If You're On Someone's Shoulders, You're Not Drowning

So I was listening to a podcast today, one of the Pen On Fire interviews with writers, agents, and publicists in the publishing industry. Sometimes these can be very informative, sometimes inspiring, sometimes neither. This particular episode was looking pretty good: it was with Michael Blake, the novelist/screenwriter most famous for penning the novel and screenplay for Dances With Wolves.

It resonated with me because Blake was talking about how difficult it had been for him to launch his career. He talked about some failed projects, including a screenplay that had been stopped by the movie studio because some exec had read the script and found it "too intelligent." That was when Blake (understandably) decided that he needed to get out of the film biz. As he was feeling around for what he should do next, he had started to study some Indian history ... and you can see where this is going: embattled writer who is apparently too good for popular culture must find a way to connect with an audience when no one willgive him a chance.

Then he says this: "... And Kevin Costner was a big star, well, was becoming a big star. I went over to his house one night just to have spaghetti with him and his wife...."

Now, wait a gol'darned second! You just up and headed over to Mr. Costner's abode and invited yourself to dinner? Or perhaps you already knew him?

Yeah, you kinda lost major points in the sympathy-for-the-starving-artist game there, Mr. Blake.

Then a few minutes later, talking about a more recent book he has written, there's this: "... And Viggo Mortenson's an old friend of mine, and we were on the phone the other day...." And he goes on to explain how Viggo's publishing concern agreed to publish this new book.

So I'm trying to decide: If you're close friends with arguably two of the most bankable stars in the entertainment industry (or at least at the time of these two anecdotes, they were among the most bankable), do you really get to play the "I started at the bottom" card?

Free Write: Return to Childhood Home

Walt has arrived back in Shelsandra, his childhood home. It is his first time back in his adult life. He is walking through the house, making his way to see his father, Kris, who he has not seen or spoken to in just as long a time.

***

He took the stairs at a deliberate pace. He told himself this was in order to collect his thoughts, but he had been trying to do that for several days now and he was no more successful now than in Chicago, on the jet, the transport plane, the private plane, the helicopter. At the time he wrote that off to the noise and bustle of the various engines, but now in the silent sturdiness of Shelsandra, the noise in his ears seemed worse than any jet turbine. These stairs—how old were they? Yet perfectly silent, not a creak as he padded on the Oriental rug. The dark wood railing, so smooth, except he was already anticipating the place near the top where his hand would encounter deep gashes in the dark chocolate wood, the result of an “experiment” performed by an 11-year-old Walt, who couldn’t resist the urge to experience the feeling of swinging the machete his father had brought him from Kenya.

More memories in store at the top of the stairs: The chaise lounge with the burgundy velvet upholstery worn down in corners to tan, where he had once found a maid sleeping sitting up and had studied her oddly bent nose too closely until she had awoken with a shriek. The small table with the exact same bowl of wax fruit, though looking pristine from regular dusting; he didn’t check to see if anyone had ever discovered the one ruined apple that his friend Roberto, having been fooled in the low light, took a hearty bite when they were nine. The lead candelabra with three thick candles that Mother always lit when entertaining, though very few guests ever came up these stairs to the Kurtzman family quarters. Noticeably absent was a portrait of Walt, done when he was almost a teenager, by a friend of his mothers who had gone on to become a successful painter in New England. He had worked from a photograph he had taken of Walt on a trip to Boston where Father had worked and Mother and he had walked the Freedom Trail when not sitting through endless lunches and dinners with relatives Walt had never met before and would never meet again. Walt had never liked the picture much because it conjured for him the anger he was filled with that day, made to sit on a porch in Brookline and listen to his mother evading questions that would get into too much detail about their faux-life in Minnesota.

His hesitation at the top of the stairs was not to reminisce but rather to remember where his father would be. When Walt last visited Shelsandra, Kris still spent his resting hours in the parental bedroom suite. But Margot had reported Kris’s increasing reclusiveness, and if it was isolation his father wanted it was more likely he’d be in the study. This was where Walt headed, down the darker of the two hallways. At the end was the closed study door. He watched the bottom of the door for any sign of light, and at first he thought it was completely dark, he was about to double back and head to the bedrooms after all, when he heard a sound of something falling, a box or large book, beyond the doorway. He approached, prepared to knock, and then decided to push open the heavy door.

“Hello?” He was surprised at the sound of fear in his voice. He cleared his throat, fighting the quaver: “Father?”

Actually there was some light, from a single desk lamp, but it was blocked from the side of the room Walt stood on by stacks and stacks of books and file boxes. The sound of papers being moved suddenly ceased as the figure on the other side of the paper wall listened. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Father, it’s Walt.”

A longer pause. Then another cleared throat. “Son! Your mother told me you were … is today the day?”

“Yes. We arrived about an hour ago.”

“Come here!” he beckoned. Kris's voice was welcoming, but weak, as if he had just woken up.

Walt studied the books and papers. “I’m not sure where …” But then he saw an opening, and he worked his way through there, stepping over more scattered tomes, some open with cloth bookmarks laid across the open pages. The flutter of fear was back again as he came around the edge and caught his first glimpse of Kris, which was in silhouette as the single desk lamp shone in his eyes.

His father laughed, and the chuckle transformed into a cough that shook his whole body. The chair bearing his weight squeaked in rhythm. Walt considered for a moment moving to his father, clapping him on the back, but his disorientation fixed his feet. Instead he asked: “You okay?” which Kris dismissed with a wave of a hand, and in short order he had regained control.

“You … look good, Nicholas,” Kris said. “Considering all the states your mother has imagined you in over the last few years, I believe she must be happy with the state you’re in.”

“Yes,” was all Walt could say, and he wanted to reply with something in kind, something superficial noting his father’s condition, something he might be able to find to say that would be complimentary, except that he still couldn’t see much other than his father’s profile. He could see that Kris was significantly balder … or no, now that he studied him for another moment, it appeared that he was wearing a beret.

“How long will you be with us?” Kris asked, studying his hands in his lap.

“I’m not sure,” Walt said, and suddenly unsure if his father had any idea why he had returned to North Center at all, he diverted the subject: “I brought somebody with me, Father. Two people, actually. Sherry, and her daughter Arden.” He suddenly felt like a college schoolboy, looking for his father’s approval via the girlfriend he had dragged home with him … an experience he had never actually had. Better late than never.

25 Specific, Carefully Crafted Things About Me

1. Not too terribly long ago, I listened to a podcast (I listen to a lot of podcasts) that informed me that the "25 random things about me" meme that permeated Facebook earlier this year generated 5 million such lists over four weeks. Thankfully, the trend has died down—I must have been tagged ten times in the course of two weeks by people doing their "25 things" list. The rest of Faceburbia moved on to other more specific memes (The Best 15 Drunk-Dials I've Made ... The 10 Orgasms That Changed My Life, etc.), so me doing my list now make me so uncool that I'm practically cool again.

2. The idea, by the way, that your (or anyone else's) list was random is, quite frankly, bullshit. You and I both know that you spent a lot of time putting your list together. God knows I've been editing this and tweaking it for several days now.

3. Coming up with the 25 items is going to made a little more difficult by virtue of the fact that this blog already contains a list of six random items about myself, for which I only had to tag six other friends. I'm not tagging anyone this time. That's probably very antisocial-media of me, to not be more inclusive. I just can't bring myself to do it.

4. The thing is, I felt really guilty about tagging those six friends. I mean, everyone's really busy these days, you know? While it's a huge conceit to believe that people want to read six (much less 25) things about you in the first place, to ask them to take the time to come up with their own list is really pushing it.

5. So I felt better when only one of my six friends actually followed through with his list. I actually felt less guilty about tagging Jason than others, because a) I know that he kind of likes these things, and b) even though he's one of the busiest people I know on this planet, he somehow finds the time to do fun things like blogging and cool online April Fools pranks.

6. I envy Jason's organization. My organization is for crap. I'm trying all the time to get better at it, but so often in my life, I am simply overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff I have to do that I'm never sure where to start. And then when I add in the stuff I actually want to do ... fuggedahboutit.

7. Right now, at least 3.4 of you read #6 and thought: "I need to introduce him to David Allen's Getting Things Done program!" First of all: you're geeks, quit it. Second of all, I've tried GTD. I'm still trying GTD. Somedays it's great. Somedays I can't find my ass from the runway, much less 50,000 feet. Like with so many self-help programs/diets/regimes, when you're motivated to make them work they're da bomb. But they have to become a habit, and to get to that point you have to rely on shear gut motivation and faith for longer than I can usually handle.

8. But I digress. What I want to say is that no one is tagged for this list. (Well, that's not technically true: I tagged a couple of people mentioned in this over on Facebook; this is in now way meant to encourage those people to even look at this note.) No one reading this should make their own list. And if you do, don't blame me. No "Marck tagged me, so now I have to do this." Okay? You are off the hook. You can just read this, and forget it, and move on.

9. Or you can just not read it. How would I know? I don't pore over my Google Analytics and meta-stalk my readers. Hell, at this point, I assume I'm down to about three readers, since this blog is so "feast or famine." 15 straight posts, followed by months of inactivity. I'm as streaky as an overpaid baseball pro.

10. I had to look up "pore" just now to make sure that I was spelling it the right way.

11. I fear that memes like this 25-random-things is a heavy contributor to the trend away from thoughtful writing/reading. It's an easy way to say short, pithy things about oneself without doing any constructive thinking. I can't decide, though, if this has happened because we don't have the time to read longer pieces anymore, or if we don't read longer pieces because nothing we read (especially on the Internet) has much depth/substance anymore. Chicken-egg.

12. Like, take Newser, for instance. Great idea, in theory: as a battle against the information overload we face every day, the major stories of the day/hour/minute are whittled down to a two-paragraph, People magazine-worthy summary. Newser's motto is: "Read less, know more." They got half of it right, that's for sure. My fear is that people think they are informed after reading a couple of paragraphs to have an opinion on ... oh, say, a certain national stimulus package. This would explain why 58% of people polled for one poll believe that the Republicans are at fault for the package not passing faster, and in another poll 59% feel that it's Obama's fault. That 8-9% who (theoretically, I realize) voted both ways? They're the epitome of this "I don't know much but I'll have an opinion anyway" culture we live in.

13. Which is not to say I haven't read every 25-random-things list I've been tagged for. Some of them are fascinating.

14. Take John Scholvin, for instance. I know John through a softball team we were on several years ago, where I regularly watched him misplay fly balls. I got to know him a bit from post-game bar chats, but I got more information about his life and the kind of guy he is from his stupid list. And it made me wish I had the chance to know him better.

15. John gave me that chance, by the way: I have a Facebook email from him in which he invited me to lunch sometime. While I was certainly more inclined to do it after reading his 25 things list, it's still really hard for me to motivate myself to pull the trigger and reply "Okay! When?" This has nothing at all to do with John -- or the dozens of other people whose emails I haven't responded to. It has everything to do with #6 above.

16. By the way, I can make fun of John's bad defense because he has watched ground balls eat me for dinner on the crappy, stone-filled infield of the Chicago Park District softball fields more times than he ever bricked his cans of corn. Also, I feel safer doing it now because he no longer works in Evanston—he sold his company and works downtown somewhere now. This also means that I snoozed too long on the lunch invite, so I lose.

17. Right about now, I bet many of you are wishing I'd just gone with one of those "one-word-answer" memes. I considered this very seriously, but I thought it would be a lot more fun to have my 4-year-old daughter supply the answers. That meme would go something like this: "1. How would you describe yourself? POOP! 2. Where is your cell phone? POOP! 3. How do you feel today? "POOPY!"

18. In fact, both girls have been going through a major "poop/underpants" ... uh, meme these days. Bathtime has particularly horrendous: the word "poopy" and "butt" are worked into every conceivable part of speech (yes, "peepee" works beautifully if you're looking to split an infinitive or two). I do my best to not react and thus feed the fire, but at some point I have to crack down because I just need them to stop cackling maniacally so I can freakin' wash them already because I'm not down here on my knees for my health, you little twerps.

19. The "butt/underpants" bath routine also contributed greatly to my decision to transition Piper to taking showers. For some reason this feels like a watershed coming-of-age moment. "Watershed" being a strange word to use, since she takes such ridiculously long showers that the theoretical "shed" is pretty much devoid of water by the time Zuzu begins her bath. I mean, I'm seriously reconsidering this decision on environmental grounds: I would be embarrassed if it turned out that my daughter's showers were responsible for the acceleration of the drop in Lake Michigan's water level. So for the time being, during Peach's showers, I'm stationed in the bathroom with a book, dutifully reminding her every few minutes that we need to keep a move on.

20. I can't decide how to pronounce "meme." I hear a lot of techno-pundits say meem, but I had too many years of junior-high and high-school French that I can't look at the word without thinking of même (pronounced mehm), the word for "same." Maybe the word is so trendy I should just go with the pronunciation "... Meh ...."

21. I was reading a Magic Treehouse book to Zuzu a few nights ago -- an exciting story where our protagonists, Jack and Annie, travel back to the Ireland in the Dark Ages and land on a rocky island with a monastery that has taken on the task of preserving literature. (It's called Maniacal Monks at Midday or something like that.) I'm getting into the "Irishness" of it ... I mean, how can I help it? Look at my last name ... and I've given the lead character, Father Michael, this brogue that—in my head, at least—is based on what I can recall from Glen Hansard's voice in the movie Once. And I'm grooving on it ... I mean, I think I'm really channeling this Irish dude! And just as I'm getting to the climactic moment when the bad-guy vikings are spotted approaching the island on their serpent ships and Father Michael is fretting about what will happen to their austere structures, Zuzu stops me dead with: "Daddy, why are you talking weird like that?" Which is all to explain to you that I always have, and always will, totally suck at accents and impressions.

22. It's not really called Maniacal Monks at Midday. I just threw that in there as an inside joke to all you parents who read Magic Treehouse books 'cause I knew you'd really app-- OH GOD. Has it really come to THIS? *sigh* I mean, I wanted to be a rock star, fer chrissakes!

23. In fact, I sometimes think that the only way I'll "capture" that whole musician vibe again is through the Internet. I have a number of tapes off the board of my gigs from the 90s, and bits and pieces of them are pretty decent. I'm thinking of digitizing them and putting them up for all three of my former fans to hear. Who knows? Maybe it'll set off a burgeoning Marck Bailey mash-up counterculture.

24. And along those same lines: I recently discovered the first diary I ever kept. It has an entry on every day of the year of 1978. It was the year I was 12, turning 13. I am sorely tempted to post this diary on this blog, starting January 1, 2010. I can't decide if this is a great idea because it would be this document of a 12-year-old boy's life and all his awkwardness and emotion and banal daily goings-on ... or if it's the whole idea is the height of narcissism. Those of you who have actually read this far are encouraged to give me your thoughts (publicly or privately) on what I should do.

25. Well, you've reached 25. When I was a teenager, I had specific goals that I was to reach by the age of 25. They got tweaked once in awhile, but they always aimed at one thing: fame and fortune in the arts. I know, I know: laugh all you want. It's what scares me the most when I hear Piper worshiping at the Altar of Fame, wishing-hoping-praying that she can become famous. And that, combined with her perfectionism, smells like danger to me. I can stay awake at nights trying to figure out how to explain to her that her daddy had the same hopes and faults, and over here on this side of it, he knows now—and he wants her to know so that she can save herself the frustration and dejection, that the greatest things he has been involved in creating—will ever be a part of—are her and her sister. But there really is no way to tell her that; she's on her own on this one. All I can do is stand on the side and cheer her on like the insane fan she needs.

Re: My Complicated Relationship with Poppies

I don't get it. I mean, I love to sleep. Before marriage and children, rising from bed after 12 noon was de rigeur. My family can tell you stories of days I would fall asleep in my room before dinner and not wake up until after breakfast the next morning. Great cocktail party fodder has been made from anecdotes of my ability to conk out anywhere. Two-hour nap in the afternoon? No problem! I can go right back to bed at ten that night and sleep through the night.

Those who suffer from insomnia are cursing me. But to make matters worse—and I think this is proof that God does not exist—my superpower is wasted on me. I love to sleep, but I don't want to sleep. I'm like the naturally curly-haired child whose mop is the envy of all those stricken with straight hair, yet all (s)he wants is to get rid of the curls.

A few weeks ago, I made a promise to Laura that I'd go to bed by midnight. Her concern for my well-being was well-founded: I had regularly been staying up 'til 1:00 or sometimes 2:00 a.m. and then rising at 6 a.m. to start a new day. I'd tell myself I could handle it, but the fact is that the cumulative effect by Friday meant that I was noticeably shorter with Piper and Susannah. I knew the wisdom of Laura's concern: no one can keep going like this without collapsing. I agreed.

My resolve lasted barely three weeks. Now I'm back to my usual pattern: after the girls go to bed, I am filled with energy and I find any combination of television-watching, reading, and writing that keeps my mind busy.

I know the research out there: the benefits of sleep are legion. If I just committed to 7-8 hours a night I would see vast improvement in my creativity, attention span, concentration, productivity.... But I'd have to go to sleep! I'd have to miss out on conscious life! When Laura notices that I'm trying to fit another activity into my already dreadfully overcommitted day, she tells me that "You can't manufacture time." And she's right, but when I stay awake at night, squeezing the last bit of juice from today and stealing some from tomorrow, I can convince myself that I have gained a couple of hours. I can write another blog post (gotta stick to my NaBloPoMo guns!), finish another chapter (how will the character get out of that mess?), clean the kitchen (the morning goes so much easier when I start with a blank slate ... and countertop), AND catch up on those back-episodes of Bill Moyer's Journal all before I finally wake up my wife, who has been fast asleep on the couch, and head off to bed, hoping she isn't awake enough to look at a clock and realize that it's 2:15 a.m.

Now that I’m the parent of two energetic, thoroughly exhausting children, I should be dead to the world by 10 p.m., on the couch, face pointed to the ceiling, mouth-breathing, with Jon Stewart sardonically grinning at me. I regularly implore (read: nag) my kids about the glories of sleep, about how much better the next day goes if they get their customary night’s rest (currently hovering around eleven hours … eleven hours!). But I do not even pretend to practice what I preach. "Stay here in bed, Daddy," she says. "Daddy has 'work' to do," I reply with not a small modicum of guilt, because I know what I really want to do is catch another segment of "Cheating Death with Dr. Stephen Colbert, DFA." And even after the TV itself has given up the ghost and turned to the dreamscape of infomercials, I'm still getting in one last round of Bejeweled, one last check of Facebook, fully aware that I will drag through the afternoon at work tomorrow. I will probably have to pick up a 5-minute power-nap on my floor. I will consider caffeinated tea or coffee but probably won't give in. (Yes, through all this little sleep, I have also given up caffeine.) I will stifle the yawns in meetings with my colleagues. But I'm not worried about that right now.

First, I'll need to hear Laura beg me with a sadness tinged with anger to please get some more rest tomorrow, and she'll give me the same lecture I'd given to a daughter several hours earlier. And then I'll finally close my eyes, and even as I'm losing consciousness, I'll think to myself: "God, this feels so good, this bed, this feels really wonderful, I really, really need to get to bed earlier because this just feels so--"

And the thought won't get finished, because Laura is nudging my shoulder: "Honey, it's 6 a.m." And before I'm aware, I'm in the bathroom putting on my robe. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Why I Dumped Glee

I made an off-the-cuff tweet the other night about achieving something akin to aesthetic equanimity after abandoning the Fox show Glee, and I was surprised at how many Facebook and Twitter friends had a strong reaction. Perhaps even more surprising was that the reaction was pretty evenly split between fans ("Why? Why? Why?") and people who have never seen the show ("I've heard about that show—what's wrong with it?"). Apparently 140 characters plus one follow-up tweet weren't complete enough. For those of you who asked: you have no one to blame but yourselves. You should know better than to ask me to explain.

When Glee aired its pilot episode last May, I fell "in like" with the show. The incessant promotion throughout the summer didn't bother me like it bothered others—I was enjoying my anticipation "buzz." I couldn't wait to see more of Jane Lynch, who plays Sue Sylvester the deliciously evil cheerleader coach: she was walking out the door with the show tucked underneath a sweatsuit-adorned arm in a wake of chewed-up scenery. Though the other characters all paled in comparison to Lynch's villainess, everyone seemed likable enough and I figured the writers would finagle some good story lines in between some fun production numbers.

Most of all, I was impressed with the musical elements. Glee approaches the musical in a grounded way: songs don't just break out, Fame-like, in the middle of otherwise banal, everyday circumstances; no dancing on cafeteria tables. Almost all the music happens during show choir rehearsals and performances. (One notable—and successful— exception is the hilarious episode with the football team learning Beyonce's "Single Ladies [Put A Ring On It].") Even with this limitation, show creator Ryan Murphy still manages to use music to advance storyline and character development. It was an oasis of restraint in a show that keeps forgetting to set up boundaries.

Ah, restraint. I sigh, thinking of what Glee could have been. Maybe not even restraint. Maybe just a sanity check.

My concerns cropped up during the second episode when young, quasi-nerdy ingenue Rache tries bulimia (unsuccessfully). She complains in her bathroom stall that she has no gag reflex. Standing in the bathroom is the meek and germophobic Emma Pillsbury, a teacher. Emma comments out loud (I'm paraphrasing here): "That'll be useful when you're older." As crassly cynical as that zinger is, I would have let it go if it had come from a fellow student. But the fact that this came from the mouth of the most tightly wound and straight-laced character on the show showed a complete lack of respecting the characters.

Another example: somewhat hunky Finn Hudson, the football-player-turned-performer, has a problem with premature ejaculation (or maybe just arousal, it's unclear), so when he gets into sexual situations, he falls back on the age-old trick of thinking about something non-sexual. But Finn doesn't pick run-of-the-mill subject matter—say, vegetables or baseball statistics or reciting the pledge of allegiance in one's head. Instead, he recalls the memory of the mailman he hit with a car while learning to drive. The image (and sound) of the body slamming into the car's windshield was played numerous times in early episodes ... I suppose as a point of humor. I simply found it unnerving and distracting.

The weird thing is that I'm a huge (but somewhat closeted) fan of Ryan Murphy's other show, nip/tuck, which, partly due to the subject matter and partly due to the fact that it's on basic cable channel FX rather than a traditional network, gets to be outrageous in ways that Glee will never be. The writers of nip/tuck seem to be in a perpetual goal of topping the last episode in prurience or cosmetic mutilation, reaching deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of their collective psyche for outrageous ways to humiliate, arouse, and sometimes kill its characters. (Jessalyn Gilsig, who plays Terri Schuester on Glee, played a sexually addicted character on nip/tuck with one of the most memorable deaths I've ever seen.)

But nip/tuck doesn't try to pass itself off as any kind of reality. Glee sometimes wants to be nip/tuck in its soap-opera-rageousness at times ... but then at other times it has to be a more tame, traditional 2oth-century television teen drama. This split-personality kills the show for me. It's not that it ever truly jumps the shark, but it hops over a heckuva lot of barracudas. Moments of greatness are slammed (not unlike that mailman) by insanely lame, hare-brained parallel plots. An episode where the flamboyant Kurt Hummel comes out to his father (whose surprisingdisplay of tolerance is portrayed with poetic nuance by Mike O'Malley) is a series high point; unfortunately, it shares screen time with the completely ludicrous "I'm not pregnant but I'll take that baby off your hands, little cheerleader" story of Terri and her hearthrob-worthy-but-apparently-otherwise-doltish husband Will. (I mean, really, are we to believe that Will is the "perfect husband," metrosexual in all the right ways, doting and devoted to his shrewish and materialistic wife ... yet he can't be bothered to learn anything about pregnancy?)

And I'm sorry if anyone takes this as insensitive, but will they ever find a way to gracefully work Artie Abrams' wheelchair into the choreography of any song?

And when will they stop trying to create deep, tortured significance out of incessant, aggravating throwing-the-slushee-in-the-face bits? The green slime-dumping of You Can't Do That on Television was more clever in comparison.

And ...

Ugh. I'm irritating myself, so I can only imagine how you're feeling. If you got this far.

Anyway.

To be honest, Laura and I haven't cancelled the season pass for Glee. we're still TiVoing it, fast-forwarding through to watch the musical numbers. (I just realized that it's actually the opposite way I watch nip/tuck, where I fast-forward through the plastic surgery scenes!) It gets us through the hour-long episode in a nifty, efficient ten minutes. But even watching the songs from last week's episode ("Wheels"), I felt disappointed: the duet of "Defying Gravity" never really took off (and I can't decide if Chris Colfer's near-castrato performance was awe-inspiring or creepy). The all-wheelchair "Proud Mary" was just clunky and forced. (Hey, how did they afford all those wheelchairs on a $60-a-year budge the principal put them on in the pilot? Oh alright, I'll suspend disbelief and let that one go....)

But here's hoping that we get some more drop-dead show-stoppers like "Don't Stop Believing" and "Somebody To Love." This show needs something to tame it, because Jane Lynch can't do it all alone.

Plotting (... My Demise?)

For the good writer, nothing is easier than making up possible stories. If pushed, he can spin them out hour after hour, each one of them theoretically sound—a sequence of events leading to some climax, or, in longer narratives, an episodic sequence of climaxes.... But of the thiry plots he can think up in an hour, only one—if even that— will catch and hold his interest, make him want to write.

- John Gardner, The Art of Fiction, p. 61

I remember discovering the basic plot of Son of A Saint. I remember thinking how someone should write that novel. A couple of months later, when it suddenly dawned on me that maybe I should be the one to do that writing, it was a joyous (if obvious) revelation. Over the next several weeks, I thought a lot about it and was well on my way to filling up a notebook filled with plot points, character development, and general thoughts about how to approach the book.

All of this was shot to hell when I lost the notebook containing all this valuable information. Sometimes you can recover from losses like this: I never fretted too much when I didn't get a song melody or lyric out of my head and into some more permanent medium because I knew there were always a ton of ideas just as good to replace that one. That quote at the top of this entry, that's me to a T—when it comes to songwriting. But that notebook ... it was my Bible, my gold mine, and there was only one of them, and so much material had been poured into it while my brain was simply in "dump" mode that little of it could be remembered. I started another notebook, but I know there is a ton of material in there that could have made it into this story and probably never will.

I try not to think about this too much.

I'm digressing. What I want to talk about is plot. Unlike songwriting, where I feel expertly proficient and can create pretty decent gems from beginning to end, I have a (very typical) problem when it comes to stories, in that I can kick things off to a great premise, get things rolling, and then ... never be able to find that logical ending. Or—and this is the case with this book—I have my beginning and my ending, but connecting A to Z is a grind. I have two files on my computer: "Scenes Still to Be Written" and "Questions Still to Be Answered." And at this point, I've pretty much written everything I know is going to happen. The unwritten scenes are in that state because ... I just don't know what to do.

And the thing is, I know those unwritten scenes will naturally lead to more unwritten scenes, or, if the new material is good and should be kept, may require that I drastically rewrite other material to keep everything coherent and logical. One scene's rhythm may affect another scene's (or character's) emphasis. The philosophical implications of a moment in the first chapter may have devastating effects on a moment from an event two-thirds of the way through the book.

"All these considerations the author bears in mind, consciously or intuitively as he constructs his sequence of events leading to the climax," Gardner writes. "If his story plan is to be successful, he must rightly analyze what is logically necessary to the climax.... [I]f the plan of the story is to work, the writer's solutions to the problems involved in authenticating the climax must be credible and apt." Well, not just the climax, John; I would think that the writer would like every moment of his or her book to be "credible and apt."

When I lie in bed at night thinking about it—or when I'm driving, or walking, or pretty much doing anything, because there are days when this book completely obsesses my conscious and subconscious mind—I can so easily find myself overwhelmed. I trap myself in Walt's motivations, looking for my way out. Sadly, it's not always as easy as standing in the corner until the paint with which you've trapped yourself dries and then just walking out.

Most of the time, I cling to the idea that I can write my way out of this. Through sheer force of thinking, reading, and writing, I will find all the lost shards and glue them in the right place and make a whole masterpiece. Well, okay, I'd just settle for piece. And so I'll keep plugging away at these moments, trying to get this first draft done, and expect that when I start revising I'll be able to pull a lot of my glaring omissions and contradictions into line and make this kid march like a good soldier.

The belief that I will get this story finished, that I will end up with a story that connects all the dots ... I can't think of a better definition of faith.

An Open Letter to the Formerly Curious John Williams, WGN Radio

Hiya, John.

Marck here. You remember me, right? We've had a number of contacts over the years, though since you moved to the morning drive (belated congrats on that, by the way). I did a project for you that you seemed to appreciate: I devised a method of "scoring" a major league baseball game that centered on counting how many baseballs were used over the course of a game. I haven't been able to listen to you live since you moved to mornings, but I still catch all the podcasts and enjoy them.

That is, until I came across your discussion about the modern wing of the Art Institute and you're self-effacing monologue on not understanding the art you saw. The way you talked about your experience in the modern wing seemed so completely contradictory to everything I've come to understand about your nature that I felt the need to draw attention to it ... and perhaps defend modern art as an everyman (to an everyman) in the process.

The reason you grew to become my favorite WGN radio personality was your natural curiosity about things, about seemingly everything, whether scientific, cultural, or political. The questions you ask, the research you do, the books you read -- all of this speaks strongly to your wanting to understand the world and the characters that inhabit it. A lot of the books on your bedside table reflect this, and I have taken many cues from your reading list to explore similar ground. (A belated thank-you, btw, for putting me on to Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything, which might have been my favorite non-fiction read in the last couple of years.)

But then you walk into the Art Institute and you completely throw your hands up in the air at the modern wing's contents -- and even went so far as to belittle the art with one caller (I'm talking about when you delivered the line "You're not educated" in a fairly sarcastic tone). You used the example of the video installation called "Clown Torture" by Bruce Nauman. (I didn't know the name or the piece or the artist, but less than 10 seconds on Google got me this information.) It's a piece I have visited myself, and was similarly confused by it at first.

Now, the John Williams I remember would look at this and would have asked one of two questions (or both):

1. "Okay -- it's in the Art Institute, so I guess it's great art -- there's limited room for stuff, and someone decided that this was brilliant enough to take up valuable real estate. Now *why* is this considered great?" The John Williams I remember, the curious one, would have actually looked for some answers to that question.
   
   
2. "How is the experience standing in this dark room watching disturbing videos affecting me? How is it affecting others viewing this?" The John Williams I remember would have explored that. And I'm talking beyond the easy go-to of "How does the security guard stand listening to the video for four hours?" (In fact, when I was there, I asked the guard stationed next to the exhibit what annoys him more -- the video or everyone asking him how much it annoys him. Guess which answer he chose?)

You claimed on the air that if you were compelling people with this description of the installation to go to the Art Institute, all the better — you were selling tickets. But I'm not so certain that you're being the least bit respectful to an artist by encouraging people to go laugh at the weird thing they don't understand. Is that even good motivation to pay admission to the modern wing?

At the risk of belaboring this, let me tell you what I, Uneducated Marck™ (at least as far as art goes), got out of "Clown Torture:"

I was there with my two daughters, ages 7 and 4. They waltzed into the middle of that dark room, sat on the ground, and started watching. In mere seconds, my kids were as transfixed by this "show" as by any of the cute, educational children's programming we let them watch at home. It didn't seem to matter at all to them that the content was disturbing, emotionally violent. All that mattered to them was that it was television.

I walked out of that thinking a lot harder about the visual images that we subject our (and our children's) minds to, and how quickly and easily we come to accept it and distance ourselves from it for the simple reason that it is on a television screen.

Now, do I think that this is what the artist intended? I doubt it. And reading his description of what he was intending (see above link), it sounds almost as if my daughters' experience was the OPPOSITE of what he was hoping for. But in the end, I don't think he'd mind. Because in the end, he moved me by his art, stirring me up and getting me thinking about things from a different perspective.

You don't have to be educated to have an a-ha moment. And the last thing an art museum needs in this day and age is more excuses for the everyman to want to avoid using his brain. Maybe the issue is that the nine-to-noon shift you're on now doesn't allow for much time to expound, though as you can see from this, it doesn't take a lot of time to have extracted a useful message from "Clown Torture." Hopefully in the future, you won't take the easy way out and just talk about all those crazy artists out there acting goofy. So much of your show is about helping people understand what's happening in this world -- mass shootings, no-interest-no-asset mortgages, the healthcare mess. You think maybe you could throw culture (other than television) a bone too?

Don't forget to play to your strengths, John -- your curiosity is one of your best. I'll continue to be a fan of yours. Even if I miss the more laid-back days of the 4-7 shift, when you could stretch segments out and let them organically grow.

Still listening,

Marck