Leap Day

Leap Day. A day I wish I could have utilized better. Instead, I worked all day, came home, and cleaned the house. Perhaps I'll take my leap day later this year.

Yesterday, I wrote one page.

Back

Empty promises are being made yet again, by me to my .3 remaining loyal readers.

I am currently reading The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. It's kind of awesome.

New feature: I will try, every day, to yell you how many pages I wrote the day before. For reference, one page is considered one full side of a page plus at least one line onto the next page, 12 point Times New Roman, double-spaced with one inch margins all around. Admitting the days when I write zero pages, and forcing myself to admit it to anybody who is still visiting this blog (or who hasn't yet deleted it from their reader) will be good for me.

I plan on finishing my novel by the time I turn 30. I have 267 days, as of today, to finish it.

I have disabled NetworkedBlogs from posting to Facebook. I don't know that it was generating a whole lot of traffic anyway.

Correlated to the novel, if I finish and send it out to publishers before I turn 30, I will be getting a tattoo. My wife has designed it. I will not be getting any tattoos past the age of 30. Despite being a college graduate, a husband, and a father with a steady full time job, I still feel like I don't have to be a full grown-up ever, but there are certain times when you have to draw a line. For me, 30 is a good cut-off for no longer doing something like getting a tattoo or buying an incredibly impractical sports car (at least, until after Juliette and any other as-yet-unborn offspring are off to college). No, my wife is not having another baby any time soon, so don't think that was just a clever way of not telling you something. Besides, we have to give some other bands time to put together a life-altering album which I will then listen to on every single major milestone in the second child's life (like I do with Arcade Fire's The Suburbs for the major events in Juliette's life), and those sorts of things don't happen all that often.

Yesterday, I wrote a total of zero pages.

A Group of Peers

My writing group met tonight at our dive bar. It's interesting to go there for a couple reasons; first off, I'm not using hyperbole when I tell you it's a dive bar; it's kind of a dive. It's moodily lit and there are regulars who languish at the bar and they've had the same wait staff for years and years. I've been going semi-regularly since about 2007, when I started going with a group of classmates from college. And that's why I've been going with recently. The difference is that we used to have a writing workshop and then go to our dive bar to relax, and now we go to our dive bar to have our workshop.

It's great to be doing this; once a month we meet up and workshop a short story (or last month, we workshopped the first twenty pages and a summary of the rest of my novel) and catch up. It keeps us all motivated to continue writing and reading and thinking critically.

Only, tonight, I got home from work late and Kathy had a wonderful dinner on the table. I had enough time to say hello, grab some stuff, and say goodbye before workshop. Life's sometimes like that, I guess.

This post is so unfocused because my brain hurts.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank all who came to hear me read this evening at the Tap Room. It was a great success!

This was actually the first open mic night at the Tap Room for the Writer's Guild, so in addition to the reading being a personal success, it was also a success for the organization as a whole.

Also, and this is one of the really cool things, one of the readers was Gerry Mandel, who read from his new book Shadow and Substance: My Time with Charlie Chaplin. This may not immediately be of a cool nature to you, until I explain to you that Gerry was one of my professors at Webster University. He was the instructor of my favorite class of the fall 2008 semester, The Films of Charlie Chaplin.

When I got up to read, I started by introducing myself and saying, "Funny story; Gerry Mandel was one of my professors!" Someone from he crowd said, "So, blame him if your writing is bad, right?"

After I read, we took a short break, during which Gerry came over and congratulated me on graduating, becoming a father and my reading. He also gave me a copy of his book which he then signed.

Pretty cool night.

I'ma go ahead and say this now; 2010 has kicked 2009's ass STRAIGHT. OUT. THE. DOOR. I mean, aside from Surfacing 2009, graduating from college and the release of three albums (see here and pick through the list for which three), 2009 was no good. 2010? Let's see...three more absolutely essential albums, Writers Guild awesomeness, signed-by-the-author book about Charlie Chaplin, amazing friends all the time and Juliette joining the family. Check and mate, 2009. Check. And. Mate.

Oh, you wanted to know more about the book?

Check here:

I Used to Write Letters, I Used to Sign My Name

Does anybody remember being younger and being excited to get a letter in the mail? I do. Letters from grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, postcards from friends on vacation, birthday cards...the list goes on. It was always such a singular pleasure to open a sealed envelope, knowing that whatever was inside was intended specifically for my eyes. Of course, as I got older, I got more mail. You would think that would make the novelty wear off, but you'd be wrong, because most of the mail I get these days consists of solicitations for services I either already have from another (or the same) company or that I don't need, invitations to apply for more debt than I already have accumulated, and demands that I pay for the services I use daily and the stuff I've purchased using credit or loans (in the vernacular, we call those "Bills" which reminds me of a funny story I need to tell you later).

But letters, actual real letters written by somebody I know, addressed personally to me, with salutations and inside jokes and a signature in ink...that is the kind of rare treat I love to get. And the pleasure is becoming increasingly rare for everyone in these days. Which is too bad, because while it's nice to be able to reach anyone anywhere with a cell phone, text them, e-mail them, instant message them, stalk them on Facebook, Google them constantly every day to see what they're up to...oh, um, not that I stalk anyone or Google people I know...umm...[Editor's note: Elliot is taking a break from blogging to delete his search history and learning how to use private browsing modes]...sorry, for a second there I had to, uh, cuddle with the cat. Daughter. One or both of those two things, yes.

Some of the great minds of our past were prolific letter writers, and some of those letters have since been bound and published and are a great wealth of information and insight into the minds of genius. Imagine being able to read the personal thoughts of someone like Einstein or Mark Twain, Carl Sagan, Robert Browning, Winston Churchill, Gandhi, John and Abigail Adams, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Jackie Kennedy...amazing what you might learn about their thought processes, their struggles, their emotions and concerns. And the best are those correspondences which have been fully archived, such as the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence of Philosophical argument. What treasures can be found in letters!

But imagine trying to publish a book of all the e-mails two great minds of our future may have exchanged. Here is an imagined example:

===

From: PhysicsRoxBoSox@sweetmail.com
To: ThisIsNotALoveStory@yourmail.net
Subject: Weekend Plans

Hey dude, coming in to town this weekend. I'll call you with details. We should hit up the bars.

From: ThisIsNotALoveStory@yourmail.net
To: PhysicsRoxBoSox@sweetmail.com
Subject: Re: Weekend Plans

Damn, man, I'm actually going to be in Chicago this weekend. Gotta get some stuff from Ikea and hang out with a friend for her birthday. When are you going to be back?

From: PhysicsRoxBoSox@sweetmail.com
To: ThisIsNotALoveStory@yourmail.net
Subject: Re: Re: Weekend Plans

Too bad, I'm taking off Monday morning. If you're back in time on Sunday, we should get some ice cream or something.

Also, have you seen this photo of this hilarious cat?

Attachment: hugging_kitten.jpg

From: ThisIsNotALoveStory@yourmail.net
To: PhysicsRoxBoSox@sweetmail.com
Subject: Fwd: Fw: Re: Fwd: (Fwd): OMG THIS IS THE SCARIEST THING EVER DON'T SCROLL DOWN YOU'LL RUIN IT AND DIE...

I normally doen't send these along but thus wun frEaKed me out way 2 much they're are scary things in this wurld! (and I told you Obama was a socialist Nazi commie terrorist Muslin elitist)

etc.

===

You get the idea. And before you ask, no, those are not (to my knowledge) real e-mail addresses, nor are these e-mails transcripts of e-mails I have either sent or received. Promise.

And what would be even worse would be a book of back and forth text messages or tweets:

===

(314) Just got out of class meet u @ starbucks

(612) No can do maybe tomorsmy

(314) Tomorsmy?

(612) Stupid T9 my phone thinks tomorsmy is a word when I mean tomorsmy

(314) whatever i will c u tomorrow

(612) that's the word i was trying 2 say :)

===

PhysicsRox: Going to eat a burger made w/ Krispy Kreme for a bun yum!

NotALoveStory042: @PhysicsRox why do you eat death?

PhysicsRox: @NotALoveStory042 Maybe not the best idea, my stomach is killing me. http://twitpic.com/18gx42

NotALoveStory042: @PhysicsRox damn that looks tasty I'll be right there.

NotALoveStory042: my stomach is killing me.

===

While it may be entertaining, it adds nothing to the process of whatever these two people get into for their passion (presumable for the one guy he likes physics and the Red Sox while the other guy is maybe a writer?*) and also, it doesn't show any of the possible depth their friendship may actually have.

To that end, my good friend Zach and I have begun a correspondence via letter. And it feels great to open the envelopes, and equally great to seal them. Signing my name feels good. We write about what we do (he's a particle physicist), we write about the people in our lives, plans for upcoming events (mutual friends' weddings, holidays), and the pleasure of sending and receiving letters.

Get yourself a pen pal, everybody. And write with substance. Talk about your life, your longings, your yearnings, your passions. Don't type it up as a computer file, make contact with the paper, the pen in your hand. Or, if you have bad handwriting (like I do), get yourself a typewriter at a thrift shop and hammer away at those keys. And please, sign in ink. It feels good. Trust me, I know. I'm a writer.

===

*Yes, that is exactly what I was intending all along because this is a fictional universe in which my friend Zach and I text, e-mail and tweet at each other, and we're also really ridiculously inane about more than music, bikes, guitars and Douglas Adams. Again, fictional universe.

When I Say I'm In a Guild, Do Not Get Out Your WoW Nerd Glasses

I went to my first ever St. Louis Writer's Guild meeting tonight. I kept wanting to go to events, but decided that family came first, especially since my family has just expanded.

But, Juliette turned six weeks old today. Pfft, old hat now! Daughter, I am so over you (For the record, extreme sarcasm, I will never, ever be over Juliette).

Well, every other month they have a speaker on a Thursday night, and tonight's speaker happened to be St. Louis Writer's Guild Historian Brad Cook's lecture about researching your novel. So, I figured I'd attend, it sounded interesting enough.

It was a lot of fun. It seems like it would be boring, a bunch of writers sitting in a Barnes & Noble, talking about methods of researching period-specific clothes, events, houses, etc. But it wasn't...it was a good time. And, I made a good impression on the people, I think. Everybody was happy to have somebody young there, anyway, so I guess it's up to me to bring some other young people in.

So, young readers (who are also writers maybe), anyone want to join the Guild with me? They have fun events, including readings in the Eliot room at the Schlafly Tap Room. So, a good excuse to hang out with other writers and drink beer...eh? Eh?

My training as a real estate record researcher came in handy, tonight. One of the other members of the guild asked how she could go about finding out who owned a particular house in the late nineteenth century. I talked to her afterwards about how to go about doing that, and she was very happy to have asked the question because I was so knowledgeable. Unfortunately, I can not take time out of my schedule to go do this search for her in Springfield, IL, which I think she was secretly hoping for, but the research experience will be good for her, I maintain.

Anyway, since I was out until nine this evening, there are some things that need to get done around the house which must get done before bed. And since it's almost bed time, I should get to it. So, I'ma go get to it.

See you all later.

Paternity Leave

I'm sure you've all noticed the sudden lack of new posts, and for that, I make no apology other than to say see my previous post. I've got very little time these days, it seems, with adjusting to this crazy awesome new little human being living in my house, with all the visitors streaming in bringing food and eager baby-yearning open arms, and with all the sleep I am not getting. So if the blog kind of falls to the wayside, you would do well, readers, to understand.

Just an update: Juliette is still doing great. Coming home was easier than I thought it would be, and at this point, it's hard to remember life without her. It's easy to see that I am enamored of her; my desktop background on my work computer has always been a silly picture from the internet but now it is my daughter. I even brought in my very first ever physical photograph in a frame and placed it on my desk - a picture of Juliette asleep on my chest. It's something special, I'll tell you, being a father. Even though I'm still very new at it, it's one of the most exciting adventures I've ever been on.

And the good things just seem to keep on happening, too. Monday, as I drove home from work (with the windows down and the radio up because even though it's August in St. Louis it was unseasonably gorgeous), the very first sentence of my novel fell from the sky, through my open moonroof and into my brain. I have been stuck on how to begin my novel since, well, since I began my novel. There's an event (it's no secret, I've said it before, the death of the narrator's father) that I was not sure where to place. Does it take place before the novel begins? In the first chapter? The first page? Later? The first sentence was my answer; the very first sentence saved my sanity and sparked my creativity.

You want to read my first sentence? Really? Okay.

Go buy my book when it comes out.

Zing!

But seriously, I think I'm done posting excerpts and rough chapter fragments from the book for a while. I need to hunker down and write the thing, so it gets done. I'd like to have a complete draft done by March, not completed but with enough polish and revision that it's readable and marketable. So no more dilly-dallying.

So...a few weeks ago I promised album reviews. I have not delivered. I have yet another album review I want to do, but I won't let myself until I get the two I promised done. So the third might just not happen.

Look for those at a future date.

Shower

An update on the novel (which still has the working title Before Rock Attained Perfection but I'm determined to do better than that): This novel is being written, right now, in bits and pieces and it is presenting, as such, problems of cohesion. I keep trying to tell too much about the story rather than just tell the story in the pieces I'm turning out because they've yet to flow together. But in the past few weeks, I've had a series of breakthroughs on things like plot, character development, themes, etc, so I'm confident this cohesiveness problem will be easily rectified.

Speaking of breaking through a creative impediment, my most recent epiphany about the book came about this afternoon while I was showering. Not something many of my readers want to picture, I'm sure, but I am still going to talk about it, so ye be warned. No, I will not go into graphic detail about what I was wearing in the shower (which was, for the record, nothing, not even cut-offs), but I will go into the epiphany, and why I think it happened.

So I've been thinking a lot about the novel (obviously) and yesterday, one of my good friends whom I have known since I was twelve (almost thirteen, back in 7th grade) got married to a guy I wholeheartedly approve of. So that's good. We were close through high school and she was there for me when I needed her in my listless post-high school graduation pre-college funk with an invite to see the stage show Blast, and she came to visit me in Minnesota on her fall break (and inadvertently made my current wife jealous, because Kathy thought this friend was my girlfriend and Kathy, it turns out, wanted that job to be hers). So there was a lot of good feelings about this wedding, plus I got to see my best friend from high school Zach (the bass player in my old band The Hitchhikers, which I may or may not have mentioned on the blog before) plus some other good friends from back in the day. So with these good thoughts and old memories running through my head all day yesterday, and all night, I got up this morning (late) and got to working on the garden.

There is something to be said about working in a garden; feeling the dirt in your hands, holding the plants in your palms and feeling their life. It's...calming. And that's a big deal for me to say, because (as my parents are quick to point out) I would never, ever have voluntarily done any kind of gardening or yardwork, whatsoever, when I lived with them. And Kathy would agree...it takes a lot to get me out to do that kind of work and for some reason, I always forget how rewarding it can be. But working in the garden (not mowing the lawn, which is just sweaty or raking leaves, which is just painful) can really help me clear my mind a little.

After that, I took a shower, which is relaxing in a different way. Gardening relaxes my mind; a shower relaxes my body. So I was in there, relaxed mind and relaxed body, singing some Moody Blues softly to myself, when all of a sudden, a solution to one of the problems of my novel presented itself. The water was running down my back and over my shoulders and it just came t me.

I'll just go ahead and tell you a little bit about what I mean. There's a problem of the narrator's father believes that Rock music reached a pinnacle in 1976, and that since then it has been on a rapid downward spiral. The reason presented for this in the original short story on which the novel is founded is that Led Zeppelin's album Presence contained the greatest achievement of rock music, "Achilles Last Stand." But I needed there to be more to it than that, so I found a way for the narrator to discover his father's true reasons. I will say no more now. But I'm excited to get working on it.

Anyway...if your head is ever in a funk, do something with a little bit of a Zen feel to it. Rock garden. Real garden? Try it. Then take a shower. It seems to help me.

A (very) Short Excerpt

from a current work in progress

===

Ryan turned his eyes to me, narrowing them. "But how did you know?" he asked me in the tone he always reserved for questions to which the answers never satisfied.

"How does anybody really know?" I stalled. He didn't buy it. "She touched my arm."

Ryan's reaction was a jumble of surprise, skepticism, and confusion. I rubbed the spot on my arm, to assure one of us that the arm really was there to be touched. "Excuse me, I'm gonna need some clarification," he asked.

"We were having coffee one night, years ago, and talking about paradise, agreeing that it was completely unattainable. And then she shattered the consensus by touching my arm and taking me there." I continued rubbing the spot on my left arm where her coffee-warmed hand had wrapped around my winter-kissed flesh, just below the sleeve of my t-shirt.

"Where?"

For a second, I could smell the coffee shop, the chai tea cakes I had also fallen in love with that night, my stale frozen and dried sweat from the show, her perfume which I found out later to be called "Heaven." I could feel her hand on me, her lips against mine. Ryan asked again and I was brought back to the noise of the DC dive bar. I looked hard at the sagging ceiling tiles and the yellowing beer pitcher half empty between us.

"Where?"

"Paradise," I said. "One perfect moment. She touched my arm, and took me to paradise."

Ryan's right hand moved toward my left arm, his fingers twitching in response to some impulse in his muscle memory or cerebral cortex. I wanted him to feel the spot where she had touched me, to see if he could still feel her energy. Maybe he could find himself on the edge of paradise, looking in at me and Katie Mason, sitting at a Formica table, coffee cups half filled between us, her hand on my arm. Instead, he grabbed the pitcher of Stag and emptied it into our glasses. He picked his up and held it out towards me. "To one perfect moment," he said.

"To one perfect moment." I moved my glass to meet his and we drank. I wanted the juke box to be playing "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, her favorite song. I wanted her to walk through the door, look around, and find me. Instead, a group of Yankees fans in the corner belted along with "You Give Love a Bad Name." Bon Jovi never fails to ruin my best laid fantasies. "And one more, to paradise," I added.

"Wherever it may be," Ryan said, our glasses touching again. We both drained our beers and decided to go back to the hotel.

"Think Johnny and Adam are awake?" I asked.

"Johnny's awake," Ryan said, pointing past the raucous group in the corner. Johnny was sitting at a table behind them, across from a girl with dark blonde hair highlighted in pink. "Come on, let's go." And Ryan started towards the door, throwing a twenty on the table.

I lingered, watching Johnny and the girl through the laughing crowd. He was cool, uninterested, his eyes darting around the room. His glance fell on me for a moment, continued it's journey and then jolted back to me. I smiled at him, waved. He nodded nonchalantly. I wasn't sure if he didn't want the girl to know I was there, or if he didn't want her to know he wasn't really paying attention. Just as I was about to turn around and leave, I saw her reach out to him, put her left hand on his right arm, between his wrist and elbow. She laughed and pressed her hand to him, and he smiled cooly at her and looked fleetingly in her direction.

===

This will make more sense in context, I am sure, but I felt this little bit was exceptional, given the quality of my writing lately. Let's hope this becomes more the norm.

Oh, and if you think it sucks and is terrible, don't tell me. This is the best I've been able to do on the novel for a few weeks now. Be kind to the fragile writer.

A Treat

I made this video in the Spring of 2006 for a Fiction workshop I took at St. Louis Community College - Meramec. I may have mentioned it in passing back then.

Tess

In the interest of 1) continuing to write in spite of writer's block (no way out but to write through it, I've come to learn) and 2) continuing to garner interest from my readers, something I've been working on for the book.

===

When Bravo Little Gavroche would go on tour, it was always Ryan who would set the schedule. He'd be the one on the phone with the club managers, the other bands (or their agents, if they were big enough to have one), the hotels, anybody else I may be forgetting. He'd then give each of us an itinerary. "And," he would always stress, "this time, we have to follow it. To the last letter." That last summer we toured was no different. What was also no different was that thirty seconds into the itinerary, we were already behind.

Johnny and I were sitting in Bingo, our van. We were parked on Tamm Avenue in front of Adam's apartment. The van was loaded with drums, amps, microphones, two of Adam's guitars (one electric, one acoustic), two of Johnny's basses, two guitars of mine (an electric and an acoustic, merely for back-up purposes) and four of Ryan's guitars (two electrics, one electric/acoustic and a fretless hollow-body electric he had built himself). Johnny had picked the short straw the night before, so he sat behind the driver's seat drumming his fingers out of time with The Cure as they quietly played over the speakers. I sat next to him in the passenger seat, tapping my fingers in time. Johnny honked.

"Let's go, Adam!" he said, to himself. After a second or two Adam emerged from the two-story brick apartment building onto a second floor fire escape, a soft guitar case slung across his back, the better of his two electrics, and in his right hand an overnight bag which held enough clothes to last him the first three nights of our two month tour. Even as he made his way down the steps, Johnny honked again. This time he yelled out the window. "While we're breathing, Adam!"

The back door opened and Adam laid his guitar in and haphazardly threw his clothes in, then climbed up and shut the door. "Sorry, guys, the dishes were really stacked up, I lost track of time."

"You should have been doing laundry, let Amy do the dishes while you're gone," Johnny said, checking the mirror and rashly pulling out into the street before a Honda, which honked. The equipment shifted in the back and Adam lost his balance and fell against the back doors.

"Jesus, Johnny, take it easy," I tried. "I'd like to get out of St. Louis alive and with everything in one piece, right?"

Johnny laughed a short, evil laugh. He looked at me and his smile turned sour. He elongated his syllables. "Sorry."

"Amy doesn't do the dishes on Tuesdays." Adam had regained his balance and made his way onto the rear bench seat. "We divide up the chores."

"You two are way to fucking cutesy and domestic," Johnny said. He pulled onto the highway and in a few minutes of reverent silence (you don't talk through a live recording of Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused" which had just started playing after The Cure) we were at the loft, which was close enough to the brewery that it almost always smelled of hops or barley. Not that any of us minded. Ryan was waiting for us, duffel bag in hand. We pulled up in front of the building.

"Running late, I see," he said as he lifted himself in through the side door and set his bag on the ground. "For a change," he added. I looked at Johnny, who was looking at Ryan in the rear view mirror, and I turned around to look at Ryan.

"Don't blame me," Johnny said defensively."

"Nobody was," Ryan said.

"No, that's bullshit; it's always my fault and I know that, but this time it's not. Ask Adam."

Adam leaned forward. "It's true. I had to do the dishes."

Ryan shrugged and put on a pair of sunglasses. "That's fine, Adam. I forgot it was a Tuesday."

Johnny broke a rule and turned the stereo off before the end of a Bob Dylan song. "What? So uncool! Every time, no matter what excuse I have, if I'm making us run late, you jump down my throat!"

"Johnny-" Ryan tried to say, but could get no further.

"But Adam or Elliot has an excuse and it's all, 'I understand guys. It's the third Wednesday of an even numbered month during a leap year, it could happen to anybody.' How do I get that kind of credibility?"

"Be on time, almost all the time," I said. He paused. "I know, right? The treatment sounds worse than the disease." Johnny shot daggers from his eyes at each of us in turn, faced the road and turned the radio back on. He pulled away from the curb.

"Johnny," Ryan said again, "I was trying to say that it's okay, this time, because even if you had been on time, we can't leave yet. We have to go to Eddie's."

"What for?" I asked, as Johnny maneuvered the van around a left turn.

"I'm picking up Tess."

The brakes squealed lightly as Johnny came to an abrupt stop at a red light. "Tess?" Adam asked in the following silence.

"That's what I said."

"You're bringing Tess?" I asked.

"Yes."

The first time Ryan saw Tess was at Eddie's Guitars on Manchester. This was before Adam had joined the band, and Johnny did the singing. We were all there, and though all three of us saw Tess and recognized how beautiful she was, she affected Ryan in a different way. We were fifteen, maybe sixteen, only there to buy picks and strings for an upcoming show, and while Johnny and I decided to leave and get some lunch, Ryan opted to stay behind. "So we can get acquainted," he said, motioning to Tess, who was behind him at that point. He had only taken his eyes off of her long enough to acknowledge that we were leaving and to let us know he wasn't joining, then his attention was once again riveted on her. Craig, the guy at the counter, merely nodded his head at this.

"She's good looking for sure," he said. "But not to everybody. She's charmed quite a few guys come in here. Ryan's a little young, but, well, I don't know. She may be twice his age, but they do look...nice together." We agreed, but left to get lunch anyway.

Ryan kept going back, some weeks he'd be there every other day just to see her, to be with her. We started to worry. He even showed up late for practice one day. He barged in half an hour late, which was a problem back then because we used my father's basement to rehearse in, but when my father came home we had to stop. Time was precious. Ryan was excited, though.

"You guys; I wrote this song today," he said. "At Eddie's. Tess totally inspired me." This was the first time Johnny or I had heard the name. We liked it, but we liked the song even better. That was the birth of "Welcome to the Ballroom," the song which Johnny calls our panty melter and which my father referred to the week he died as a hymn for the Church of Rock.

After a month of Ryan visiting Tess at the guitar store, he came to practice one day with her. We were amazed. We needed to know why, and how he was able to manage it.

"I've just had my eye on her for a while, you know," he said later. "And I was in yesterday, and noticed somebody else eyeballing her. It was Eric, that terrible guitar player from that terrible ska band we played with at The Hi-Pointe. I wasn't going to let that happen."

We liked having her around; she had a good voice and was beautiful and somehow gave us a little credibility. If we came to a show and the manager thought we looked a little young and started trying to back out of the show, all Ryan would have to do is grab Tess. One look at her, and it was almost instant; if we had Tess with us, we were real musicians.

The problems started, though; she'd get trashed in the middle of a show and embarrass us. Once she fell apart onstage in the middle of one of the more quiet parts of the very song she had inspired. Similar things began happening when Ryan would bring her to rehearsals. The last tour she came on with us, she came completely undone onstage and we were almost asked to leave a club in Boston.

These are the points I tried to make as Johnny drove us on surface streets (which I know he had done to buy me time) towards Eddie's. Ryan would not be gainsaid.

"Look, if you look at the law of averages," Ryan said, "she's due. She's been a problem at every show she's been to in the last three years, but I've taken care of everything with that, so she should be perfectly okay this time."

"That's only sort of a good point. I could use the same argument and say that she's ruined every show she's been to in the last three years, so the law of averages states that she'll probably be a problem this time."

"I agree with the drummer," Johnny said, and we knew he was serious. Johnny never referred to us by name when discussing matters of utmost import to the band.

"Me too," Adam said. His arms were crossed in the rear seat.

Ryan looked desperately for an ally, but he had none in the van. "Come on guys." He looked up and must have noticed Johnny driving conservatively. "Hurry up; they close at five, that's in like five minutes. And I promise, this time, it will be different. Band vote?"

We nodded our agreement for the band vote. "Good. I vote yes," Ryan said.

"No," Johnny said.

"Abstain," Adam said. Ryan and I turned to look at him. Johnny joined us as he pulled to a line of stuck traffic. "What? This is a thorny issue. I love Tess, I do. I think she could be very good for the morale of the band, but she doesn't have the best track record. So abstain."

The traffic was moving again as Ryan and Adam looked to me. "Elliot?" Johnny asked, looking at the road ahead. I joined him to give myself something to look at while I contemplated which member of the band I most wanted to be murdered by that night.

"Fine. Johnny, get us to Eddie's." I heard Ryan give a triumphant "yes" under his breath. "But," I continued. "But...one slip up. One embarrassing moment. She's gone."

"Agreed," Johnny said through gritted teeth.

"Acceptable," Adam said.

"Agreed, then!" Ryan nearly shouted. He looked very pleased.

We arrived at Eddie's just before it closed. "I'll run in and get her, then we can get on the road," Ryan said, flinging the door open and jumping out. He ran into the store.

Johnny turned the music up. "Riders on the Storm" seemed to seep from the speakers and hang above our heads in the van, ominous and foreboding. A minute later, Ryan skipped happily out the door of the shop, holding tightly to Tess. Together they skipped to the back, where he opened the door for her and picked her up, set her neatly next to the other guitars. He climbed in behind her and shut the door.

"She looks so good with the brass colored strings; it matches the volume knobs. So exciting!"

"What was she in the shop for?" I finally asked.

"New pickups, adjustment on the truss rod, the trim around the edge was coming up a bit by the neck pocket, and I got the output rewired." He giggled and carefully lifted Tess out of her case.

I had to admit, as I looked at her lit from the sunlight slanting into the driver's side windows, for a forty year old hollow body electric twelve string, she was incredibly beautiful.

===

A Free Write Friday of Sorts...

I have not been posting, and there is a reason for that.

I have been very angry. Those who know me well, are friends with/stalk me on facebook or follow my tweets, you already know what is making me angry. For those of you in the dark, I don't want to get into it. It's been all I could think about for something like two weeks, and every time I sat down to write I couldn't, because I wanted to write for my novel and not in anger. Let us leave it at that.

As to the rumors I've been hearing through the pipeline that I have forsaken blogspot for twitter, or that I feel my art should be only used for pay, or that I'm stuck in a tunnel, or that I've gone so crazy I forgot I had a blog, or whatever other crazy rumors are out there, they're all wrong. Each and every one of them. Trust me. I've just explained myself.

First things first, before I get into the writing: a quick update. The month of June was fairly uneventful. my sister and her husband celebrated their 4th anniversary. My brother-in-law Joe got married, which meant I got to attend my second wedding of the year. The first one was a low key deal in March in Iowa. This was rather a bigger deal and took place in Puerto Rico. The trip was very nice, if I do say so myself. Very nice indeed. Of course, sunny and beautiful just about every day, and the wedding was amazingly awesome. The flight back was a terror, but we're going for the highlights and not the lowlights on our way through June.

Skip forward to this past weekend, when my old roommate Chris came to town for a Twins v. Cardinals showdown. Of course we hit up the City Museum, Ted Drewes and drank ourselves some Schlafly Pale Ale (I believe Chris went with the dry-hopped American Pale Ale here at the house, and then the regular Pale Ale at Beatnik Bob's). Good times were, indeed, had by all. I can't remember who won the baseball game, though.

Anyway, that about wraps up the update. Work is still going well, Kathy is still looking for a job (leads? leads? anyone?) but in a slightly ironic twist of fate she received word this week that the bi-monthly program guide published by the television station from which she was laid off won an award for its design, and that her name is on that award because (fancy this) she was the designer. So with that tidbit added to her resume, she can't possibly be too far from employment now!

Okay, now on to the Free Write Friday of sorts. I've been stuck writing my novel lately, as I said I wasn't exactly in the right mood. But I need to keep my head down and power through. So in the interest of doing so, I'm going to write for a little bit and do it here, on my blog, spontaneously. Well, maybe not so spontaneously, as I've been thinking about how to go about constructing my novel for about two months now, and have actually already written some down. But this is a part of the envisioned novel that exists only in my head and as a scribbled note in my composition book.

Now I know that usually, my Free Write Fridays are done via suggestion; I ask around Tuesday or Wednesday, I check comments, I pick the most creative or the one with most potential (or I sandbag it and post an anonymous suggestion myself and take off with that...wait, did I just admit that?) and on Friday write it. But instead, this time it's just going for the overarching idea in my head of the novel about the guy in a band working through the relationships and the music, and one of the more specific ways in which I was planning on presenting the idea. So we'll give it a try. Here we go.

===

July 2009

One of the most important lessons about rock 'n' roll my father taught me was the idea that a song belongs to the person who wrote it in much the same way a true story belongs to the person to whom it happened. But, he was always careful to point out, that doesn't stop others from trying to tell the story or play the song.

There are two ways to cover a song, my father used to say. Make it sound like it did on the original recording, or make it your own in some way. He made it very clear which method he preferred.

"If it's a fast song originally, try to speed it up. If the main instrument is a guitar, transpose it to piano. If it was sung with a twinge of longing, amp it up."

I had a hundred perfect examples for him the last time we had this conversation. "Dad, you know that song 'Superstar' by The Carpenters?"

"Yeah," he answered, "originally written by Delaney, Bonnie & Friends, sung by Bette Midler of all people on The Tonight Show, but made famous by The Carpenters," and he started singing it.

"Yeah, that one. The way they do it, you know, it's, you feel sad for the singer."

"'Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear' yeah, 'but you're not really here...'"

I should have stopped there, tried to talk about that song, because I knew where the conversation would end. But I went on anyway. "Well, there was a tribute album to the Carpenters, you know, back in 1994?"

"'You said you'd be coming back this way again baby...'"

"And, well, Sonic Youth did a version of it, and..."

"What do I always tell you about covering tunes?" He had stopped singing, was looking at me, had even taken his glasses off so I could see how serious he was.

"Well, it was a tribute album," I tried to stall him. "It was released ten years ago, dad, and Sonic Youth..."

"And what do I always tell you about rock 'n' roll?"

I knew his rules, the gray areas. I tried to stall a little longer, hoping to pique his curiosity enough to at least ask if he could hear what I knew he would ultimately decry as a bastardized version of one of his treasured musical masterpieces. He liked to do that, to claim all the music that came before 1976 as his own. "But dad, look, it's a tribute album, for a band that made music from 1969 until 1982."

"Eighty-three," he corrected me. I couldn't let him go any further until I had said more.

"Fine, eighty-three. They made music before and after. And the tribute isn't about a bunch of people thinking they can repackage the songs and sell them to a younger crowd, they're paying tribute to them."

He was speechless. I thought he might actually want to hear the song this time. My heart pumped in my throat. "What I wanted to say was, though, that the way Sonic Youth does it, that you don't feel sorry for the singer at all, you feel kind of, kind of creeped out. Like with The Carpenters, you feel like the guy lied to the singer just to get her into bed or something, but with Sonic Youth, you know? Not that! You feel like, like, like...you feel like there never was any actual connection between the singer of the song and the person they're singing about. You get the sense that the singer's kind of, like, a stalker or something. It's really very cool, they do what you say, they make it their own."

I had just contradicted myself, and I knew it; after trying to convince my father that Sonic Youth had not usurped the song, had paid tribute to The Carpenters, I then told him flat out they had made it their own. And he caught me.

"I thought you said it was a tribute."

"It is, but..."

"That's not a very nice tribute, huh? Changing the meaning of their song?" And that was that.

"Nobody should ever be allowed to cover a song," he said to me, and I mouthed along with the next part of his statement; "except for Joe Cocker." I rolled my eyes. "And," he continued, "speak of the devil, Mad Dogs and Englishmen covered the tune before anybody else. Delaney, Mad Dogs, Bette Midler, Cher, some Australian lady, then The Carpenters. Maybe this Sonic band's paying tribute to somebody else, and they shouldn't be."

Because Rock 'n' Roll, I knew, attained perfection in 1976 with Led Zeppelin's release of "Achilles' Last Stand."

This was just the last of many conversations I had with my father about covering music. I asked him when I first started my band if we should play some Rolling Stones tunes, and he said no. "Not unless you intend on dressing up like them, looking like them, and playing only their music, and call yourselves The Ruby Tuesdays or something like that. Be a tribute band. You're no Joe Cocker."

To be honest, though, there were three kinds of bands that could play rock 'n' roll cover tunes, and my father acknowledged all three of them: Joe Cocker (not really a kind of band, but he goes on the list), tribute bands and wedding bands. And there is a reason they go in that order, too. Joe Cocker is the ultimate, because according to my father Joe Cocker is creating art from the remnants of previously shattered art (and what shattered that art? I'll let you know when I find the answer). Tribute bands fall next because they are providing a service that is like but not equal to the service provided by bands and artists who have passed this world and entered the crowded venues of Rock heaven. Wedding bands go last because they provide a very basic service which is always better than hiring a DJ but nonetheless nothing to get excited about.

These rules only ever applied to rock 'n' roll, though, never to any other kind of music, at least according to my father. Together, he and I had spent every Christmas since I was thirteen playing in a community orchestra together. My first year out of college, the band wasn't touring for various reasons and so I joined my father full time with the orchestra. He played timpani, I played whatever other percussion instruments needed to be played, and one night after playing some Holst and Mahler I asked him about the rules.

"If we're going to open with Mahler, dad, shouldn't we stick with Mahler? I mean, unless you're at a wedding gig, you wouldn't open with 'Twist and Shout' and then go on to 'Misty Mountain Hop' now would you?" We were packing up the music and still standing on the stage while the audience dispersed.

"You probably wouldn't play 'Misty Mountain Hop' at a wedding anyway," he answered, "but you're right. Only, this is different. Nobody in our audience ever got a chance to see Mahler. You can't run down to the record store about buy a recording of Mahler conducting himself, you know. He wrote it down so that others may play it. So much of the enjoyment of classical music isn't happening out there," and he waved toward the seats in the auditorium, "but up here, with the musicians. Rock, you know, the enjoyment...there's a lot of it up on stage, but even more of it out there. And out there, they want to see what they hear. They don't want to see Blood Sweat and Tears playing 'Stairway to Heaven.' Give 'em 'Spinning Wheel,' give 'em 'Lucretia MacEvil.'"

My father's first Christmas without his own father came upon all of us suddenly. My grandfather had died in February, but when December 15th came everyone in the family realized how different this year would be. Grandpa always played his tuba at an event called "Tuba Christmas" in one of the malls in town every year, up until the year before he died, and there it was, Tuba Christmas, upon us. We had almost forgotten about it, until one night there we were, rehearsing for the orchestra's holiday concert, and one of the tuba players mentioned it in passing. Of course. Tuba Christmas.

We called all of my father's brothers, even the ones we never talked to in Alabama, and invited them all up to come see Tuba Christmas one last time. Only the ones who were still in St. Louis came. So on a Saturday afternoon, we went to the Galleria and picked out a spot to watch and listen to all the tubas. We sat. We watched. We listened. I was the only one of my cousins to show up, but then for some reason Grandpa Schulz had always seemed especially fond of me over his other grandsons. While others would get a card with a five dollar bill for their birthdays, sent in the mail no matter how close they lived, Grandpa would always come down and visit with me, take me to a movie, usually war films or flicks about baseball. We sat for a long time, even after the tubas had all been packed up and hauled off. We were trading stories, and my father was telling all about the last camping trip before Robert, the oldest brother, moved out on his own. He told the whole story, and we laughed at the right spots, except for my uncle James, the second youngest.

When the story was over, James frowned. "Gerald, that's not how it happened. We weren't lost in the woods for six hours, it was more like half an hour. And it only rained for the whole day one of the days we were there. And dad had spare gas, he didn't use Robert's whiskey to fuel the boat, he just threatened to."

"Maybe you're right," my father said, after a silence. Robert sat, grinning, not willing or wanting to settle the matter of what happened to his whiskey.

"I am right," James said. "And it wasn't the sixty-two Pontiac anymore, it was the sixty-five. Remember, Dale had totalled the sixty-two on his seventeenth birthday?"

"That, you're right about," Robert chimed in. "It was the sixty-five. The Bonneville. Maroon."

When all was said and done that day, my father and I got back into his car to head home. "Why does James always insist on contradicting you?" I asked.

"What, about the story?" I nodded. "He's right. About the time lost, the rain, the whiskey. Dad's not around, James feels like he should correct history. But sometimes, you know, when you cover a song, you gotta change it a little. Make it your own." He turned the radio on, perhaps somehow knowing that Joe Cocker's version of "The Letter" would be on the classic hit station. "Besides, your uncle James has never been able to change it up that way. He's in a wedding band."

===

A little (very) disjointed, but remember, this only existed as a sliver of an idea in my head when I started. But the important thing is that I kept my head down and powered through. I've made an important step. Yay!

No promises about blogging. You can follow me on twitter, though!

Happy 4th of July everyone!

Something Big...

...is in the works.

It's got to do with Rock 'n' Roll, Pontiacs, and father-son relationships.

Just know that I have recently watched American Graffiti, and also watched and read High Fidelity so I am on a bit of a Rock kick. Also, I am promising myself to own a nice component stereo system with a turntable by the end of the year so that I can listen to all the records I bought in my teens (I know that makes me sound old, but I really did buy a bunch of used records in my teens because they were cheaper than CDs and my parents have a working record player).

This project is based on the short story "Before Rock Attained Perfection" which in turn was a top-to-bottom rewrite of "North For Salvation" (from which you can read an excerpt here). It will incorporate aspects of both stories, and in fact much of "Before Rock" will be within this work, just not altogether, and a lot of "North for Salvation" may be salvaged and reintroduced as a chapter.

That's right, a chapter. As in, chapter of a novel or novella. I've got a lot of good ideas brewing for this, and it will be nice after having an entire semester devoted to writing for the stage to work on this for the summer. Not that I'm putting my bard-style quill down just yet, I want to polish up Still Life and send it to some festivals and contests (it really is about the most complete thing I've ever written I think), but that shouldn't take me more than a week, but as I said I'm coming off a semester where all of my creative writing went into Still Life and rewrites of Spice.

Speaking of Spice, I promise that within the next week, I will post the video. I have been lazy in that regard while I've been working hard finishing up school and working as much as I can before my vacation in mid-June.

I know, I know, a vacation now? With Kathy still unemployed (yes, Kathy is still unemployed)? Well, we paid for our plane tickets in December, and we're splitting the hotel room with my brother-in-law, and we can't miss it because how often is there a family wedding in Puerto Rico? Only, like, one in ten people get married in Puerto Rico (the percentage is much higher for those who, you know, live there...) so we can't miss it. Plus, it's our first real vacation together since our honeymoon. When we went to New York City two years ago, it was only a vacation for me. And weekend trips don't count as vacations. They're just little road trips.

Anyway, keep checking back here for updates on any and all situations. Again, look here in a week or so for the video of Spice and everybody please have a happy and safe summer.

But before you go, what will you be reading this summer? Something new? An old favorite? Nothing? A classic you've somehow missed all these years? That book you were supposed to have read in your Sophomore year American Lit class but just checked sparknotes and scraped a B- on the paper and vowed to read it eventually? Let me know in the comments!

Way Overdue

I apologize. I've been busier than I've ever been. Trying to squeeze as much money out of my job as I can, trying to do all of my homework, trying to spend time with my friends and family. Something had to fall by the wayside. Something had to take not just a backseat, but a spot in the trunk, next to my bottle of windshield washer fluid and the golf clubs that were supposed to be used as props in one of the plays at this year's Surfacing, but which never made it into the theatre for whatever reason. And that something was my blog. And it's unfair to you, my readers, for me to have done that.

I haven't been totally silent, though. I have been twittering quite a bit. If you've come here at all and paid attention to the twitter feed at right (----->), you'd notice how active I've been there. You could put all of those together to form one post.

Sadly, for those who have been watching the blog only for information, I hate to say that you missed Surfacing, only because I never posted about it. That's been my biggest screw up. I really am upset at myself for that. If you're friends with me on Facebook or follow me on twitter, again, you probably heard all about it. Or if you saw me in person any time over the last few weeks. It was basically all I could think of/talk about.

Not that this helps, but there will be videos posted. Again, it's not the same.

This year's Surfacing was incredible, though. I told the cast and director of my show today that this was the best experience I've had in theatre, and I meant that. All the shows I was a part of growing up, in high school, community theatre, last year's Surfacing...all good, some great. But this year was different. I don't know why. I feel closer this year to my cast, even though I spent more time last year. I didn't have to direct this year; maybe that's the difference. I want to thank my director, Mac, for taking my play and trimming the fat from the script. I'm sure you're aware, readers, of how verbose I can sometimes be. I'd like to thank Madeline, the Assistant Director, for doing everything that I would have not thought of if I had been left in control, like organizing props backstage beforehand. I want to thank Max, Christina and Dexter for their portrayals of (respectively) Chris, Janette and Kai. I wrote these parts with certain things in mind, but you each interpreted them in your own way, and brought something new and exciting and awesome to the table.

I have never understood the phrase "Just the writer" in theatre. Until this weekend. I was humbled, but in a good way. Lines that I wrote were getting laughs. Sure, some of them were written to get laughs. Others were delivered in a way I didn't think when I wrote them. I thought, "this line should go here" and put it there. I never thought they would get a laugh. And they did. It was very interesting. I could have sat there with a scorecard and divied up the laughs as they came; that one goes to me for clever writing, that one goes to Mac for clever directing, and this one goes to Dexter for clever delivery. It probably would have come out even.

Anyway, back to my apology. I can't say that you'll be inundated with updates. You know that won't happen. But don't give up on me. I graduate in three weeks. Expect a doozy of an update sometime thereafter. Okay? And please, feel free to drop me a comment any time. Encouraging ones are always appreciated. Snarky ones are likely to be returned at a later date with extra snark attached. Sort of like an interest bearing deposit. Ye be warned.

The Long Awaited (and delayed) Post

Well, my teacher called class a little early, because all he had left on the agenda was to screen a film he wrote that went to sundance called Dopamine, and there wasn't enough time to do so.

I am going to just do a brief little "New Years Resolutions" deal here, not recap the ones I didn't keep from last year. I have more important things to blog about tonight.

So, this year I resolve to graduate. I resolve to get on my bike at least once. I resolve to write as much over Spring Break as I will have been doing all semester (with playwriting and scriptwriting [two totally different classes; playwriting is plays and scriptwriting is actually screenwriting] it should be quite a large amount). I resolve to love more, dislike less, try new things, spend more quality time with my wife and our family (both at home with the cats and the extended groups), cook more often (because I love to cook and haven't done enough of it in the last two and a half years), publish, make contacts, sell myself as a writer. I resolve to be Elliot M. Rauscher, writer.

I want to talk about the writing process, and two pieces I wrote in the last year and a half that I think truly are me, one hundred percent, through and through. These pieces that grew from the mind but evolved from the heart, while growing from the heart and evolving from the mind. What I mean by that is that, well, I have written a great deal from my heart in the past, but my heart has always been on my sleeve whilst doing so. I have also written a great deal from my mind, which has proven ill-fated and hard to read later when I can't figure out where my sentences were going and why they took so long to get to nowhere (kinda like this sentence which I have extended even longer with the parenthetical). What I learned while writing these two pieces is that you shouldn't write from just the heart or just the mind, but both. Let the heart kick the mind up, let the mind ground the heart in reality.

These pieces-and I have excerpts of both of them on here and I'll link to them at the bottom of this post-are similar in subject matter, but approach them differently. It's sad to say that they both deal with death, which is odd, because I have the good fortune of not having dealt with much death in my life. Three of my four grandparents are dead, one of them before I was even born. It was difficult when Granny Rauscher died suddenly, but it was even more difficult six years later to watch Grandpa Rauscher die slowly. I've had three pets that I held very dear to my heart die in the last eight years; one unexpectedly, one slowly and in great comfort (I like to think that the morning she died, the last thing she did when my father picked her up was purr), and one in the cold, clinical fashion most of our pets leave the world. But this is all normal; pets do not live forever; they get old or their adventurous attitude catches up with them. Grandparents die. Parents die, too, and so do children, and brothers and sisters and friends and enemies. People die. This is nothing new. What could I possibly have to say of any value, of any profound consequence, on the subject of death? It's a theme writers and philosophers have dealt with for centuries.

But I tackled it, as I said, from the heart and from the mind. My first drafts were, however, not done correctly. The first of these two pieces, a play, I began writing upon hearing of the death of a friend I hadn't seen in four years. It was too much to tackle at that point, and it poured out of my heart and came out on the page splotchy, bloody, raw, but not emotionally raw; melodramatically raw. Not the good kind of raw. It started with the protagonist (loosely based on your heroic writer) receiving a hand-addressed letter (how romantic, no?) informing him of his friend's death. Only, the audience does not know the nature of the news. It sent the character into a spiral of self-pity and then, lo and behold the (as-of-yet unrevealed to the audience) dead friend arrives. Clearly, it is all in the protagonist's head.

So I put it down for four months and worked on another play, Spice (and more on that in a moment). I thought a lot about what my friendship with this person had been, had meant. I read up a lot on what projects he was working on before he died, as he had been a terrific actor. Lots of people had a lot to say about him online in tribute groups on facebook. And in a way, reading all of that and thinking hard about him made me remember more of our friendship, insignificant as it truly was. And it got me to thinking about how lives cross paths at all kinds of angles, acute and obtuse and right and sometimes they run parallel and bend together for a short while. About how no life is really a straight line, lived from start to finish. It bends, it circles, it splits in two at times. And I wrote The Last Thing.

The second piece is sort of the opposite; I had this idea for writing about a band, traveling to their last gig because they've had it with life as an unsuccessful local band. It was partially inspired by the second ever free-write Friday about Joe Dubinsky. But I had all this stuff in my head about music, and about a band, and it all came out on the page. Actually, nothing about death in the traditional sense, merely the death of a certain musical act, which can seem like a death (believe me).

But as I said, I wrote this one from the mind, not releasing my passion for music, just some technical jargon. Which is not to say it didn't have any heart in it; the friendships were written with heart, because I had learned that with The Last Thing. But in a sixteen page story, three pages with heart do not equal anything good. This story was called "North for Salvation" and, while parts of it were good, it fizzled for me with every read.

So I got to thinking about death again as I was redrafting, thinking about it because I felt mortality creeping up on everybody I know; not morbidly, not immediately, but I feel the steady drumbeat of time, and it dawned on me that each second passed is a second less to live than a second ago. Now, this could cause some heavy breathing and angst amongst some people, so instead of dwelling on this, I just let it happen to one of my characters. Not the angst, but the final passing second. My main character's father passed away. It got me to thinking of what I would do if I were that person; how does one cope with that? It's not the same as a cat. It can be the same as a grandparent, but for me it would be more immediate. There's a generational buffer between us and our grandparents. There is no such buffer between ourselves and our own parents.

Suddenly, I found the heart of the story. Not to keep saying heart, but I found it when I started writing from the heart. The result is something more profound than four guys riding in a van trying to live out their last rock 'n' roll glory. The result is called "Before Rock Attained Perfection."

Anyway, these are the two pieces I am currently going to push forth as the heavy artillery in my arsenal. The Last Thing is very nearly polished to perfection; "Rock" still needs work but it is getting there. These are the works that are going to go out to contests, magazines, etc.

You can find the excerpt from The Last Thing here. Currently, no excerpt of "Before Rock Attained Perfection" can be found on this blog. However, you can find an excerpt from the original draft of "North for Salvation" here.

And now, to other business. Remember the debacle that was Surfacing Emerging Playwrights Festival 2008? Well, it's back, but this time in better hands. In fact, it's in the hands of the same person who rescued it from oblivion last year. And this year, rather than being commissioned to write a piece and guaranteed a spot regardless of the crap I turn out, I opted to submit work and hope for the best. I actually submitted three pieces: the aforementioned The Last Thing, a dramedy set in a restaurant called The Office Bar and Grill, and a romantic comedy entitled Spice (no excerpt posted [and none forthcoming, read on]). I had hope for The Last Thing, knew that The Office Bar and Grill was a long shot, and I submitted Spice because I knew it would play well onstage and fit in very well because there are moments of absurd comedy played against the reality of a young couple falling for each other over Thai food. I was originally going to suicide submit just The Last Thing, but Surfacing is known for selecting plays with parts for both men and women, hence the other two.

Anyway, I received confirmation last week that Spice has been selected this year! And the best part is that I won't have to direct it! Which is a big relief, because that was very time consuming and stressful. I had offered to direct a play if none of my written work was selected, and you can bet your last dollar I was doing my best to will fate to select a play so I wouldn't have to direct. I would have taken the director's chair for a play, if needed; you can't renege on a promise once you've made it, unless of course it's a promise to be more of a consistent blogger...

Well, there you have it. My long silence is broken.

I would like to take a second to ask for a moment of blog silence, to mourn the dismantlement and removal of Gerald's blog turbochubs. He assures us he will come back some day, showcasing his amazing skills of an artist. Yes, I said skills of an artist. Ten points to anyone who can recognize that reference.

A Late Tuesday Excerpt

Kind of late, I know. But you're getting an interesting treat tonight with it. See, normally with a Tuesday Excerpt you get a short bit from a longer piece. But tonight, what you're getting is something else.

Writing is much like any other art (painting, composing, sculpting) in that sometimes the artist has a few false starts before finding a groove. Bearing that in mind, for every story I finish you can safely guess that there were three more started. So what do I do with those three unfinished stories? Well, sometimes they just sit forever, and I find them later and read what I've got and decide it's terrible. Sometimes, I come back and say, "Hey, that's not bad." The only problem is that it's normally a long time before I come back, and it's hard to remember just where I was going to take the story.

So tonight, I'm sharing with you a selection of those false starts. Some have potential (a couple are already past ten pages), some are so so, and some are just terrible. What you may notice is a similarity in theme, or character or plot elements within these false starts, because what I am doing is fine-tuning an idea. Most of what you are seeing tonight eventually became one of two stories; "Special Detail" or "Momentum." There is also one thrown in about buying a used car that I really want to revisit now and try and tweak. So, without further explanation:

===

from an Untitled work, spring 2006

Michael would later reflect on his first job out of college, at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company restaurant at the Mall of America, and wonder if things wouldn’t have been better if he had just stayed there. Not even to advance in employment, from server to captain of servers, to assistant floor manager, to floor manager, and so on, but just to remain a server, and smile, and bring people shrimp cocktails, shrimp burgers, barbecued shrimp, and so on, and earn the tips that bought him the car that got him into so much trouble.

The mob. Don’t think it disappeared. It seems now to be a Hollywood legend, a thing of the past, romanticized to no end by names like Dean Martin, Al Pacino, and so forth. Guy Richie stylized the British mafia as nothing more than a bunch of blundering buffoons. We all had a good laugh, even me and Michael. Roommates, he and I, back at good the good old U of M. That’s what we like to call the University of Minnesota, but I suppose that’s what kids who go to University of Michigan call their school. We used to spend hours watching mafia movies. He and I went as gangsters one Halloween (that’s gangsters, not gangstas). He ended up one in real life. With a capitol G.

We lost touch for a few years out of school. I was dating this girl I met at graduation, and he was using his business accounting degree to sell plates of shrimp to tourists. We got together every once in a while, reminisced annually. Six years out of school, he found a real job at an architecture firm called Ellerbee-Beckett, as their Assistant Chief Executive Accountant in charge of Institutional Projects. Basically, this meant that he was in charge of the money being spent on building more ridiculously overpriced (and ridiculous looking) structures on the very college campus he said, on graduation day, “Man, I’ve had some great times here. I never want to leave.”

As a journalist, I should have caught on quicker, but I was blinded by his new apartment on our fifth annual catching-up-and-getting-smashed meeting. The drinks were free, the food was free, the limo was free. Everybody knew Fran Levinson owned that bar. Everybody was about to find out he owned Ellerbee-Beckett, too.

It would be almost another year before I found out Fran also owned Michael Rose.

“Colin Fairmount,” I answered my phone. It was Craig Jeffries, the editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. A man with a plan. A man with vision. A man who I had been trying to avoid because I didn’t have my story done.

“Fairmount.” He started every conversation with the last name of the person he was talking to.

***

from an unfinished work titled "In Which Colin, Fed Up With His VW, Buys A Used Car" spring 2006

“No, this one isn’t going to cut it,” he said, sizing up the out of place Skoda sitting on the Volkswagen dealer’s lot. The man helping him had a thick Germanic accent that Colin couldn’t quite wrap his head completely around. The man gestured at the automobile—for that is what it was, no odd Eastern-European model could rightly be called a ‘car’ in Colin’s mind—and looked helplessly at Colin.

“What, wrong kind of color?”

Colin regarded the color, something he had been trying to avoid since he first saw it; he had so far focused on the tires, the rims, the hubcaps, the logo on the grill, the bumper sticker which read “I’m not tailgating, I’m inspecting their—“ but was ripped off and so the punch-line was missing, anything but register the sickening day-glow orange paint with the equally eye-twisting fluorescent purple detail work. “The colors are awful,” he admitted. “But that’s not the problem.”

“Custom paint job. The man who trades this car, tells me so. Custom, he said. Premium. Cost him a lot. I gave him good deal on trade in. Do you have trade in?”

“My car,” Colin inserted a sigh here. “Is in Moline, Illinois.”

Three days earlier, on a routine trip to Racine, Wisconsin to visit a friend of his from college, Colin’s car had overheated in the middle of the night. “Your water pump went out,” the stranger on the phone from Middle-Of-Nowhere, Illinois told him the morning after this happened. “So you’re timing belt is, well, you got close to a hundred and fifty thousand miles on there, it was time for it to be replaced anyway.”

“I just got the timing belt replaced. The whole engine just got rebuilt. Why didn’t they tell me I needed a new water pump?”

There was a long intake of breath from the other end of the line. “Well, it’s cause they either got shit for brains,” here he paused, as if for dramatic effect. “Or your water pump looked fine. They’ll go out on you, all of a sudden. One minute pumping water like a heart pumping blood, next minute you’re on the side of the road.” He took a breath, and Colin sensed the man would go on and on if left to his own devices.

“How much to have it repaired?” he asked.

“Shoot, new timing belt and water pump for a V Dub? You want me to do it, you’re talking at least seven hundred parts and labor, maybe more. Not to mention I can’t start today, cause I ain’t even got the parts, gotta order them from Chicago.”

Colin stared out of his hotel room window, eyes unfocused and reliving the previous evening. The check engine light, the temperature gauge buried in the red, way too hot zone, the grinding noise as his engine died. Then the state trooper stopping and calling in the tow truck. The truck taking the car twelve miles in the wrong direction, while he and the state trooper followed. The state trooper being nice enough to drive him to the nearest hotel which happened to be sixty miles away, in Moline. His room, from a four story Howard Johnson or Red Roof or something along those lines, overlooked a plethora of car dealerships, the most prominent of which was a Volkswagen dealer. “Can’t you order them from the dealership in Moline?” To which the inevitable response was that no, he ordered all of his parts from his cousin’s automotive supply in Chicago.

And so Colin found himself at the odd dealership, talking to the odd man, looking at the odd car. “It’s a 1997 Jetta, and it’s in Moline with a broken water pump and a melted timing belt.” He looked again at the Skoda. “I hate this.”

“You take better care of your car, then these things happen, well, they won’t.” The man looked again at the Skoda. “It is good car, reliable. And only used car on lot. You want a new car?”

“No.” That was something Colin found odd, more odd than the mechanic not ordering the parts from Moline, and almost as odd as the Skoda itself; six car dealerships, and not one used car aside from this, for lack of a better term, thing. “How can this be the only used car you have?”

“We a giant sale are having, all of our used cars last weekend. Super Six-Hundred Sale. Once every few months. All dealers here, all owned by same man. He gather all used cars, sells them at the fairgrounds. This is all that’s left.” Colin peered into the interior and saw a yellow and black stripe pattern on the seats, gearshift and steering wheel.

“I wonder why.”

***

from an Untitled work, spring 2006

Brandon

Every morning, when he stepped out of his room and into the hall, he gave a silent command to everybody; stay out of my way, and everything will be fine. He would never have hurt anybody, hadn’t done so off the lacrosse field and wasn’t going to start now. Actually backing up his mere presence with actions would have required more time than was given to him in a day, and that time was precious. Grades needed to be kept up to stay on the team. In the off season, trips to the gym needed to replace the rigorous practices he faced during the regular season.

He slept only four hours a night; classes began for him at eight every morning, even Fridays, and nobody else on his floor went to class on Fridays because they were on the Northeast end of campus, the school of design sector, and they never had classes on Fridays. Design students loaded their Tuesdays and Thursdays with gen-eds and took their color classes and computer animation courses on Mondays and Wednesdays, leaving Friday as an extra day of the weekend. He had deliberately chosen Pennington Hall because it was farthest from both the business college and the lacrosse field. He ignored the nearby gym, claiming the main student gym on the south side of campus was far superior. He didn’t know for sure, because he had never been to the gym attached to Pennington Hall. He ran to practice as a warm up. He rode his bicycle to class on days when it wasn’t raining. He had class until three every day, and returned to his dorm before doing anything else. Studying was done after working out.

He was glad his roommate had never shown up for school.

Nathan

“Hey, guys, we have a floor meeting tonight in the lounge downstairs. I ordered some pizza, I’ve got some soda, we’re going to talk about this semester, okay?” His residents took no notice of him, on their way out. He continued walking to his room. Opening the door, he found underwear duct-taped to his ceiling. A note, hanging from a pair of gray boxer-briefs, read “Nate, you should have locked your room when you left. Call my room when you get back. Love, Brian.”

“Son of a bitch,” Nathan muttered, as he began pulling his underpants off the ceiling, standing on his tip-toes to reach them. Somebody knocked on his door, so he cleared his throat. “Just a second.” The situation was hopeless, he decided, so he stepped out of his room and into the hall and came face to face with Brandon.

Brandon was holding a piece of paper which he shoved in Nathan’s face. “What’s this?” It was a sheet of paper with a drawing of Bart Simpson and his friend Milhouse. Underneath their picture, in bold black letters, were the names “Brandon L.” and “Cameron S.”

“It’s your new Door Decoration. Everybody’s got new ones for the new semester.” Indeed, ever door had a similar piece of paper; Mike D. and Paul T. had a drawing of Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble. Jeff S. and Jerry N. had Batman and Superman. Nathan himself had Huckleberry Hound.

“Okay, but what’s this?” Brandon pointed to the second name on his sheet of paper.

“Well, come to the meeting tonight at 7:30 in the downstairs lounge, and you’ll find out. Okay? And, pass the information along to any of the other guys you see, please?”

“Am I getting a roommate?”

“Come to the meeting.” Nathan tried to look intimidating, but as his head came to Brandon’s shoulders it was, he decided, probably less than impressive.

“I’ll be working out at 7:30.” Brandon walked away, bumping into Nathan’s shoulder as he passed him. Nathan watched Brandon as he strode down the hall, shoulders back, head high, effortlessly tall and intimidating.

“Shit.” Nathan muttered before returning to his room.

Cameron

Cameron Sound walked into Pennington Hall with only his messenger bag. Everything else he intended to bring along to school was still at home, a mere seventeen miles away. He approached the front desk slowly, glancing around the room; the notice board still declaring that refrigerators must be unplugged over winter break. Dates were given for people driving home, along with destinations and invitations for anyone interested to split the cost of gas. He greeted the guy sitting behind the desk. “Hi, I’m supposed to be moving in here, how do I go about doing that?”

“Student ID?” the person asked. Cameron saw “Jake” on his nametag.

“Here you go, Jake.” Cameron said, handing him the fresh ID he had been given that morning; the shadows behind him in the picture gave the impression of a mullet. Jake checked a list he had sitting beside him on the desk, running down a column with his long, thin finger.

“Okay, Cam, you’re in room E434.” Jake swiped Cameron’s ID through a card reader mounted to the wall, pushed a button on the apparatus and slid it through again. “I just activated your card so it will open the front doors,” he pointed to the doors that were propped open at the moment. “And also the interior doors leading to the east and north wings.” He pointed to doors at opposite ends of the lobby. “Front door is unlocked between eight in the morning and four in the afternoon, but the interior doors are always locked, so don’t lose this.” Jake handed the ID back to Cameron.

“Which door is mine?”

“East Wing, that door there.” Jake pointed to the door closest to Cameron. A blonde girl in a ruffled skirt emerged from the door and looked at Cameron for a second before turning and exiting through the open front door. “Now, if you would just fill out this paperwork and I’ll get your key. Have you met your Resident Advisor yet?” Cameron admitted he had not, and Jake shook his head. “Sorry. You have to sign something for him before I can give you your key. I’ll give it to him next time I see him, or I can call and see if he’s in his room.” Jake handed Cameron a stack of paper Tolstoy would have been proud to turn out and vanished behind a partition.

Cameron began filling it out, sighing at each mention he encountered of “The University” because, he kept telling himself, he was finally moving on, finally getting away from high school. Finally, he was doing the right thing.

Jake came back and sat heavily in his chair. “Okay, your RA’s name is Nathan, and he’s having a floor meeting at 7:30 in the lounge.” Jake pointed at a room with windows all around it behind Cameron. “He says he’ll meet you there, is that okay?”

“Sure,” Cameron said. “Do you have a map of the campus? I’ll just walk around looking for my classes.”

Brandon

“I’m getting a roommate, Emily. Can you believe it?” He ground his teeth into the phone.

“Well, yes, I can; I have three roommates and I live in what used to be the floor lounge. I never thought it was fair you had a double to yourself.”

“I’m not the only one; Rob down the hall has a double, and there’s only three guys in the quad on my floor. Why single me out?”

“It’s not a conspiracy against you, you know.”

“Yeah, well, it could be. I’m going to workout, will you meet me at the gym?” He moved himself to the edge of his bed and swung his legs down. They dangled in the empty space between the top and bottom bunks.

“No, we have a floor meeting tonight, discussing what we’re doing this semester or something.”

“I wonder why my advisor never does anything like that,” Brandon mused. “Okay, well, I’ll see you tomorrow. Did you get into the comp two class I’m in?”

“I’m not sure, I have to go talk to the teacher first day of class. Have a good workout.”

“Bye.” Brandon hung up the phone and dropped to the floor. His telephone, which he had sitting on his bed, took a fall behind him.

He turned and saw that the phone had been ruined when it fell. The earpiece had broken off, the keypad had come detached. It was an ancient phone he had taken from his parents’ basement before coming to college, and he was loath to shell out money to buy a new phone. “Damn it all, now I’ve got to go to the store tonight.”

***

from an Untitled work, spring 2006

After my last gas bill, I had turned off my heater and not turned it back on, so the early January cold intruded my space, nearly freezing my extremities every time I slept. I couldn’t wait to sleep in my old room, with Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins smiling at me from my wall.

The muted television displayed an image of the vice president. Headlines scrawled along the bottom of the screen. Flights cancelled, major universities shutting down campuses, traffic jams out of New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, and Chicago. Schaumburg was only about twenty miles from Evanston, but with a traffic jam, it was likely to take me two hours or more. My phone rang.

“This is Cameron Sound.”

“Honey, it’s your mother. Are you safe?” I glanced out my window at the Northwestern Campus, watching the cars as they periodically pulled out from the parking lot, driving somewhere imaginary that was safer than where they were.

“I’m fine, Mom.” Put up a defense, don’t seem too eager; it’s not your style to be agreeable. You are still rebelling, even though you’re twenty-one years old and should, by all rights, be an adult.

“Are you sure? I’m worried about you. Did you hear that the terror level was raised?” I closed my eyes. What was she doing right now? Multi-tasking for sure. Was she playing Solitaire on her computer? Was she preparing lunch? I heard my mother take a deep breath. Was she smoking again? I saw her chain smoking, sitting in the kitchen blowing the smoke out the window.

“I don’t live in a cave.” I picked at my sleeve. My cell phone rang, but I ignored it.

“Come home.”

My cell phone continued to ring even after I had left Evanston. The sound mixed with honking and the hum of my engine. I ignored it. It rang. I ignored it. It rang and rang. I finally picked it up and glanced at the number that was calling. It was just a number, nobody in my phone book, but it was somebody in Schaumburg. “I don’t know who you are,” I scolded the phone. “I’m not picking you up.”

I set my phone on the console, sliding it underneath the parking brake lever. The Volkswagen in front of me had Missouri license plates and was emitting a rhythmic thumping which shook my mirrors. My phone rang. I set my hand on the parking brake lever and put my thumb over the button. I clicked the button several times, then moved my hand to my gearshift and pushed it from neutral to third, second, first, neutral, first, neutral, and first one more time, before slowly letting the clutch out and pushing down on the gas. The tension of the clutch pushed my foot hard; I slid backwards a few feet before the clutch engaged and inched me forward. I rocked back and forth like this until the Volkswagen pulled ahead, and I followed.

“This is Cameron Sound,” I finally gave in to the phone. Silence. “This is Cameron Sound, hello?”

“Cameron.” The voice sounded nervous. It cleared it’s throat. “Cameron, it’s—it’s Amanda.”

The booming bass from the Volkswagen stopped. My engine ran silent. All I could hear was Amanda’s voice. “Amanda.”

I heard her sigh, saw her sigh, her lips parted, phone to her left ear, left elbow leaning on a table, right hand brushing her hair behind her right ear over and over. I pulled my car forward another car length. “I’m sorry to call you,” she explained. “I’m in trouble.”

What kind of trouble could she be in that it drove her to call me of all people? “Nothing is springing to my mind,” I said aloud.

“What?”

“Nothing. What kind of trouble are you in?” The Volkswagen pulled ahead suddenly, and beyond it I saw traffic begin to flow at a quicker pace.

“Are you near home?”

“On my way,” I told her. “Leaving Evanston now. What kind of trouble are you in?”

“My flight got cancelled. Trains aren’t running, busses are running on a limited schedule and they’re all booked.” Where do I come in? “Listen, I called everybody, my mom can’t get away from work and my dad can’t get down here from Detroit, everybody else I know is in the same boat I am, nobody can head to Lawrence.”

Traffic was moving along well now, and I drove in silence for half a mile with the phone to my ear, listening to her breath on the other end.

“Cameron, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called you, it was a last resort, and if you can’t take me, just say so.”

“You want me to take you to Lawrence?” Every time I had to shift, I took my right hand off the steering wheel and frantically pushed up a gear. This is a trick I used to find out if my wheels were properly aligned. I was in fourth gear now, and cruising well.

“You’re the only person who can help me. But you don’t have to.” I pushed into fifth gear, changed lanes and passed the Volkswagen, leaving the throbbing bass behind.

My mother was standing on the porch, waving and smiling and sending a thousand thank-yous heavenward for my safe arrival. I smelled charred wood and vegetable soup simmering on the stove. “I’m not staying,” I told her right away. “I’m sorry.”

“Why not? You’re not going back into the city are you?” She absent-mindedly took a cigarette from a silver case she kept in her pocket and stuck it in her mouth, lighting it with a souvenir Hard Rock Café Zippo. I stared at her.

“Where’s Dad, Mom?” I dropped my laptop bag to the floor with a thud. She took a drag and walked to the cold fireplace, reaching in and opening the floo and blowing the smoke at the burnt wood in the grate.

“He’s at the grocery store. When I told him you were coming home, he went out to buy a case of beer. Whatever that beer is you always ask for.” She flicked the ashes into the fireplace and looked at me.

“Does he know you started smoking again?” She looked at her cigarette, eyelids drawing slowly up, up, revealing the whites of her eyes in sharper and sharper detail. She took a quick puff and smiled at me.

“Stressful day, you know how it is.”

“Must be. Stressful enough to sift through all those boxes of crap in the basement and find your lighter and cigarette flask.” I walked to the bathroom. When I came out, she had thrown her cigarette into the fireplace and was preparing a fire. “Disposing of the evidence?”

“Don’t start. Why aren’t you staying?” She lit the fire starter and stood. “Make sure the fire catches while I go check on the soup.” My mother was like a cigarette herself, leaving me breathless and winded.

“No, I’m not staying. I’m taking Amanda to school.”

I watched the fireplace, the flames licking the stack of wood. “You’re taking Amanda to school?” I could smell the smoke from her clothes as she walked closer to me. “Are you two back together?” Of course not. We broke up two years ago and that was it. I didn’t answer her.

“I’m doing her a favor; she’s got to be back before class starts Thursday.”

“And you’re just going to take a couple of days to drive a girl you barely ever talk to halfway across the country?”

“You smell like cigarettes. I love you.”

She lived in one of those subdivisions which have only six houses repeated a hundred times, each off-white with a brick façade around the door. Amanda’s house had been repainted a soothing baby blue since the last time I saw it. I rang the bell and held my breath as the door opened. “Could you take this?” She shoved a suitcase at me.

“Nice to see you, Amanda.” I opened my trunk and moved my junk around to make room for her suitcase which I assumed contained her entire wardrobe. With a thud behind me, I realized I had been wrong. “Got enough clothes?”

“I didn’t pack the sweater you gave me for my seventeenth birthday,” she explained. “So yes, I have just enough clothes.” This remark was followed by a short lived smirk, which was replaced with a look of disgust. “I’m sorry, that’s really mean of me. I should be more grateful. Thank you for doing this, Cameron.”

She stood, facing me, her hair falling like a black curtain over her forehead and eyes. She wore a long sleeve white shirt underneath a light blue KU tee. Her black boots disappeared into the cuffs of her faded jeans. The left boot rocked back and forth. Her arms were raised, halfway, in a gesture that appeared to be an aborted hug. I stuck out my right hand and took hers. “You’re welcome; I won’t ask for a hug so you don’t need to offer one. Just get in.”

===

Well, there they are. Like I said, you'll notice similar themes and/or characters, not only here but it other stories I've written. Hope this makes up for my recent bad blogging skills...

"All of us learn to write in the second grade. Most of us go on to greater things." -Bobby Knight

We Are (Almost) Back In Business!

Well, see, silly me and my wanting to maintain a higher video quality...what was I thinking? So, I had to compress it into an mpeg2 (mpeg4 w/mp3 audio was still too big), which is just a suck, but the point is it will soon be posted to Google Video, which means once it goes through review, I can post it on the blog. Yay! A month later!

Right, so, a few new updates to the blog. First off, a new poll is coming for all of you to vote on. And then, there is of course, the updated links list. And in the interest of interesting you all, I am going to go through the links one by one and tell you what they are all about.

NPR

If you don't listen to NPR, you should, and if you do, good. My local station KWMU just came under a bit of fire for what their general manager likes to call her management style, but that doesn't change the fact that NPR itself is great. Sure, sometimes it can be a little, um, ear grating (Diane Rehm's voice), some of the hosts can get a bit sycophantic (hello Terry Gross), but all in all, it's a good source of news and entertainment. I like to play the Wait Wait Don't Tell Me online quiz every day to keep up with odd news.

...But I Am a Cyclist

You see, it's funny because I actually am a writer and not much of a cyclist. But there's a small amount of posts on there, I update very infrequently (even moreso than on here) but I get some good rants in on the state of affairs in cycling. There's also a list of links on that blog, but I won't go into them.

Turbochubs

Formerly the link read "Gerald Has Returned" but he's been returned for a while now, so I figured I'd retitle the link. Gerald's a designer, into hockey and is probably the most politically liberal of all of my friends, which is no bad thing. He's got a healthy mix of NHL, politics, and Daily Show clips interspersed with other tidbits and hilariousness. Check him out, yo.

Whiskey Tastes Better When You Have Problems

My former roommate from college, Chris and I rioted after the U of MN won hockey nationals in 2002. We also drank cheap vodka (read: he drank cheap vodka and I spent money I didn't have on Smirnoff, which I know, is cheap vodka, but if I considered that splurging, just imagine what he was drinking...), played simultaneous Dark Forces (Chris on PSOne, me on PC), pondered rearranging our room once, and he also took a video of me riding my bicycle down the hallway (at a terrifying-for-indoor-riding 26 miles an hour). But, through all of that, it seems we kind of forgot about going to class every so often, and I ended up leaving and he ended up in a little bit of trouble. But hey, you live and if you're lucky (like Chris and I), you learn and you move on with life and you stay friends and such. Check out his blog, he talks a lot about sports in the Twin Cities. Proving once again that all the sportswriters out there with their degrees in Journalism have nothing against a fan with a dangerous amount of time on his hands and a gift for the written word. Check it out.

mGk

Formerly titled "Mo and Kev and Maddy," I liked the simplicity of the look of the mGk, so I went with it. For a while, it was a blog about my sister, her husband, their house and their cat, and then it was about how my sister was dealing with her husband, house and cat while she was pregnant, and then, about a year ago (May 4th, actually, of 2007), it became all about my niece Madeline. She's adorable. Except she watches American Idol, which I just can't get down with. I gotta help that girl out with some serious Good Television Marathons. Mo, Kev, send Maddy over. We're gonna spend the weekend watching Arrested Development.

Idealism Never Goes out of Fashion

A new addition to the list, Becca is another of my Minnesota friends. Memories of her always included either Fiona Apple, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Piggly Wiggly, or her stealing various items from my room and then kicking me in the ding-ding. She's working on her Master's Degree in (appropriately enough) Middle Earth itself, New Zealand. Let's see if I can get this right...she was a clothing design undergrad, and is getting her masters in textiles? Yes? Becca, feel free to correct me if I am wrong (which I almost never am). Her blog is about life in New Zealand, with a fair amount of an emphasis on living a greener life and even, it seems, a bit about clothing design and textiles. Hey alright! Check it.

Auntie Maine

My mother's youngest sister Nora lives in Maine with her husband and two children, and there's not much to do up there in the long winter months, so they find ways to entertain themselves and, sometimes, the readers of their blog. Updates are few and far between, but sometimes you don't need an update, you can just keep reading her old posts and the comments that pop up there from, say, my mother and my other aunt. So click the link; let it never be said that "You can't get theah from heah."

TGSeale.com

A friend of mine from Webster, Tanya Seale is a fellow writer who is a bit further along in her writing career than I am. But what we both have in common is that we both got plays produced at Surfacing 2008. I really liked hers quite a bit, and I am looking forward to seeing more of her work next semester when we have our fiction workshop together. A word to those with slow interweb connections: her site is a bit of a slow loader because it's got a lot of stuff on it. But check out her blog anyway, she writes the same kinds of things that I do, only, you know, more frequently, like, you know, a good blogger.

JMG Design

Like Gerald, John is a friend from my days working in Retail. Of the four of us represented here (Gerald, John, Colleen, me), John was the first to escape to work on his garden, a passion of his which he has turned into a small business of designing gardens for people. Check it out, he's full of information about what to plant where and when, plus he's got recipes for great dinners and drinks.

These Walls Are Paper Thin...

Colleen escaped the drudgery of retail toil only to experience the drudgery of office toil. But, be that as it may, she still finds plenty to keep her mind occupied elsewhere. Lately, she's been doing the Apartment Cure, which is interesting to read about, because she divulges some secrets about how high off the ground to hang pictures and other strange tidbits you didn't know people wrote books and made websites and did bad reality TV shows about.

Annie Get Your Blog

While the link text is not the official title, I will never change it because it came to me in a moment of clear thought, and to me it seemed clever. But "What I Do Not Understand" is one of my favorite blogs; Annie's got a sweet touch to her writing style that makes me forgive her for being a Cubs fan, which is no small feat. And of the bloggers I've linked to, aside from family members Annie is my oldest friend, seeing as how we've known each other since we were like, twelve (oh my God, Annie, we've known each other more than half of our lives. That makes me feel kind of old). And what doesn't Annie understand? Well, actually, she understands quite a bit. I think it's the fact that we live in a world where so many things are understandable that shouldn't be that makes it hard for her to understand the world. If that makes sense. Also, she claims to be married to Yadier Molina, but I haven't confirmed that with either Yadi or Annie's boyfriend.

The McGrath Family

My uncle Dennis is nine years older than my cousin Brian, who is nine years older than me, and I am nine years older than my cousin Maggie. Maggie is the only one who's never lived in Minneapolis. So you know what that means? She better move there to keep up tradition. But in the meantime, you can check out the blog about Dennis' family, maintained mostly by his wife Laurie. It centers mostly on their two beautiful daughters, Mia and Mazlin, both of whom were adopted from Guatemala. Laurie's posts are often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking (but the good way, not the bad way), occasionally laced with anger (check out the recent post about Teleflora and the Today Show calling adopting mothers "Non-Mothers"), but always written from that cozy spot in Laurie's soul where she keeps her children. Ask her if she is an innie or an outie.

Post Secret

If you don't know what Post Secret is yet, you will be addicted soon.

Stuff White People Like

Um...let's see, how many items from this list have I mentioned on my blog? Well, just in this one post, public radio, the daily show, bicycling and Arrested Development. Let's see, um, we used to like Jettas but now we like the Toyota Prius (but we do still like Jettas). I think I've mentioned Free health care before. If I haven't mentioned Wes Anderson Films, I should have. Arts Degrees, Kathy and I both guilty (or rather, she is guilty and I will be guilty). Microbreweries, I love those. Writing workshops, had plenty and will have more. Coffee, I've talked about coffee. Oh, I talked about Organic Coffee once, and white people love organic food! I have Trader Joe's bags in my car, that's grouped with Whole Foods/Grocery Co-Ops as well...see? White people love being white.

The System is Down

Homestar Runner Dot Net. "It's Dot Com!" Seriously, you guys gotta check it out. Strong Bad E-mails and Teen Girl Squad are a must. And the absolute musts are Strong Bad E-Mail Dragon, Japanese Cartoon, Rock Opera, and...Tape Leg? Seriously.

Daryl Cagle

Okay, I know there are people out there who only get their news from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report (another thing white people like), but I am not one of those people. I get my news from NPR...and also from Daryl Cagle's professional cartoonist index. See, when you look at over a hundred artists' editorial cartoons, you get to see positions from each side of every major story/issue in a very quick, concise way. It works for me.

That's about it for now. Look for the video in a day or so, just gotta let it load up through Google Video and go through the process. Have a wonderful rest of your week all!