Tick… Tick… Tick… For Us All

Hear, Hear
Americans should not fear talking–and listening–to those whose views we loathe.

[T]his has been our history: to let all speak and to fear no one. That’s a good history to continue.

This is brilliant.

Writer: Barry Eisler Japanese Edition

Amaon in Japan link.

Gambatte kudasai, Eisler-san!

=======================
Did you just read this post? Now click here.

Previously in this blog:
Go Read Barry Eisler’s Chat
Photo Album: Writer Barry Eisler
Writer Barry Eisler: Rain’s Man

Jaysus

3 Charged in PC Magazine Editor’s Death

PITTSBURG, Calif. (AP) – Three men have been charged with murdering a senior editor for PC World magazine in what police said was an attempt to steal marijuana that the victim’s son grew in their home for medical use.

Rex Farrance, 59, the San Francisco-based magazine’s senior technical editor, was shot in the chest on Jan. 9 after masked men broke into his suburban home.

=======================
Did you just read this post? Now click here.

Writing Quote Of The Day: K.A. Bedford

FAQ 2.0

7. So you somehow defied the odds and got published by an actual for-real publisher! What’s the secret to beating the Evil Publishing Company Conspiracy to keep the “little guy” (particularly the ones with the “Unique Artistic Vision) out of publishing?

Well, the key secret to getting published, above and beyond all others, is this: you have to write a good book. That’s the whole thing, right there, in a nutshell.

=======================
Did you just read this post? Now click here.

Previously in this blog:
Second Quote Of The Day: Walter Jon Williams
Book Drooooool!
Hemorrhaging the Neural Net
Writer Added

NBC’s Journeyman: Thumbs Down

Update 12/13/07: NBC did not order more episodes beyond the original thirteen. I guess the creator now has much time to frivol.

Spoilers ahead. Skip this post if you haven’t seen the first episode tonight. It debuts on NBC at 10PM EDST.

After all the hyping I did of Journeyman here, seeing the actual pilot (courtesy of “Chuck” and also Amazon Unbox) was a letdown.

I don’t like the star playing his wife. Let me just come out and day it: She’s a shrike, a bitch, and if I had her for a wife I’d want to travel back in time too! And as for the actress herself, she looks more like a supermodel than someone who’d risk her figure to have a kid. This is bad casting.

I don’t see the appeal of the woman he pines for. All that time he thought she was dead — and she’s not? Did I care? No.

His journeying back in time made no spatial sense. He’d go to sleep in his bed and somehow wind up miles away in a park? Are they going to use earth rotation as an excuse? For that matter, what triggers the time traveling? There’s an inference of either the Hand of God or mental illness being the catalyst. The latter is more convincing than the former.

Is every episode going to involve him intervening in some aspect of the past, in someone else’s life? This reeks of Early Edition. That show had more appealing, more true-to-life, characters — plus a cat!

His initial journey back into the past lacks emotional realism. To understand what I mean, I now have to recount my own “journeyman” episode. It was a dream I had back in 2003 (1/26 to be precise; it’s in my Palm) and it left a permanent mark on me.

I “woke up” standing on the sidewalk looking at a protest marching north near Columbus Circle. It is sometime in the 1970s (I can’t pinpoint the year). I am seeing a protest I had actually witnessed in real life back then. But I am back there with my knowledge of today. And it hits me that I am back there with what I know now. I have traveled back in time. The vividness of the dream, its reality, is as real as real, if not realer (you know how hyper-real dreams can be; if you don’t, I feel sorry for you!). I am there. And I know the future. And all the shit that I’d been through in that future is now gone. Wiped away. I had a sense of freedom, of liberation, that I’d never before experienced in my life. I could do everything differently — and with the foreknowledge I contained inside me. I walked down to a neighborhood I once lived in for a few years. It was pre-gentrified. The rents were still low and I could see the lowlifes who had been swept out in the neighborhood’s redevelopment. They didn’t frighten me. In fact, I was without fear altogether. That I was suddenly homeless and apparently penniless didn’t bother me at all. It was the freedom of it all that excited me. I could get money, I could get an apartment — and beyond all that, I could get rich. I knew the tech stocks to invest in. I knew that Microsoft was still a private company. There was no DOS yet. No IBM PC. Reagan wasn’t yet in office (and when he came in, I’d know there’d never be a nuclear war with the Soviets — something many people actually feared during that time!). Do you understand? Can you imagine it for yourself? How absolutely exciting! To this day — over four years later! — all I have to do is recall that dream and I can recapture some of the emotion of it.

Journeyman lacked that. Instead of seeing his life having a new, fresh start, instead of feeling the emotions that would accompany that — we get nothing. A search for shoes in his old (not-his-yet) house. And even then it almost takes a baseball bat to the head for him to realize what has happened. Even if he thought it was a vivid dream, there are things he could have done other than what the writer chose.

This is bad writing. Very, very bad writing. Characterization was pushed aside in favor of plot. A possibly fatal mistake. With the rare opportunity to grab the audience and make them experience such a trip, to really feel it, the writer flubbed it.

In this respect, I think many people who’ve read The Time Traveler’s Wife and watch the show for the first time tonight will feel right at home. It’s as arid and as shallow as that book. It even has an element from that book: the character time-traveling while driving, causing an accident! Strange coincidence, huh?

I’m not sure if I’ll tune in for the second episode.

If you watch it and like it, visit The Journeyman Blog.

Previously in this blog:
NBC: Settle With Apple
Is Google Better Than Spy Agencies?
A Third Post-iTunes Fable For NBC: Steve Jobs Is Journeyman
A Second Post-iTunes Fable For NBC: You Got Chucked!
Should Apple Turn iTunes Into A Platform?
NBC: Stop Being Blonde!
NBC To Give Away Show Pilots
Journeyman: Still Unleaked!
Fall Network TV Doom Watch List
Journeyman: All Available Vids
Journeyman: No Leak, But Two YouTube Vids
NBC: Leak Journeyman NOW! Early Reports NOT Good!
YouTube: NBC Fall Preview
ABC Kicks NBC’s Ass For Fall TV Buzz
Hey, NBC! Leak Journeyman NOW!
Now NBC Has Pissed Me Off!
Journeyman: Interesting Bits
Hey You Three. Email NBC!
Journeyman Still Not Leaked
September 2005: NBC Promotes A New Earl Show
I Give NBC A Kick To The Nuts. It’s Called An Incentive.
Now Sinfest Persecutes Me!
Hey, NBC! Leak Journeyman, Dammit!!
Bourne Ultimatum? Yes. Journeyman? No.
Hollywood: Settle!
Brightcove: Journeyman Preview
DailyMotion: Ha. Ha. Ha.
Are The Suits Using P2P To Hype Their Shows?

Where The Gods Create

Take off your shoes, you uncircumcised heathen. You are about to tread on holy ground!

Writer’s Rooms

Hey, You Timid Wimps Who Wail About My Language!

Yeah, go read your god, Scott Adams, daddy of Dilbert, and see the words he’s using.

Now. Fuck. Off. Pussies.

Attention Dennis Potter Fans: Romance & Cigarettes Is Out In New York City

This long-unreleased movie inspired by Dennis Potter’s “serials with songs” is available to see in New York City at Film Forum.

A podcast interview with John Turturro is available at the Film Forum link.

Romances & Cigarettes wikipedia entry

Romances & Cigarettes IMDb entry

Dennis Potter puppet head from only God Knows Where

Update: A variety of YouTube vids are also available.

Previously in this blog:
Warren Ellis Quotes Dennis Potter!
Sad Anniversary: The Death Of Dennis Potter, June 7, 1994
Some Dennis Potter Links
Today Is The Anniversary Of The Birth Of Dennis Potter
The Greatest TV. Ever.
Ew.

They Want To Erase Bukowski’s Bungalow

5124 De Longpre Ave

Charles Bukowski lived at 5124 De Longpre from 1963 to 1974. It was during this time that many pivotal events occured in his writing career, namely; the beginning of his partnership with Black Sparrow Press, the writing and publishing of his first novel Post Office, his first public poetry reading, and the “research” which would later become his novel Women. It was also during this period that Bukowski begain to attain notoriety as a writer, so much so that one neighbor describes his having to sneak out the back door to avoid admirers lingering in the courtyard. The apartment is one of the last vestiges of Bukowski’s Los Angeles – stark, honest, and sometimes beautiful. It’s one of the only places he describes in his books, so noteworthy for their evocative sense of place, that remain faithfull to the time.

Currently the bungalow apartments at 5124 De Longpre stand empty and boarded up, ensconced in a chain-link fence. The property has been listed on Craig’s List as ready for demolition. We are currently embarking on a campaign to have these apartments declared a historic-cultural landmark before the property is sold and demolished. It’s a race against time, but we feel that one of Los Angeles’s finest writers and native sons deserves to take his place in the pantheon of our city’s rich and fascinating history.

Bastards.

Reading: September 23 2007

Just Read:

Outrageous Fortune by Tim Scott
— A huge romp that loses track of all its threads towards the end and leaves an unsatisfying feeling that not everything has been wrapped up as neatly as the author thought. It’s also horribly mis-titled. His next book is to be called Love In The Time Of Fridges, so this one probably was going to be Don’t You Hate It When This Happens? but something must have gone awry in editing/marketing land. If you like Jasper Fforde‘s bizarre works, you’ll love this book. For most of the book, I kept thinking it was Fforde writing under a pseudonym. Apparently Tim Scott is a real person (who does not have a site or a blog!):

Tim Scott is not Jasper Fforde!

Today:
I have no idea yet. I have a few non-fiction books and several Palahniuk novels. I’ll have to see what captures my fancy…

Tomorrow:

Ammunition by Ken Bruen
— it’s Bruen! He always jumps the Endless Reading Queue. Here’s a quick YouTube video of him. He’s one of my writing gods and has been in the Blogroll since the start. I would have had this read already, but I didn’t get to the NYPL in time. It’s on hold there and now I have to wait until tomorrow. Just what I need: a reason to wake up tomorrow.

Abandoned:

I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon by Crystal Zevon
— bloody hell. This is a two-inch thick book that also weighs a ton. I just couldn’t keep lugging it around. I’ll have to return to it another time.