Video gaming is something I've done my entire life. When I think of the most thrilling moments of my childhood, many of them involve gaming. Zelda II on the NES, which I watched my uncles play in our crowded 3-bedroom condo. Playing Shinobi on the Sega Game Gear with my Mom. Even playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis with my sister. It was purely a social and familial activity, but over time as games got more complicated, they all dropped out in favor of real responsibilities or other hobbies. I stuck through it, despite always being an entire console generation behind the other kids at school. I remained current on the internet and hooked up to last year's glowing machine at home.
Despite this connection, gaming isn't something I've really written about. For something that has been such a consistent hobby through the years, I haven't really made it an apparent part of my identity. The reason for this is that gaming is usually what I do to turn off. There will always come a time when my head is too full of something heavy and toxic, and the best thing I can do is escape for an hour or two. It's always been this way. As a child, I would daydream for fun, inventing new lives and adventures in my head until I didn't need to because video games caught up with what I had always pictured.
Sleep is a Disease
Sometimes, it feels like my entire life is just grappling with the demands and effects of my uneven sleep cycle. Sometimes, it feels like sleep is life's great central theme, not love, or innocence, or salvation. At my weirdest, I may believe that sleep is the most important thing in civilization.On This Day
Tuesday, December 27, 2011, in the interest of documenting the mundane routine of a typical day before the year ends. Also, blog fodder.Liked Best in 2011
I was fortunate enough to be a participant in voting for One Thirty BPM's Top 50 Albums of 2011. Having an inside look at a big site making their big year-end list really made me realize how divergent the opinions of the blogosphere illuminati can be. It seems like I should know that by now — that everyone has wildly different opinions and tastes — but when you're following the currents of the indie rock blogosphere, you sometimes wonder how all these people know what narrative to build. Is it a musical elite thing? Do they have skill sand knowledge and expertise that hone in on the same objectively good album?As it turns out, everyone's just true to their personal tastes, everyone will be apathetic to someone else's #1, and the best album of the year is just whatever landed as everyone's #7. Below is my top 10 albums for 2011 — or at least it is for right now. Arranging the music of an entire year into 10 spots is difficult and sometimes feels arbitrary, so it's hard to stick to one list for very long. This isn't even the exact order I voted on, and if I could go back and change it, this still might not be the order I want. There's a reason I submitted my votes under the wire.
But that's just the run of the mill trouble that comes with thinking about art. It's all just feelings and thoughts, chiseled into defined ideas until it feels right by us. These are the things I liked best in 2011, at this very moment. Card subject to change
10. The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient
When I listen to this album, I think of Bob Dylan. That's not the first touchstone people tend to name, but when I hear opener "Best Night" kick into high gear, it sounds like the modern iteration of the perfect wall of sound in "Like A Rolling Stone." Adam Granduciel doesn't write like Dylan, but there are constant moments where he hits a familiar inflection. He works so well in those strange, weary Dylan melodies, where the vocals don't play as you expect them to, they just sort of swerve and evaporate into the air. It's like if Prime Dylan was backed by Broken Social Scene singing someone else's songs.
Delivery Systems
I was hanging out for a couple of hours on Turntable FM, racking up invisible approval points awarded to me by anonymous cutesy avatars when I realized how my music consumption game was constantly changing. Turntable FM is just one method of interacting with similarly minded music fans and, I found out, discovering new songs. I get this question a lot: How do you find new music? More and more, it has come about through the dozens of music social media sites.
That's something big for me that's changed right under my nose. I forget a lot about how quickly things change, because my generation came into being at the tail end of analog technology, and we're conditioned to believe that things had always been this fast paced. We're the ones that got to see pre-paid plastic Nokia-bricks become widespread and then give way to touch screen iPods. It's not just that the old ways are dying, it's that the new ways have a increasingly shorter lifespan, and it's most evident to me when it comes to each new social music craze.
Before Getting Good
I don't yet fully understand stand-up comedy. I know what makes me laugh, and why I laugh, but I don't yet understand how the crafting of a joke works. My training as a fiction writer showed me that any kind of professional writing is deceptively simple. Although I know a lot of comics don't write out their acts, usually just bullet points to hit,they think in words and concepts the way writers do. We all have the same communicative muscles, they just do sprints and I learned middle distance.
Stand-up is one of those artforms that people like to point to as one of the rare original American arts. It's the simplest medium, resistant to the changing times, and that makes it seem all the more important. The styles and topics have evolved, but the core of it has been the same since vaudeville. It's a person using nothing but spoken words and force of personality to entertain an audience.
I like to go watch open mic nights as a way to engage in my fascination with stand-up. This is where everyone starts, at their very worst, working claustrophobic 3 to 5 minute sets in front of other aspiring comedians. The theory is that if you're good enough, you catch management's eye, and then they'll give you a spot on a show that people actually pay for. Every open mic I've ever been to has generally been unfunny but massively interesting. That's probably the worst possible reaction these upstarts could hope for, but I appreciate their evening's entertainment all the same.
Thinking About David Dondero
During the formative years of my music taste, I took to a lot of artists that would stick with me for years to come. It's all the stuff that formed the foundation of my likes and dislikes, my eternal mental iPod, stuff that I've written about at length here. I still listen to most of those artists on a near-daily basis.
Except David Dondero. David Dondero is a Minnesotan singer-songwriter, one of the best alive, yet still pretty invisible. For some reason or another, I hadn't listened closely to Dondero in years. His song "Train Hop Flop" came up on shuffle the other day and I couldn't help but wonder where he's been, or why he slipped through the cracks.
I'm no Dondero expert, but the construction of his career seemed strange in my head. See, I found out about David Dondero because he was named as one of the direct, contemporary influences on Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes. In fact, I imagine that's how a lot of fans found his music. In fact, that fact gets repeated on every David Dondero album review on Pitchfork and I assume many other music review sites. That single fact was supposed to be a good rub, but the more it gets repeated, the more it seems like an inescapable ghost.
Fall Cleaning
It's 2:30 in the morning and I am going to tell you as many secrets as I can until I am bare and clean and empty as the day I was born.
- I was never good at handball.
Poison
Do you know how long it has been since I used the "writing" tag? Nine months. Not that I haven't been writing in that time, but because a lot of the writing I've been done has been journalistic or bloggy, I haven't had the need to write about writing. Writing about writing has always been a sort of self-motivational tool. It helps me clarify and reaffirm, get through the lousy creative days, and even procrastinate my way through writing blocks and/or crippling fear. These obstacles only come about when I write fiction, and my last real, honest stab at solid short fiction was in 2010, and man, I abandoned that story on the 4th draft because that shit was poison.
But I'm trying again, mostly out of the need to do something that affords me some dignity in my continuing bout with unemployment. Writing is every bit as frustrating and depressing as I remember, even with the fire of several meaty ideas. It's also about validation -- I'm often thinking about what type of career path to struggle in, and my mind always looks back at when I was so sure I should be a literary fiction novelist. I'm still not sure that that's where I want to die, but I want to at least get published in something more substantial than No Readers Quarterly. I would be happy with that kind of validation, even though it's not something I should necessarily seek. I think I can do it; I think I have so much more knowledge than ever. It's just a matter of execution, discipline, and editing.
I'm in a weird downward funk. It's a funk that is necessary to coming up with the right emotionally resonant words, but it's draining as fuck, especially when it's a mode you inhabit for weeks. What a weird self-flagellating act that writers of sad stuff have to go through. Grant Morrison once described writing Darkseid, the cosmic god of all evil, as a dark and depressing place to be working in, something he couldn't keep up for very long without jeopardizing his mental health. Sometimes I wish I never come up with an idea that is as dark and in the ground, but then again, maybe that's just what I need to make something good.
Nuances of Offensive Humor
I've been a big Anthony Jeselnik fan since late 2009 after I saw him do a segment on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. From time to time, I've had to kind of deconstruct that, because Jeselnik is the type of stand-up comedian whose stock-in-trade is offending people and grabbing taboos by the throat. It's never been that I've felt that taboos should be untouched, and that some topics are sacred. I've just always liked comedians that didn't have to play the offensive, that could get a thrill without pushing the big obvious button.
I've been compelled, on multiple occasions, to express my opinion on the cultural impact that all mass media entertainers have on the awareness, frame of reference, and understanding of the average person. Not that they have a responsibility to be careful with their power, although that would be great, but that they should be aware that they do have power and that if they use it to be an asshole, people (and sponsors) will respond accordingly. Responses, criticism and consequence are part of freedom of speech, too.
Offensive comedy has changed a lot about what pop culture deems to be funny and acceptable. That's fine, and it's a longstanding tradition evident in every comedian's reverence for Lenny Bruce. But these days, there's a certain kind of ugly laziness that comes in with offensive humor, where the only joke you need is, "I'm saying something I'm not supposed to!" with an ironic wink and shy giggle. When I was watching the Conan O'Brien documentary, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, he runs into two kids before a show and, in an effort to make their hero laugh, one of the kids refers to being "jewed out" of some money. Conan gets them into his show on the condition that they stop saying that word.
Road Cure
In 2009, I quit my retail job because I wanted my fucking soul back. It was a long time coming, and I had saved up enough to support me for an extended job hunt or unpaid internship. I turned in my 2 weeks notice, and when those days passed, I was overjoyed. Almost immediately, a good friend of mine offered a chance to tag along with him on a road trip to the very edge of Washington state. There's a storied romanticism surrounding the road trip: the new lands, the car bonding, and, of course, the mythical rebooting of the soul. The choice was easy.
Some Encounters With Homeless People
I am terrible at not giving strangers money. Here's the problem: They ask. What am I supposed to do? Say no? Unless I can't because I have no change, I am a sucker for their buckets, paper cups, hats, and even their clipboards. I once encountered three separate people soliciting money in the span of two hours (two homeless guys and a dude collecting for a charity) and I gave to all three. This is not to say I am a good person; just weak. You'd better believe by the third guy I was thinking, I can't believe this shit is happening.
For some reason, I have a lot of weird memories involving various strangers asking for money. On more than one occasion, homeless folk have prefaced their money requests with this kind of oblivious, weird and unintentional racism. This is literally the exchange I have had at least three times:
"Hey," says a guy sitting on the floor wearing many layers of coats. "Do you speak English? English?"
I look at him and say yes.
"Do you have any money? I just need a couple dollars more, man."
So, inevitably, I give him a couple of dollars. Usually when I tell people this, they are appalled that I would even give the guy the time of day. "After he said that?!" they would say. My response is this: So what? What do you expect me to do? Not give him my spare change to teach him a lesson about cultural sensitivity?
Escapist Doom
I just thought I should blog something.
The past week has been a struggle for productivity and discipline. One of my greatest personal failings, which I keep in my spiral tower of great personal failings, is my need for escapism. It comes in binges. I find comfort in being nothing but a vessel for an experience. Like other addictions, it is difficult to beat, results in long internal arguments and is a drain on my free time (and therefore the quality of my life.)
Layman Observations of Major League Soccer
- It is hard to tell which goalie is one what team.
Well I Was Gonna Blog About Other Shit But
Case in point: I've been thinking on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, announced only 6 hours ago, and the reaction that it has been getting; in the media, in the crowds, on twitter and among my friends. Having ruminated on it for not-long-enough, here is what I've gleaned about the world.
My PA Days
Making good money in the creative arts is an intimidating Everest of a goal. It's designed to keep people who aren't serious about the work and discipline away. All of us like to say that we know this, and that we're going to be one of the few that stick it out until we get to the top. But every day, we start to see why everyone keeps jumping ship.
I'm not yet giving up on the dream, as I don't think I've encountered nearly enough difficulties to really break my back, but I have learned that saying is easier than doing. The foremost example in my life is the time I tried to be a production assistant. I got it in my head to be a writer for TV and film, because I lived in this area anyway, and the prize (while the odds of reaching it were slim) was more rewarding than my other career goal of novelist. But the path to writer is through writer's assistant, which is accessed via production assistant.
Production assistant is the term for entry level, all-purpose set hand. Here's how you know you're a competent PA: No one notices you. As a PA, you can only make things worse. On your best day, the show business machine continues on as it is supposed to. You facilitate its regular action, and the only difference you can make is when you screw up.
Dwayne McDuffie
On Monday, comics writer and animated television producer Dwayne McDuffie died unexpectedly, of complications after emergency heart surgery. He is most well known in mainstream American pop culture as one of the co-creators of Static Shock, co-founder of Milestone Media, and producer/writer of the Justice League and Ben 10 cartoons. But to describe the man simply by what work he leaves behind is only part of what made him great.
There have probably been hundreds of blog eulogies, of all sizes, since Monday. I don't have the ultimate one, or even a definitive, all-encompassing one to offer to the big RSS feed in the sky. I just have a few words that keep coming up in my head about what his work and philosophy meant to me, and how it profoundly shaped my creative goals. I can't claim to be the biggest Dwayne McDuffie fan. I haven't read many of his notable works, and my mind isn't full of McDuffie trivia. But for a while, I wanted to be a Dwayne McDuffie.
McDuffie, to me, was an activist in pop culture. He understood the nuances of racial politics, of inclusiveness versus tokenism, and on top of all that, he was a damn good writer. With other comics creators of color, he helped found Milestone Media, a publisher that had the most diverse comic books of the 1990s, as well as some of the best written. He had the talent, willpower and know-how to do what a lot of struggling, claustrophobic artists of color wished they could: Start their own company, do things their way, and be a success.
For those that don't dabble in the artistic communities of ethnic groups, there are piles and piles of starving artists trying to make it on their own, and have been for a very long time. They have their own labels, produce their own music, make their own films, fund their own projects. And a lot of them, for whatever reason, either never grow beyond the insular community that bred them, or fall by the wayside. Very rarely do they ever "break out" into mainstream success. It can be disheartening, as an artist of color, to believe that making work about your ethnic community can be a damning hindrance to your wider aspirations.
Story About Rats
From 2006 to 2008, I lived in an apartment across the street from my college. It was my first real "independent" living experience, being out of a dormitory or my parent's home. I paid my bills, assembled my furniture, and solved my problems.
A few of these problems were worse than others. In fact, some of these problems were alive, red-eyed and terrifying just a shadowy presence. My roommate and I found out, in our last year there, that we had been living with a small rat army.
Stranded
I hate money.
Read MoreI mean, I need and desire and gobble gobble chomp it up like a hungry hippo, but I hate it.
Since I was a small child, I've had weird hang-ups about money and spending, and as a result, I am pretty frugal and generally smart with how I save and spend. But it stresses me out from end to end. I go to sleep worried about money, I have bad dreams and great nightmares, and I wake up worried about money. It's not even that my family is dancing with poverty, or that my personal checking account is particularly empty. In college, I couldn't deal with having less than two hundred dollars. Today, I can't deal with having less than a thousand.
If you're part of the sane majority, that sounds like a luxurious amount of money to have stored away at this age, I know. I know I should be amazed that I manage to have that much after all this unemployment, which I can't seem to scrape off my failing person. But this mind can't be beat down with blunt logic. It is one of My Things. I stress and feel shitty and I wonder when will I be able to find some steady, reasonable income to be both independent and comfortable.
At Long Last
I discovered NaNoWriMo in 2007 and jumped right in, then immediately jumped right out. I hovered somewhere around 17,000 words written before I realized I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Sure, I was writing a screenplay and revising several pieces at that time, but NaNoWriMo is a cold, deaf master. It is about discipline, not excuses.
I tried again once every year after that. I failed around 16,000 in 2008 because of PCN preparations. I died around 20,000 in 2009 because I started my new job that month. I decided that this year, at long last, was going to be different. I was motivated to not be shamed for a 4th year in a row, and to prove to my inner critic that I could do it. Except I started my internship that month, so that wasn't conducive to a good writing schedule.
But again: it's about discipline, not excuses. There will never be a good time to sit down and write 1,600 words a day. Something will always come up, and it will feel like an incredible hurdle. So, just past midnight of Halloween night, I put my fingers to typing something incredibly depressing and ridiculous. I won't say what the story is about; It is pretty shamelessly over the top in its darkness and negativity. I will say that it had a lot of legs, but it was so horrible that I couldn't help but laugh when all the datums in my head plugged together and came up with that harrowing spark. It is one thing to come up with an idea. It is another to come up with an idea that makes you laugh because, really, your brain can't be serious.