tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42838245833490666112024-02-20T11:58:47.330-08:00Monkey, Dig Your GraveTom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-64147746581634200222009-12-11T17:39:00.000-08:002009-12-24T11:19:50.768-08:00Progress report: 11'2 thru 11'24<div><br /></div><div>A lot of notes that I now have to sum up. This is the second post based on my mid-October thru early Dec bout of note making. It's a bit depressing because I've spent my life this way, making notes for unwritten fiction. By now the process feels dumb even when it's working. Yes, I'm getting results, but couldn't there be a smarter way of doing so, a way that doesn't drag out so long it takes up phases of my life? [ <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">update,</span> Also, I notice that I have eight days listed with "nothing." Eight days off out of 23 is going pretty easy on yourself. ]</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, I filled a notebook and a half, 320 pages of longhand. </div><div><br /></div><div>I recapped maybe the first third of the material <a href="http://monkeydigyourgrave.blogspot.com/search?q=progress+report">here</a>. Now to resume:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 2</span> 11:47 am thru 4 pm </div><div> spec about cables underfoot in sound stage, scene between Harry and Constance at Tony's garden party, pretty well fleshed out, lasts 3 pages, back to lot layout, list all tech personnel present for a shoot, where are unused lights kept?, diagram of set and soundstage, diagram of zones of traffic from sound stage door to set, what's difference between head grip and gaffer?</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Nov. 3 </span>nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Nov. 4</span> nothing <br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Nov. 5</span> 4:50 pm thru 8:50 pm</div><div> lot layout: where Louie's office, where design guys? if shows share building, do Eppinger and Michaelman run into each other on the stairs? layout of show's 2 floors, whose office goes where (makes more sense when I remember to include projection room), list when different producers started, finished<br /></div><div> extras: remarks of thuggish med students at next table, plus notes about possible pop history books <br /></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Nov. 6</span> 12:30 pm thru 5:25 pm</div><div> 3 pages of describing Caesar's assassination based on what I remember reading God knows where</div><div> more floorplans for where the offices go</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 7</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 8</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 9</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 10</span> 11:50 am thru 4 pm</div><div> emblem design sketches, plus how the emblem sparked art director to do Outpost: Eppinger insists on summit meetings of design team; costume designer described, his love life; Taj's horn and its last-minute design change; evolution of Taj's part, its alienness</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 11</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 12 </span>3:05 pm thru 6:10 pm</div><div> more emblem design sketches, Epp's summit meetings again, how he and art director (Palfroy) hit on final design for Outpost, cast changes from pilot to series, CG's views on acting, the actors who were dropped after pilot, Donegal's role in show, back to the layout for Top Deck (Command, Deck 1, whatever it's called).</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 13</span> 1:35 pm thru 5:35 pm</div><div> sketches of Deck 1 layout, now with the double wishbone turned into curve broken in middle by Harry's command post. Still don't know if curves toward or away from Harry's post.</div><div> Harry's buttons panel; Palfroy (the art director) and E, their fizzled friendship; Len's view of his daily life; how Len rallies the affiliates to keep the show on the air -- pages and pages about that.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 14</span> 2:55 pm thru 6 pm</div><div> table of when different design elements of series were decided; the Hyacinth design guy and how he figured in the process; how his ideas bounced thru Palfroy's thinking to provide key elements of the final sets, but switched around and repositioned; Palfroy's experience of the design process; Epp and Perry Bren, the costume designer; uniforms</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold; ">Nov. 15</span> 1:10 pm thru 2:10 pm</div><div> first and final cast lineups compared for ethnicity; the Korean cast member</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 16 </span> 1:35 pm thru 3:45 pm, 4:05 pm thru 5:55 pm</div><div> rundown of characters' viewpoints;</div><div> CG and Doug; CG and acting, his rise, his character's style; CG meets with producer about giving Taj a "signature"; evolution of character's rationale and schtick, that of his character's alien race (the Suvok). </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 17</span> 1:46 -- 5:47 pm</div><div> CG's view of acting; <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Seven Samurai</span> and Taj; more about CG's rise, its ups and downs; more about Taj's style; Harry in 1970s, a king among the fans; CG's and Olsen's acting tics; CG's acting technique, what he looks for in a "good" scene</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 18</span> 2:35 -- 5:38 pm</div><div> Olsen's physical habits when scene is being shot; more on CG's view of acting, how it ties into his view of life; CG's "sucking-in" for Taj; how producers/writers handle CG/Taj; Olsen as actor; Olsen and CG's late-series disgruntlement; CG recalling Len's "Life Is Fair" triumph, making it sound like Len was being obsequious. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 19</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 20</span> nothing</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 21</span> 3:20 -- 6:20 pm</div><div> [ had to write this on back of pp. 175-79 "Sky Facts" printout because I forgot notebook ]</div><div> Olsen and acting, his "high attack"style, his attempts to impose a rhythm for the whole scene, other people's parts as well, and the resulting conflicts w/ directors; descriptions of some directors; Olsen marking scripts, remarking them after dir shoots down his scene ideas</div><div> Bolton's viewpoint</div><div> matchup between fan memories and real-life origins of same</div><div>[ extra: fantasy novel sketch about kids stranded in empire of Sujok Taj ]</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 22</span> 3:35 -- 5:55 pm</div><div> Tony and acting, Harry and acting -- his embarrassment over sci-fi, the pervasiveness of the kiddie-stuff feel and how it bows his spirit; damn boots that don't fit; how his embarrassment shows up in line readings, fan memories of same</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 23</span> 12:45 -- ?, 5:12 -- ?</div><div> Harry's declining role in show; how Harry, Cg and Washington Ferris react to Olsen's on-set power plays</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 24 </span>1:10 -- :55, 2:22 -- 5:21 pm</div><div> Tony and Olsen, course of Tony's career in series; W. Ferris and his worldview, career in series</div><div> [ couple pages about Cafe staff, false starts to short stories about superheroes.</div><div> Nice parody blank verse about being a critic:</div><div></div><blockquote><div> The juice that wiggles, the nose that selects,</div><div> the acumen that admits no lacuna. </div><div><br /></div><div>And now someone being a jerk in Joe Mankiewicz-ese:</div><div> I am never wrong. But sometimes my truths are inappropriate to their context. ]</div><div><br /></div></blockquote><div></div><div> ** Still need to go down episode list and mark CG's ups and downs **</div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-17240996367122112992009-12-09T19:52:00.000-08:002009-12-09T19:53:39.555-08:00Political styles<div><br /></div><div><!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal">Just saw a <a href="http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/grayson-to-cheney-stfu.php">clip</a> of Alan Grayson, a Fla rep who’s the Dems’ designated loudmouth. He comes off like one of those top-of-the-minors “hip” comedians who do commentary about celebrities for cable shows. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He’s not bad at it, has some authority and style, but the Republicans would never use him. Their loudmouths are more like car salesmen, brash and definite as opposed to drawling and definite. Whether or not they’re gay, you’re not supposed to think they are, whereas with Grayson gayness is a clear possibility and wouldn’t make much difference to his act.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">Clip via TMP.</p> <!--EndFragment--> </div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-2378134775523683722009-12-03T20:31:00.000-08:002009-12-03T21:16:02.411-08:00A typical Canadian-American encounter<div><br /></div><div>After nine years of knocking around Montreal, I've finally managed to get thru the paper work and become a recognized legal resident. I'm not a citizen yet, that's a couple years down the road, but I'm going to get health coverage and pay taxes up here. </div><div><br /></div><div>Yesterday and today I visited the government bureaus where you receive your Social Insurance number (like our Social Security number) and apply for your Medicare card (like nothing we have in the U.S. unless you're 65 and up and/or live in Massachusetts.</div><div><br /></div><div>All went smoothly. At each office you file in the door, get a slip of paper, sit in bucket seats and look at a screen where your number comes up. Then you go off to have papers stamped and/or handed to you by a bureaucrat sitting without very much desk space and not at all far from other bureaucrats. Everyone is polite and they know what they're doing. I guess I waited 20 minutes at the Social Insurance office before a lady talked to me. That was by far the longest wait at either office. My dealings with the lade herself took maybe five minutes.</div><div><br /></div><div>She was 40ish, a blond English Canadian of a type that I think may not be so common here in Montreal, radiating benign nicey-niceness. She spoke good French from what I heard, which you don't expect from someone so wheat-blond.</div><div> </div><div>I offended her because, when she was explaining to me what a Social Insurance number was, I caught on a bit early. "Oh, okay, it's like Social Security," I said. "We've got something like that. Okay, I'm all used to all that." The last bit was to let her know I knew all about what she was explaining at the moment, namely the precautions one must take not to let one's number slip out.</div><div><br /></div><div>She kept on, explaining how the program provided for old-age pensions, and I said, "Right, yeah, it really sounds like a close equivalent."</div><div><br /></div><div>A few moments later she handed me my number on a printout, and I said goodbye. It surprised me that she was glaring. For the moment before I left, when I looked at her to say bye, she no longer seemed benign.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thinking about it later, I figured she wasn't used to being interrupted. To tell the truth, what put the thought in my head was the memory of my brother quoting a sitcom, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">How I Met Your Mother</span>, that sent the characters up to Ontario. One of the characters was Canadian but living in the U.S., and the fellow behind the Tim Horton's counter reproached her as no longer being a true Canadian. "You come in here talking fast and not saying hello," etc. Maybe he also said she interrupted.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, that's me, the American cutting short the Canadian, signing up for the government's generosity and taking about the program in question as an "equivalent" of one back home in the U.S. The arrogance of it, eh? No thought of fitting in.</div><div><br /></div><div>On the other hand, my French has become halfway decent over my decade here, and at the Medicard office (run by Quebec, not Canada proper) I had the pleasure of speaking with a pretty young woman who dropped English and switched to French once we established that she would speak slowly. In general I like the French Canadians more than the English, but I think everyone says that except for English Canadians. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-27043402701392974522009-12-03T09:26:00.001-08:002009-12-03T09:28:17.176-08:00Ah well<div><br /></div><div>Joe Klein <a href="http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1945232,00.html">faults</a> Obama's Afghanistan speech:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: 12px; "><blockquote>Ronald Reagan would have done it differently. He would have told a story. It might not have been a true story, but it would have had resonance.</blockquote></span></div><div><br /></div><div>I'd prefer a true story, thank you. Had enough of the other kind last time around.</div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-90974929878909122212009-11-29T18:01:00.000-08:002009-11-30T14:18:13.945-08:00Am I my crazy politician-author's keeper?Sullivan links to "an interesting and intellectually honest" <a href="http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2009/11/done-at-last-ten-final-thoughts-on-palin-and-going-rogue/">post</a> about Palin's book by some kind of Christian winger. The winger thinks the book gives no indication Palin has a "political or governing philosophy." After reading it, in fact, he's pretty sure the ex-gov is minus "the intellectual skills needed to be an effective President." The fellow adds, "Most important, she does not seem to recognize this and shows no sign of getting them." Poor Palin is "sensitive to the charge she is 'dumb,'" he tells us, "but has not been given the tools or the teachers who can help her." He tacks on this troubled parenthetical: "(Has she sought them out?)"<br /><br />Yet the man still digs the lady: "She seems a splendid person who has lived a remarkable life ..." So the winger must be classified as a critical Palinite, which is quite different from a non-Palinite. The identifying mark of his kind shows up in the "has not been given" comment. Lovers of Lady Dynamite think that not much actually depends on this vigorous, stand-up, take-charge leader of guys and gals ("an effective mayor and governor," says the winger, "an excellent chief executive in Alaska"). For anyone else, the standing assumption would be that intellectual development is impossible without some voluntary seeking after knowledge and understanding; we call it curiosity and having a mind of your own. To a Palinite, this consideration can be at best an afterthought, a dull twinge that shows up in parentheses. Nothing is up to her, no matter how close to home it may lie.<br /><br />Dig this:<br /><br /><blockquote>Her publisher did not fact check this book well (if at all). She was badly served by her publisher and editor. People who criticize me for nit-picking her use of quotations miss the point. I am a fan . . . though now a weary one . . . and I found the errors. The publisher had to know that her critics would check every fact.</blockquote><br />In short, he found out that this "splendid person," in giving "her side of things," could not be trusted to tell the truth. And he decides that this is the fault of her publisher, who should have hired someone to take the lies out of her mouth like an orderly taking sharp objects away from a mental patient. And why should the publisher have done this? Because otherwise Palin's enemies would have more ammunition to use against her.<br /><br />Why is that HarperCollins's problem? They're not in charge of her political viability or personal reputation. She is. But a Palinite knows only love, not reason. Sarah is the sun, and her shortcomings are clouds imposed on her radiance from without.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">update,</span> I must disclose that Andrew Sullivan <a href="http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/11/adam-bellows-factchecking-ctd.html">also feels</a> that HarperCollins is at fault for not requiring the use of a fact checker. But I think he just has it in for Adam Bellow.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-46547596757867762682009-11-27T21:41:00.001-08:002009-11-27T21:47:01.760-08:00ControversyI just spoke out boldly in a <a href="http://www.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?p=108829#108829">thread</a> at the Comics Journal message board. Why? Because something was being said that struck me as obviously wrong. Yet stating the obvious took me 45 minutes and a sizable block of text. If anyone takes notice of my post, I'll find that my key points have been ignored and that I have misconstrued key parts of the posts that I'm responding to. How ghastly it all is. How I wish I could go to bars instead.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-8601165838127472752009-11-25T18:53:00.001-08:002009-11-25T19:23:15.772-08:00Progress report: Nov. 1This is really depressing. I've been working on my novel for years and years and years, and that's understating it. Now I've added this extra lump of a project, the blogging of my day-to-day progress. How could it be anything but a waste of time? And yet I don't want to back down and lose face with my nonexistent audience. Which is the same reason I'm still trying to write the book.<br /><br />Okay.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Nov. 1: </span>I find written down: "11:30 am to 2:10 pm, read turq[uoise] folder material, edited book excerpts, Len's waiting for Janey at drugstore, etc." This means that I dug out a turqoise folder full of drafts and notes, and that I wrote in line edits for excerpts from pretend books and for a disturbing little scene where the hero waits for his girlfriend in downtown L.A. and wonders what if she's left him, would his life actually feel like a better fit if he didn't have to love someone?<br /><br />Then: "2:25 pm to :50, these notes." That means I spent 25 minutes writing two pages of notes: What sets would my fictional tv show have, how many guys would be needed to move a segment of a set, what segments would make up the show's various sets, on what decks would the various locales represented by the sets be found. (My fictional tv show is about a space station that is divided into "decks," as in Deck 1, Deck 2, etc.)<br /><br />The notes show that this was the day that I hit on an idea I especially like: each major set assigned to a deck would have the same centerpiece: a round, black-metal stand on which is placed a duo of off-kilter almost-rectangles that are made of glass and lit up with a different color, depending on the function of the deck in question (blue for science, red for engineering, I suppose). The idea is that these sites are all redresses of the same basic set. The difference in the centerpieces' color would underline the differences between the sets; the similarity in the centerpieces' shape and position would underline that all parts of the space station belong to a single greater entity.<br /><br />Then: "10:30 pm thru 12:30 pm." Notes about which sets would be in which sound stage, speculation about how much movement between sound stages there would be -- get all the scenes done in one sound stage before moving to the next, or switch back and forth? More of that sort.<br /><br />A name for one of the tv show's characters: Valerie Korova.<br /><br />Parody of a parody of T. S. Eliot:<br /><blockquote><br />The unsought corridor, the unwelcome grave,<br />the smile that yields no deliverance.<br />Rough calculations to an uncertain end, with failure<br />the foredestined shrub of our diminutive landscape.</blockquote><br />Admittedly, the bit about the shrub and the landscape is a bit rich even for a parody.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-3648575944669907502009-11-25T09:17:00.000-08:002009-11-25T18:17:11.763-08:00The Magicians by Lev GrossmanJust finished it and liked it a lot. The first fantasy novel I've read since Susanna Clarke, and hers was the first I had read since 2000 (the opening Harry Potter book), and before that I don't remember.<br /><br />Magicians. Vampires lead, of course, and then zombies, but I think magicians rank as the third-place staple for today's fantasy genre. Granted, their status rests on one mega-buster YA series and two fine popular novels. But werewolves are the only competition and I haven't heard of any big-deal novels/movies all about werewolves.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">update,</span> From his <a href="http://www.avclub.com/articles/lev-grossman,32172/">AV Club</a> interview:<br /><br /><blockquote>My overriding concern while writing this book was that fantasy fandom not perceive this book as coming from an outsider. I recognize that on paper, you can’t really tell that I’m a fan or a nerd. I work at <i>Time</i>, and then there are the schools I went to, which I need to get taken out of my fucking bio. I was really concerned about that. That’s why I spent a lot of time over the past year at conventions, just talking to people and introducing myself.</blockquote><br />That's how I wound up talking with him! It seemed kind of odd that a big wheel at Time would be pressing his chapbook into the hands of some dork at a con. But it certainly worked out for me, since otherwise I wouldn't have read Grossman's novel. The joke is that, as noted, I don't read much fantasy/s.f. these days, so we were two floaters taking each other for insiders. Except that one of the floaters had written a damn good fantasy novel.<br /><br />Here's my account, originally <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-great-name.html">posted</a> on HU:<br /><br /><div></div><blockquote><div>In other news, I spent two hours in large, crowded rooms with Neil Gaiman today and can report that he is charming beyond smooth. This was at Worldcon, where the Hugo is awarded and which is being held here in Montreal this year. I also met Lev Grossman, though I had no idea who he was. He gave me a chapbook with the first chapter of his novel, which I liked, and at the end there was an author's bio. It revealed he is by far the most literarily connected person I've ever spoken to. Seemed like a nice guy! He had wandered into the back of the room during a misbegotten shambles of a panel whose scheduled participants had bailed and been replaced at the last minute. The subject was fantasy novels and how much politics and economics they should contain. Grossman offered that he was a fantasy novelist -- heads turned -- and that he had just finished a novel about a world much like the Narnia world but with some revisionism as to adult realities, including socioeconomic realities. For instance, how come Mrs. Hedgehog or whoever has a sewing machine when there are no factories in Narnia? That sounded good to me, so after the panel I asked for his name, he gave me the chapbook, etc. Hence the revelation that followed.</div><div><br /></div><div>Back to the panel discussion. A very odd, even semi-deranged, lout also wandered into the room, but he sat up front and soon planted himself in the middle of the conversation, such as it was. Otherwise the place was full of whispery fans who deferred to each other; we didn't even raise our hands properly, just bent our elbows and parked a hand by our ear, fingers curled over. So the strange lout began talking loudly and soon offered an idea that I liked: how do we know that the whatever kids, Peter and Lucy and Susan and that other one, how do we know they were the first bunch to be sent along from our world to wake the sleeping king (or whatever their mission was). The fellow reasoned that getting the job done first crack out of the box was kind of a long shot. So maybe others had come along, failed, and died, and all over Narnia there were discreet little plots of land dedicated to the graves of the Wilkins children, the Anderson children, the Smith children, etc., but the talking animals didn't want Peter and Lucy and the rest to know, so they covered it up. I liked that he remembered they would all be Anglo-Saxon family names. </div><div><br /></div><div>All right, so maybe it isn't the greatest single pop-culture revisionist geek goof you ever heard, but it sure livelied up the occasion. That panel sucked so bad. And the idea would come in handy if you were doing a parody about it being the late '80s and DC somehow acquiring the rights to Narnia and hiring some schmuck writer who had just read <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Watchmen</span>. </div></blockquote><div><br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-49628999921476646472009-11-25T09:07:00.001-08:002009-11-29T19:00:22.471-08:00My mother's dreamI'm visiting my mother for Thanksgiving. She just told me the dream she had last night, an exam dream. Her test had come back with this note:<br /><br /><blockquote>Your exam paper is determinedly amusing. Still, you do know the subject matter. I agree with you about Susan.</blockquote><br />What can it mean?Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-29163749745604995352009-11-24T14:23:00.000-08:002009-11-25T17:40:08.178-08:00Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser at Time MagazineOr Techland, a web site run by Time. Still ... <a href="http://techland.com/2009/11/24/the-six-greatest-fantasy-novels-of-all-time/">here</a> it is. The pic accompanies Lev Grossman's list of the 6 best fantasy novels ever. And here's the list:<br /><br /><blockquote>– <em>The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe</em> by C.S. Lewis<br />– <em>The Once and Future King</em> by T.H. White<br />– Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories<br />– <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> by J.R.R. Tolkien<br />– <em>Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel</em><span style="font-style: italic;">l</span> by Susanna Clarke<br />– <em>Magic for Beginners</em> by Kelly Link</blockquote><div id="TixyyLink" style="border: medium none ; overflow: hidden; text-decoration: none;color:transparent;"><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">One sees the usual problem with these things, namely that a bunch of stories is not a novel. Oh well. For the record, I've read all the books listed except for </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Magic for Beginners</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, which I had never heard of until I saw Kelly Link's blurb on the back of Grossman's fine new novel, </span><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The Magicians</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">. It's been a long, long time since I've had the habit of reading fantasy/s.f., and it's nice to know some good stuff is awaiting me if I get back in the swing of things.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">update,</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> As of 8:40 pm, eastern time, on Nov. 25, Time ranks the fantasy book list as its most visited Internet item.</span><br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-86599632973601487122009-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:002009-11-22T22:31:08.374-08:00Monkey, dig your grave<div><blockquote>Having grown accustomed to his freedom in The Jungle, the "humanized" chimp needed too much supervision and went berserk when he was put in his cage. ... When Jerry became more and more impossible, Dutton took Jerry into a nearby orange grove and gave him a shovel. "I had him dig a deep hole," Dutton said. "When he was finished, I told him to jump inside. Then a policeman friend shot him in the head." </blockquote><br /></div><div>"Dutton" is Jack Dutton, described as an "eccentric millionaire and showman." He built up a private menagerie, then put it on display as an Anaheim tourist attraction called The Jungle. Jerry the chimp was the attraction's top-billed star, "The World's Most Human Chimpanzee." </div><div><br /></div><div>Dutton and his wife had brought Jerry home from Africa and "raised him as their child," says my source, the fine coffee-table book <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Southern California in the '50s </span>(compiled and written by Charles Phoenix, designed by Kathy Kikkert). The book continues: "Within a few months he was toilet trained, sat at the dinner table, dressed himself ... Locals, tourists, schoolchildren and church groups enjoyed Jerry's antics as he played with Sunny the bear or swam with the ducks in the pond."</div><div><br /></div><div>But in just a few years everything fell apart. Disneyland opened down the road, neighbors sued because they thought the animals were dangerous, Dutton's wife eloped with his lawyer. And Jerry fritzed out. Dutton had to hire people to look after Jerry around the clock. Then he tried giving Jerry away to zoos -- no good.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then the shovel, the grave. The single bullet. The role for Bill Murray if some indy wiseacre makes this business into a film. (I see Murray in shorts and safari jacket, bush cap riding the back of his head, his oatmeal face puckering as the tears squeeze out.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Thanks to The Inkwell Collector for recommending <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Southern California in the '50s</span>.<br /><br />[ Note: I wrote this for <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/">The Hooded Utilitarian</a>, a comics-and-stuff blog run by Noah Berlatsky. As you may have noticed, the post and my blog have the same title. That's the main reason I'm running the post here; the backup reason is that I like it. ]<br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-23872558056711488582009-11-21T10:55:00.000-08:002009-11-21T21:03:52.904-08:00It was funnier after 9/11<span style="font-size:100%;"><br />My favorite </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:100%;" >Onion</span><span style="font-size:100%;"> headline turns out to be from 1998, not from the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the country's history. That renders the joke less funny, but it's still damn good. Here it is:<br /><blockquote><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/oprah_viewers_patiently_awaiting"><br />Oprah Viewers Patiently Awaiting Instructions</a></blockquote></span><br /><h2 class="title"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/oprah_viewers_patiently_awaiting"></a></span></h2><h2 class="title"><blockquote><a href="http://www.theonion.com/content/news/oprah_viewers_patiently_awaiting"></a></blockquote></h2>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-66706784900924057362009-11-20T22:37:00.000-08:002009-11-22T09:11:03.113-08:00Buddy RichHe had a temper. Via James Wolcott and a blog called <a href="http://basementrug.com/154">The Basement Rug</a>, I find that a citizen named<a href="http://www.cis.rit.edu/%7Eejipci/buddy_rich.htm"> Emmett J. Ientilucci</a> has compiled some transcripts and recordings of Buddy Rich coming unglued. Wikipedia <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddy_Rich">reveals</a> that Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld planted a number of Buddy quotes in episodes of <span style="font-style: italic;">Seinfeld.</span><br /><br />Some favorite bits:<br /><br /><blockquote>... This is not the goddamn House of David fuckin’ baseball team. This is the Buddy Rich Band: young people … with faces! No more fuckin’ beards ...<br /><br />... I don’t need this shit. I have a home in Palm Springs and I can go sit on my ass the rest of my life and not worry about a fuckin’ thing … and don’t have to meet your fuckin’ payroll, and pay you for playin’ like a fuckin’ high school dropout! How dare you do that! ASSHOLES!! ...<br /><br />... Everybody’s on two weeks notice tonight. I’m telling you, everybody gets two weeks notice tonight. I can’t handle this anymore. You’re all … [<span style="font-style: italic;">pauses thoughtfully</span>] you’re not my kind of people at all.</blockquote>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-81747614064233292662009-11-20T12:00:00.000-08:002009-11-25T17:54:15.154-08:00Compare and contrastA tv reporter caught out a kid who likes Sarah Palin but apparently doesn't know too much about her. The kid has a blog and <a href="http://redwhiteandconservative.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/the-day-i-met-sarah-palin-and-the-liberal-media/">tells us</a> her side of the story. Her big reason for liking Sarah Palin:<br /><blockquote><br />"I like how Sarah Palin will speak her mind, regardless of what the media will say about it.”</blockquote><br />A little further down, the kid thinks over various remarks she could have made on air. For example:<br /><blockquote><br />Call me crazy but it would have looked pretty bad had Sarah Palin been against something John McCain was against [she means "for"] while they were running together.</blockquote><br />At issue is TARP. The kid is against it, and she had no idea that Palin was for it. McCain supported TARP in '08, so Palin, as his veep choice, had to go along no matter what her own views might have been. And, sure, no one could disagree with that analysis. But what happened to speaking her mind?<br /><br />The kid makes a subsidiary point:<br /><br /><blockquote>I could have said ... “Hey Norah, have you read the book? She talks about how during her debate prep she was handed a list of note cards that had questions and ‘non-answers’”</blockquote><br />You know, that was pretty much my view of the debate also. It seemed to me that Palin really was not saying much of anything. So on what occasions does she speak her mind? When being interviewed by Hannity, I guess. The kid figures that Palin is outspoken because, when talking to conservatives, Palin says the things that conservatives say.<br /><br />Okay, the kid's just 17. But her blog post has been applauded by the Weekly Standard and other pro-Palin outposts manned by adults. Do they notice this incoherence and gloss over it, or do they share the incoherence and therefore don't notice it?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">update, </span>Unhappy Palinites in Noblesville, Ind. Apparently the Great Goose bailed on a bunch of people who had been standing on line (for hours in the rain with their infant children!) because they had been promised her signature on copies of <span style="font-style: italic;">Going Rogue</span>. This <a href="http://www.rumproast.com/index.php/site/comments/video_of_angry_wingnuts_booing_sarah_palin_calling_her_a_quitter_chantin/">link</a> has a sampling of unhappy comments left on her Facebook page. My favorite:<br /><blockquote><br />... the real disappointment was the realization that someone you supported and believed in didn’t follow through on the commitment they made.</blockquote><br />Pal, if only you followed the news.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-37639873319160927972009-11-18T10:16:00.000-08:002009-11-18T10:17:44.948-08:00Christmas for NazisYou don't see <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1228630/How-Hitlers-Nazi-propaganda-machine-tried-Christ-Christmas.html#ixzz0XE1wQRSR">this</a> every day.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-23719720389579413042009-11-17T19:05:00.000-08:002009-11-22T22:07:24.229-08:00Our elusive ideals<blockquote><br />Men don't see it as an ideal to be aspired to that we get our way on everything and show no interest whatsoever in compromise and balancing respective interests. Why does the feminist ideal often seem to suggest that is the goal?</blockquote><br />Says the fan of George W. Bush ... Because that's <a href="http://minx.cc/?post=294712">from</a> Ace of Spades, the renowned war blogger whose web site has a skull and crossbones (a skull and crossed swords, actually).<br /><br />A lot of men do see throwing their weight around as an ideal way to live. They wish they could get away with it at the office or on line at the coffee place. But instead they settle for watching action movies and advocating a hardline foreign policy.<br /><br />One guy who didn't settle was George Bush. He didn't have to advocate. He was able to live the dream and conduct a tough-guy foreign policy that was all my-way-or-the-highway and shut-up-stupid. Ace and the other wingnut bloggers liked that just fine.<br /><br />Now everything has turned to crap, but the wingnuts can still bitch about that devious wimp, Barack Obama. And about women. Apparently women play too rough.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-7265419654579743072009-11-13T17:56:00.000-08:002009-11-13T18:59:19.097-08:00Progress report: Oct 24 thru 31Typical. I stay away from the Internet, so my progress reports become a backlog. Now I have to set aside blocks of time and churn thru the backlog. It's all become a chore.<br /><br />Okay, to begin:<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct. 24</span> I find listed "12:22 noon to 2:25 pm," and then "5 pm to" nothing. I find a list of standing sets for the program (Sky Frontier), and a list of season 4 shows, each marked "ship" or "planet" or "ship, planet" plus a few more less-used terms. The list marks an episode ("Speak Your Name") as having "space storm not called Bronson-Gann."<br /><br />A page of changes I want to make to "The World Is Fair," a chapter about the shooting of an episode in Sept 1966, just when the show is new and CG's character (Lieut. Taj, the alien) is taking off with viewers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct 25</span> nothing<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct 26</span> This was when I took the morning bus to Ottawa. In my noteboook I started working out a step-by-step progress from the gates of the studio lot inward. That is, I sat there on the floor of the Gare Central at 9:30 am (early for me) and wrote out what you'd find on driving up to the studio gates, then driving to the administration building, seeing the ornamental shruberry between the admin building and the tv shows' building, and so on.<br /><br />Rectangles drawn to represent the sound stages, bungalows, parking lot, admin building. Wrote questions to myself: "Where's the shade, if any?" and so on.<br /><br />But we're only talking a couple of pages. I know that I dropped the work after getting on the bus.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct 2- ?</span> Nine pages of notes show up, no date. Fairly useful sort. Working out where SkyFron and Tracer offices would be. A list of design people and tech staff for SkyFron. (But also a stray couple of stories about someone recalling childhood with a seer-mother, a bit of Dunsany-ism about "the Virulean Gate.") Then material about studio offices, tech/design people listed again, question of who was unit production manager, a crowded diagram attempting to represent the shooting of a scene in a sound stage. Questions about color sound stages painted, distance between sound stages (Burt Ward sounds like he's saying it was 15 feet). A lot on sound stages and shooting, and every step of the way I've got questions. Yet I sort of like the experience. I've had sound stages in the back of my mind for years now, while working on this book, and it's nice to take a look at them full on. So I take what I've got and lay it out, and then figure ways all the bits together may make sense.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct 30 </span>Marked "5:18 pm to 9:19 pm." Thirteen pages of notes, mainly nailing down (probable) layout of sound stage floor, position of generators, how soon cables begin to get underfoot once you walk in the door, where the actors would be sitting, bit of their between-sets behavior, what principles would be applied in the scheduling of scenes to be shot.<br /><br />(There's also some stray material: the layout for a novelty book about notable personalities; a page of comebacks to people who are being impossible; more of the same; a paragraph about the evolution of social interaction among the members of the world's elites if they had transferred themselves to zeppelins located high above the earth; the title in English of a 1950s French popularization of philosophy, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Deluded Beast</span>. Also, the title and subtitles for a book about how the Roman Republic fell. That's because right about then I was finishing <span style="font-style: italic;">Imperium</span> by Robert Harris. The zeppelins paragraph is some sort of afterbelch to an idea I had 20 years ago and never acted on.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oct 31</span> Nothing.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-75516254935781497272009-11-10T23:08:00.000-08:002009-11-10T23:11:02.308-08:00What?<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">From WaPo's </span><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903690_3.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">retrospective</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> on the Scozzafava mess:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'Times New Roman';"><blockquote><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">"There is a great song called 'Coca Cola Cowboy' and I believe that's what we have here. She was a Republican as long as it enhanced her electability," said Armey, reached while petting a goat at his Texas ranch. "My guess is she made a deal with Chuck Schumer or the White House that will eventually show itself to us."</span></blockquote></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The "goat" bit is what surprises me, of course.</span></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-13443914455676943182009-11-01T14:58:00.000-08:002009-11-04T11:35:22.430-08:00I say Hoffman<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">final update,</span> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/nyregion/04district.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss">I said wrong</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div>*******</div><div><br /></div>The Republican candidate <a href="http://watertowndailytimes.com/article/20091101/NEWS09/911019992">folds</a>. I predict that the tea party candidate will win. This is based on nothing but a few headlines, so call it the recording of a hunch.<br /><br />Premise: Politically, this is a terrible time to be Republican but not such a bad time to be a really pissed-off right-winger. Republicans per se have got it tough all over; pissed-off extreme conservatives have their spots where they can break thru.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">update,</span> Lib blogs point me to<a href="http://www.siena.edu/uploadedfiles/home/Parents_and_Community/Community_Page/SRI/SNY_Poll/23rd%20CD%20SNY%20Poll%20Release%203%20--%20FINAL.pdf"> this</a>, a Siena Institute poll. Chris Cilizza highlights:<br /><blockquote><br />more than 60 percent of Scozzafava backers were self-identified Republicans, meaning that the majority of them are likely to back Conservative Party candidate <strong>Doug Hoffman</strong>.</blockquote> The NRCC is promising the tea party candidate a seat on Armed Services; the district contains a U.S. army military reservation, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Drum">per</a> Wiki.Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-32049800781226373132009-10-28T18:03:00.000-07:002009-10-30T17:23:37.812-07:00Visionary: Prouty was right<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 10px; white-space: pre; "><a href="http://s375.photobucket.com/albums/oo198/Tom_Crippen/?action=view&current=312594.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i375.photobucket.com/albums/oo198/Tom_Crippen/312594.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket" /></a></span><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olive_Higgins_Prouty">Olive Higgins Prouty</a> wrote the novels on which <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Now,_Voyager#cite_ref-7">Now, Voyager</a> </span>and <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Stella Dallas</span> were based, and she helped out the young Sylvia Plath with money and thereby wound up as "Philomena Guinea" in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Bell Jar</span>. I know all this from Wikipedia, which I consulted because I just watched <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Now, Voyager.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "><div>Wiki says:</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" line-height: 19px; font-family:-webkit-sans-serif;font-size:13px;"><blockquote>Initial production of the Prouty novel had to take into account that European locales would not be possible in the midst of a war, despite the novelist's insistence on using Italy as the main setting. Her quirky demands for vibrant colors and flashbacks shot in black and white with subtitles were similarly disregarded.</blockquote></span></div><div>Okay, it was quirky to expect Warner Brothers, or anyone in Hollywood, to get so lively in 1942. But it still sounds like Prouty had a good idea. Color for the present, black and white for the past -- yeah. I mean, it makes so much sense that by now it may be a cliche. Subtitles, well, I'd have to see what she had in mind, but still ... could work, could be useful.</div><div><br /></div><div>Overall, it sounds like she was going for something a bit Oliver Stone-ish but decades before he and psychodelics were ever introduced. I like Oliver Stone, so I'm impressed. "Quirky." The three-name lady was right. </div></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">The book/movie is a document of the early therapeutic culture. Wiki says Prouty had psychoanalytic leanings, but I didn't see much of them here. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic; ">Now, Voyager</span> celebrates the idea of emotional therapy, just emotional therapy in general -- not even the talking cure, let alone something as specific as Freudianism.</span><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></div><div>The movie is about Bette Davis's nervous breakdown and her subsequent vigorous rebirth thanks to enlightened therapeutic practices. That is, Claude Rains runs a country sanitarium, she stays there, and while she's there people treat her nicely and she's away from her horrible, browbeating mother. Then she loses weight, dresses up sharp, and goes on an ocean cruise where nobody knows her and she can be her new self. Before she sails, she reads a note that Claude Rains left her. His voice says: "The untold want by life and land ne'er granted / Now voyager sail thou forth to seek and find." Apparently the words are the whole of a Walt Whitman poem called "The Untold Want," to which Prouty added a comma for her title.</div><div><br /></div><div>The movie centers on three basic beliefs undergirding the therapeutic mentality: that persistent emotional misery can be explained by what a person experienced as a child (most especially by the behavior of mom and dad); that the unhappiness can be cured by someone who has a medical degree or something near and who uses the equivalent of modern medicine's hygenic operating environment (the sanitarium in <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Voyager</span>, the impersonality required of practitioners of Freudian analysis, the "safe place" idea in modern-day talk therapy); and that no cure will happen unless the patient takes a risk, makes a stake in his/her life, decides that he/she is going to get more out of it than he/she has been getting -- you've got to start living out loud, as the saying goes. </div><div><br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-25404704817768108102009-10-23T19:54:00.000-07:002009-10-23T20:30:33.513-07:00Progress report: 10'16 thru 23I've kind of lost track of the day-by-day. But I've lined up 95 episodes in a shooting order that I find plausible. Forget how many I had to invent on the spot -- plenty, since I decided that some of my favorite previously invented episodes were too character-driven to keep the network happy. The network wants alien spectacle and "planet shows," the same demand <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> got from NBC.<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Bronson-Gann.</span> Here's a side of things that I like but that any eventual readers may not care about. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> is about a space ship, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Sky Frontier</span> about a space station, so I have to think of ways to bring situations to the station. One is the space storm, otherwise known as a "time-warp disruption." It's gobbledygook but useful, and it pops up more often as the series goes on. Eventually a script gives one space storm the made-up name of "a Bronson-Gann disruption," and the name surfaces a few more times, though scripts also revert to "time-warp disruption" and simple "space storm," depending on the attention being paid by the people in charge. Years later "Bronson-Gann" becomes a continuity staple of the franchise and penetrates fan talk ("He's having a Gann" means someone is acting like a flake or pitching a fit).</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Mission Tube. </span> Last night, among other things, I worked out which episodes would feature space storms, disruptions, or Bronson-Ganns. I also worked out which ones would feature the Mission Tube, another contrivance for making plots possible. <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Sky Frontier</span> should have started out with a teleport device, like <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span> did. But it didn't, both because I want the two series to be different and because <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Sky Frontier</span>'s creator is a stubborn sort who wants people to come to him. But before the first season is up, he and his team hit on teleporting as a storytelling crutch. Instead of the streamlined teleporting used by <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek</span>, theirs is quite a production. A machine with a man-sized portal sets up a high hum and the characters jump thru the portal and into whatever situation they're supposed to get into. The effect is much like <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">The Time Tunnel</span>, I think (because I haven't seen that show). The Mission Tube is not the surefire device the <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: italic;">Star Trek </span>crew enjoys; it can send you to the wrong place and is subject to interference from difficult local conditions. "We can scramble them there," the engineering man says tensely. "I just don't know if we can scramble them back."</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Titles.</span> Here are some I came up with. You'll see I got pretty ripe:</div><div><br /></div><div>"That My Hands Shall Know Their Maker"</div><div>"Half a Blindfold"</div><div>"The Stars that See, the Sky that Forgets"</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-46873136265947451462009-10-15T21:43:00.000-07:002009-10-15T21:51:52.069-07:00A writer after my own heart<div><br /></div><div>I never thought I would identify with a member of Obama's crack communications team. But:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(29, 29, 29); line-height: 18px; font-family:georgia;font-size:14px;"><blockquote>... less than seventy-two hours before the speech would be delivered to a live audience, Favreau was sitting alone in an unfurnished group house in Chicago when the boss called. “I’m going to give you some stream of consciousness,” Obama told him. Then he spoke for about forty-five minutes, laying out his speech’s argumentative construction. Favreau thanked him, hung up, considered the enormity of the task and the looming deadline, and then decided he was “too freaked out by the whole thing” to write and went out with friends instead. </blockquote></span></div><div><br /></div><div>Favreau is Jon Favreau (not the Hollywood guy, a speechwriter) and the speech in question was the big one, Obama's response to the flap over Jeremiah Wright and "God damn America!" It got written in the end, which I hope is a portent. The <a href="http://www.gq.com/news-politics/politics/200911/barack-obama-writing-books-writer-robert-draper?currentPage=5">article</a> is by Robert Draper in GQ, via Sullivan, of course.</div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-1029467433269736262009-10-15T20:24:00.000-07:002009-10-15T21:30:54.333-07:00Progress report: 10'13, '14 and '15 <div>Today's Thursday, so the dates work out like this ...</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Tuesday</span>: 4 hours writing notes, mainly about the show but also with a section about two of the characters, CG and Olsen, and how they deal with personal appearances. Back in the '60s tv actors could make more money doing weekend appearances at shopping malls and small-town harvest festivals they made from their tv work. For instance, Leonard Nimoy was a bear about scheduling appearances around the country every weekend, then driving straight from the airport to the studio for shooting. Of course he had a certain amount of stardom; Koenig, Takei and Nichols, for example, didn't have much to say about appearances in their memoirs, most likely because they didn't do as much of that work. For whatever reason, I read their memoirs a few years ago and Nimoy's not until last December or so. Once I had read him, I realized I had to make p.a.'s a bigger factor in CG's and Olsen's lives, and now I think I've figured out how to do that.</div><div><br /></div><div>The other notes had to do with my show's credits sequence and core gimmicks: the look of the space station, its set-up (Deck 8, Deck 7, Deck 6, etc., all the way up to Deck 1, Command, the High Deck -- the special h.q. with the screens and blinking lights and the regulars sitting at their posts), the neat tricks it can pull (protector rings, offense beams, etc. -- I don't have the notebook with me, but I worked out some pretty good terms).</div><div><br /></div><div>I was very happy with what I decided for the credits sequence and the station's look. I've been noodling with both questions for God nows how many years, and now I've got answers that I like. They seem plausible for mid-'60s tv and plausible as winners with the people watching the show, and I managed to work them out in enough detail for them to feel solid. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Wednesday:</span> Not much at all. I spent half an hour with my notebook while traveling by subway. Unfortunately all I did was write nonsense phrases for fantasy stories: "The red cut glass of the goblin's triangular stare in the dark." Reason: the night before I had read LeGuin's "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie," which contains a few quotes from fantasy authors whom she likes. Not much of a reason, but it turned out to be enough.</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Today:</span> Four hours selecting and rewriting the first 15 episodes to be shot. I don't mean rewriting scripts, because I'm not fool enough to write those, just blurb descriptions. Eighty to go and I'll have enough. I've got a bunch written up, though a count revealed the bunch was about 15 short of what I had expected. The job now is to decide which episodes were shot when, to write more as needed, and to fix the ones I already have if they need fixing. Not fix them too much, because I might get lost in the project and never come out, but enough for me to feel that each episode could have been broadcast and to give me an idea of what the production staff and actors would have had to do to get the thing made.</div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-74599845361757372032009-10-12T18:02:00.000-07:002009-10-12T18:06:32.815-07:00Progress report: 10'12<div><br /></div><div>Think it was 3.5 hours. I'm trying to decide which episodes will go where in the first-season shooting schedule I made up.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Clarification if needed: so far the schedule is just a set of dates. The fourth episode starts shooting on a given date, the fifth starts on a given date, etc. But which episode goes fourth? That's the side of things I'm working on now.) </div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4283824583349066611.post-24915199761775416922009-10-12T16:29:00.000-07:002009-10-12T17:19:16.836-07:00Exercises in meme sharpening<blockquote><br /></blockquote><blockquote>If the Republicans can't win, they want America to lose.</blockquote><div><br /></div><div>My own phrasing, and I hope the DNC sees it somehow. I think that's the ultimate in pithification for the line being pushed <a href="http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Michael_Steele">here</a>. Also, it probably would have been best if the DNC had made the Taliban parallel a backup talking point rather than the lead.</div><div><br /></div><div>More advice, this time to the Young Democrats. They have a <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/louisiana-young-dems-we-can-only-guess-why-vitter-is-opposed-to-anti-rape-law.php">letter</a> harping on the vote by Sen. David Vitter, a client of prostitutes, against Al Franken's bill to let employees of military contractors use the U.S. court system if they are victims of sexual assault. "What exactly is David Vitter's problem with women?" the letter wants to know. That's subtler than saying "David Vitter hires prostitutes, therefore he hates women." But it's not as good as hammering at the fact that Vitter gave no reason for his vote. List all the common sense points that make the bill a matter of simple justice; leave Vitter's vote as a mystery he refuses to explain. "Dave, at least tell us why" would have primed the reader to say, "I know why" and out would have popped the memory of the sex scandal.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sometimes not only do you have to avoid drawing connections, you have to let the audience supply one of the dots. Otherwise, as in this case, you wind up looking a bit cheesy.</div>Tom Crippenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11858665969910012803noreply@blogger.com0