I’ve been reading David Mamet…

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…from his book, Three Uses of the Knife, and I have to say the man does have a way with words. Some memorable quotes:

The avant-garde is to the left what jingoism is to the right. Both are a refuge in nonsense.

Las Vegas doesn’t offer fortune (though it purports to) or thrills (unless one finds degradation thrilling). It offers the opportunity to exercise one’s compulsion.

The book is good stuff for leaning about story structure and writing drama. The quotes simply help to make it easier to grasp.

A Cool Conceit…

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…but not yet a story. The idea is that someone gets arrested for causing a power outage (an act thought to be impossible). The crime is Criminal Interruption of Internet Service, because as everyone knows, in the future it will be a crime to stop anyone from having access to the internet.

on music

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Today I listened to some music while working out in the garage. That happens to be where I keep my stereo (not enough room in the house). I recently picked up the album Crime of the Century by Supertramp. That I referred to it as an album tells you right off how old I am. I remember when that album came out on a Criterion Collection special high quality vinyl. This was back before there were CDs.

The music is deep, and highly polished. It is prog rock, meaning that it reaches back into the classic music closet for ideas as opposed to the blues, jazz, or country closets. So odd meters, odd chords, actual counter melodies in the bass line, deep meaningful lyrics, etc. But there is more to it than that. I have Rush albums from that time, and they are good, but not this lush. Yes albums from the same era are wonderfully complex, but not as commercial. Not as slick. These are albums in which a lot of time was painstakingly put into the craft of recording and producing high quality music. In today’s digital world, where recording is so much easier, I wonder if something is being lost. I can’t think of a modern CD which was written/produced like this album. I don’t think anyone builds songs like this anymore.

Listening to it today brought me back to summers in Clovis. Driving around in Carl Christenson’s car, music blaring. I discovered this album, and this type of music in high school, back when I was VERY ERNEST about the world. It was impossible for me to listen to the music and NOT talk about it. I had to point out every cool part, every interesting note. It seems very compulsive to me now, but I suppose at the time that it was just our way of working out our intellects. Finding something we could be adult about, and hammering away at it until we appeared practiced and urbane.

I’m older now, and really don’t have much time to just sit and listen to music. I tend to use music as a tool, either to set a mood for writing, or to help be focus on retouching. Rarely do I take the time to just listen, letting the lush orchestration flow over my ears. So today I cleaned out pool equipment that has been sitting on my workbench since last fall when we put away the pool, and enjoyed Supertramp, followed by Ambrosia’s self titled first album. The only one in my collection that is missing  from that time period is Dark Side of the Moon, which is sitting in my Amazon shopping cart, waiting for me to make the purchase.

Oh frabjous day!

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It’s 8:30 and already I’ve had the most wonderful morning. You see I was walking Trevor to our local public school, like I do every school day. To get there we have to cross the treacherous and swift moving Burbank Blvd. where more than once I’ve almost been hit by passing cars. So today, when we round the corner and spied the villainous street ahead, we saw there was a roving gang of jack-booted thugs on motorcycles, enforcing the local traffic standards. They even had an undercover “troll” who crossed the street – at the cross-walk, and always with the huge lights flashing – just to reel in more suckers.

Let me tell you, it was beautiful.

12 to 15 motorcycle cops were out, and they just were throwing down ticket after ticket. Half way across the street I looked west down Burbank Blvd., and off in the distance I saw three different sets of flashing lights behind pulled over cars. It was like Christmas in May. On the way home, while I was thanking the fine officers for being there, our corner crossing guard went back and forth across the street twice. Each time two or more cars would zoom past him, and each time another motorcycle cop hit the gas, and that little bit of siren song sounded.

I didn’t feel the least bit bad for the poor unsuspecting cars. That corner has been a nightmare for us for 5 years. I’ve been almost hit countless times while crossing the street with my son. You try crossing a street with a small child, and have the cars miss you only because you jump out of their way, and tell me how you feel about it. Cars will not only fail to stop, but they will zoom right pass you and flip you off.

But not today mother fuckers. Let me tell you. Not today.

So how has your morning been?

Housecleaning

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I just did some work to the site, moving Angel of Death to a different page, and updating the old AoD page to be my new Fiction page. The main reason for the change was to make room for more of my fictional work. Yea! More fiction, more fiction. I put up a page about an evil little fantasy piece called Wisdom, and plan to follow it soon with a longer pure sci-fi short called In The Root. I’ll provide links to the stories if I can sell them.

All of this mean that you, my dear reader, get cool stuff to read. And I ask you, what is wrong with that?

Interesting people

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I met a very interesting lady tonight named Judith, on the ride home. She was an excellent contrast in character. She spoke like a New Yorker (not with the accent, but with that same feverish delivery, and the tendency to use proclamations), yet she thought like an old-school liberal. She is a piano teacher, in town from Canada to see her daughter perform in a local show. I got the feeling she is also at loose ends, a creative person playing the odds to see what will fall out of their lives. As she talked, you could almost see her fierce intellect behind her eyes. She wasn’t mean, or unkind, at least at heart. Yet there was a part of her I could sense that was neither dangerous, nor scary, but powerful all the same. I think perhaps, fearless.

The Metro’s bus and rail system was definitely not suited to Judith. That girl needs a train. She also had mental illness in her family, and in her personal life; a point we both could share. A brave and faithful traveler. Perhaps we’ll meet again.

Then later, on my last bus, I met a young lady who had a large backpack on her back. She had just been to Mississippi to some meeting for those who like to ride the rails, and we’re not talking about the ticket purchasing kind of traveler either. I told her of my own grandfather’s experiences during the great depression when “hopping freight” was common. She must have been under 30, and yet had already been married three times. Her third husband died of cancer (I believe). What she didn’t say, but what was clear to me, was that she was definitely touched by mental illness. When I meet people like this, I often wonder what will happen to them. She was very smart (she mentioned she had a degree in Chemistry), but she was also very fragile, so much so that I was almost afraid to talk to her. As if my words might harm her. She was quite the opposite of Judith, who was almost painfully centered. The two, separated by a middle train run, made for a very bizarre commute.

New Brain Food

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I got a link today to a site called Coilhouse, which is an arthouse print magazine, a very nice one. I bought their first issue (they’ve only done 5) for a paltry $6. The pdf downloaded, and I made it to the spread of pages 34-35. On that page is a photo by a Spanish photographer named Eugenio Recuenco, who is just awesome. The photo in question was this, from his fairy tales collection. I got one look at this lovely lady stretched out in her room, and I knew I had a story. The story is about going on a hike with some friends, and suddenly running across this woman, exactly as in the photo.

Its not every day one gets such a bang to the creative brain from a new source. Looks like I’ll be buying more of Coilhouse’s work. After I get through their first issue.

AoD almost ready for show

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I’ve been working on a round of edits for Angel of Death. I say “I”, but the lion’s share of the work was done by my mother-in-law, Sharon Davis. As if I wasn’t indebted to her enough. Anyway, I intend to have the novel up shortly as a full file.

Since I was under the hood anyway, I’ve gone through and switched it from 21 chapters to 70. These chapters breaks were mostly obvious. I noticed their need when I went back and read the whole novel as I would any other book. When I wrote AoD, I structured the novel around 20 different chunks of text, each about 5k words long. But when I went back and read the book, these divisions were neither clear, nor necessary. Now the chapters are much shorter, and cleaner; most are under 2k words, with two just a few paragraphs long. All the breaks, save two, come at natural points in the story. The two additional chapters break up some fairly long scenes (3500 words of more), and happen at points where some sort of a gap should work. Mind you, I’m guessing here; I have a strong sense of what works as a voracious reader, but I’m not anything like a professional editor, and will not take on that mantel to suit my own selfish needs.

The best part of working with Sharon was sitting down with her, and trying to figure out the proper spelling for “pinche pendejo”, and “culo”. Its not every day one gets to use such words around their mother-in-law, and get away with it.

Part of a tribe

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The other day, some idiot drove though the crosswalk to my son’s school.

Now this is not that unusual an occurrence. The crosswalk is on a busy street (Burbank Blvd), and the cars, especially in the morning, are not particularly focused on their surroundings. What made this episode unusual was the amazingly level of blindness performed by this driver. Really almost a Herculean effort. And then when this driver actually had to deal with his epic level of fuck-upidness (is that a word?), sadly he failed.

Let me start at the beginning. The crosswalk is fairly big, in crosswalk terms. There are flashing yellow lights (3 each way), large yellow reflective signs (2 each way), big fat yellow lines, etc. In addition there are signs for the School Zone, and others that say “Reduced Speed 25 MPH when children are present”. On top of all that, there is a crossing guard, whose name happens to be Mali (really the nicest of guys). Mali wears a bright yellow vest with a reflective orange stripe, and carries a very large red stop sign.

These are the hints, the subtile, and not so subtile, suggestions which all drivers are expected to observe and follow. From experience, I’d say about 1 in 10 morning drivers are not up to the level of introspection. The unexamined driver is NOT worth following apparently. At least on Burbank Blvd.

Every morning when I walk my son to school, we have to look out for these bozos, and make sure we are not in the crosswalk when they decide to not see us. Like I said, 1 in 10.

Anyway, my story starts with me crossing back over, after dropping off my son. The South side of the road slightly more congested with parents dropping off their kids. The crossing guard, hits the button, causing those big orange lights to flash. The traffic slows on both sides, and we begin to cross. A eastbound car stuck in the middle of the T intersection, attempts to turn North from Burbank onto St. Clare. A guy in a black car, going the other way (westbound) barely stops in time for the guy to make his left turn, laying on his horn to let everyone know how unhappy he is. By this time, every other car around is stopped, as in NO MOTION. Mali and I are halfway across Burbank, heading North.

So now there is, in addition to all the signs and lights noted above, the fact that every single other car around is completely stopped, and there are people in the middle of the street. The guy in the black car starts to drive forward. Remember he had to come to a complete stop to let the car turn left in front of him. So now he hits the gas, and moves forward. Several people including myself yell very loudly at this time. (Let me tell you, I know how to yell. When I yell at something, it stays yelled at. For hours.) This apparently has no effect as the guy continues to drive, and drives right in front of me.

That was when I slammed my arm down, and hit the top of his rear corner panel with an open palm. Bamm. I’d love to say I can slap a car as good as I can yell. I’d love to say that there were paint flakes in my hand because I hit that car so hard. Alas, I did not damage the car at all. However, I did manage to do something no one else had been able to do that morning; get through the thick skull of the idiot behind the wheel.

In classic American idiot fashion, our young driver pulls over, and gets out of his car. He is mad now. Someone has touched his car. Out of the Blue! or so I’m sure it felt to him. So he gets out, and starts to curse. I wait for him at the corner, and he comes walking over, eyes aflame.

And it is at this particular moment I realize I am part of a village. The idiot comes over to confront me, and suddenly another father, and the crossing guard are at my side. A third father is on his balcony of the apartments above us, yelling for the guys license plate number as he is on the phone with the cops. The other father, (Lee, whom we also happen to know) and I are attempting to out yell the idiot driver. The crossing guard is yelling to. I’m fairly passive, trained as I was to stop situations like these from escalating (special education teachers are good at this), but Lee is having none of that passive crap. He is mad. Mad and tall. He looms over the young man, and suddenly the idiot is realizing he might be in a situation over his head. The idiot’s excuse, “But I didn’t see you,” sounded especially lame.

Moments later, our intrepid idiot, suddenly turns heal and walks to his car.

And you know the best part about all this? That very morning when he got to work, I know exactly what that idiot said to his co-workers: “Hey guess what? Some asshole hit my car today. For no reason.”

There’s an old writing adage that goes, “Every villain is the hero of their own story.” I can tell you, it is true. So very true.

How to make a difficult job even harder

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As I dropped off my son at school today, I got handed a handout from one of the staff members of the school. It was a sheet telling me that LAUSD is not standing up for education, and it throwing their teachers to the wolves.

My first thought was, of course the teachers union is going to characterize it this way. They obviously have an axe to grind. Being told the new LAUSD Superintendent gave himself an $80k/year raise just confirmed my opinion.

Mind you, this was handed to me by an employee who works less than 5 hours/day so the district doesn’t have to pay for her benefits. She is very energentic, and involved, ALWAYS helpful, and acts as if this is her dream job. So it was a bit of a shock when she told me, “oh no honey. This isn’t my bread-and-butter. I have to work somewhere else for that.”

So with these mixed signals, I came home, and started doing some research. What I found was a Lawsuit settlement, a failed district policy for dealing with layoffs, and a newspaper which also had an axe to grind. It’s also true that the district which is firing a large number of teachers for next year, did in fact raise the salary for the newly incoming super from $250k to $330k.

For a short run-down, read this. The comment at the bottom, attributed to Scott Folsom on his blog 4LAKids seem to be spot on. Everything I found this morning in my research, supported his contentions. Of interest I found the link on the bottom of his comments about the NYC school troubles (the largest school district in the US) to be especially insightful. It appears LA is not the only place where big does not equal beautiful.

I’ll be looking into Scott’s blog, and see what he is like, but so far, his is the only voice that doesn’t trigger my BS detector.

I actually do favor the use of “value added” as an objective metric to measuring teacher performance, BUT (and that is a big but) it should not be THE ONLY METRIC for measuring teacher performance (for instance, to be labeled a special needs child in the state of CA, one needs to have several metrics to determine if that child is indeed “special”. One test alone will not cut it), and if teachers are going to get paid based on this performance, then the kids taking the test should be equally judged on their performance. In other words, everyone needs to have some skin in the game. You fail this test, you fail the grade.

Mind you, I’m not a big fan of standardized testing. I am, however, a big fan of treating or teachers with equality. I don’t know about anywhere else, but in our local school, the teachers bust their butts to try and deliver a quality education their their charges. The entire staff, without exception is professional and passionate about their work, Seeing them have to work harder in an already difficult job, and yet expecting them to give the same performance is crazy.

And to the new Superintendent, John Deasy, my message is this: If you want my support, you better have some skin in the game too. If you’re cutting 5% of your staff, I expect at least a 5% pay cut from you, AND EVERY SINGLE ADMINISTRATOR on staff. No exceptions. You expect them to do more, with less, and you expect me to swallow that, then you better be doing the same. The Spartans got it right. The leadership position is in the front of the army.