Losing Touch
One of my current favorite shows is Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. This is where Gordon Ramsay arrives at a failing restaurant, and like Pollyanna, makes the place a success.
Often the current leadership of the restaurant is resistant to Ramsay’s plans. However, his necessity is often self-evident. He’s there to save restaurants on the brink of closure, and despite the fact that the restaurant owners/chefs are facing failure head on, it takes his arrival to wake them up to reality.
What boggles my mind is when these guys serve Ramsay their food and he tells them to their face that it’s shit, they often don’t believe him. On an episode the other night, a chef/restauranteur said “I don’t care how many awards he has — they mean nothing to me.” What?! He has nine Michelin stars. If there’s anyone who truly knows what the fuck is going on, it’s him.
And often their success hinges upon whether they finally GET IT or not. And despite their empty restaurant and lack of customers, it takes Gordon Ramsay coming in to tell them the truth before they finally fucking get it.
Being bitch slapped by reality hurts, but it’s a good kind of hurt. It’s a hurt that’s been waiting to happen, and the sooner it happens the sooner you can change course. Like the dude says in his last lecture, if they stop giving you criticism, you’re screwed because they’ve given up on you. They don’t care enough to criticize.
In regards to writing, every now and then someone will say, “Yeah, I’m hoping I won’t have to do any rewrites.” Saying this out loud means that in all likelihood you’re wrong — in fact, you have a TON of rewrites to do. Because it means that you’ve lost touch with your story. Like the chef that’s surprised that his food sucks — he’s lost touch with his food. He has settled for what it is, with all of its warts and problems.
Settling sucks.
Disbelief
Sam wanted to check out the new X-Files movie; I was all for this since I liked the last one and I haven’t been keeping up with current events.
I don’t know if you’re planning on seeing it, but I think there’s a lesson to be learned there in terms of scope. As in make sure that the scope warrants the film. SPOILERS FOLLOW, but if you don’t intend to see the movie, please keep reading.
At the beginning of the movie we have Mulder and Scully called back to the FBI to track down a missing agent. All well and good. A helicopter picks them up, lands them on a rooftop. A figure in the shadows steps forward to greet them. The way that it’s played visually, you think that it’s AD Skinner.
But it’s not. It’s Some Other Dude. And that’s where things start to collapse.
You see, if it was Skinner, the movie would have started off big. This is the guy who allowed Mulder to get drummed out of the FBI. They have history and tension. And if he’s there, you know things are serious. The stakes are high.
But NO — instead you get Some Other Dude meeting them, telling them about an agent that they don’t know (and who we barely meet, and thus don’t care that much about) that has gone missing. She’s the Quest Object. These are the stakes.
Dude: In the last movie Mulder rescued Scully from a fucking ALIEN SPACE SHIP in the ARCTIC. How does missing agent lady compare to that? To being rescued from a SPACE SHIP? It’s like going from steak and eggs to a PB&J. What is the point?
OKAY — the story can be simple. It can be about a missing agent, it can be about greater themes that surround that simple story. I feel like they were attempting that. Here we have a subplot with a convicted pedophile psychic priest that tests Scully’s Catholic convictions. But there wasn’t enough digging there — he merely tells her to keep going, have faith, but WHY DOES SHE? Why does she allow herself to trust him? Why doesn’t the story dig into the fact that she can never be a mother due to alien tampering, something that she can’t explain? Why doesn’t it shake her core beliefs?
So the problem here is a stakes issue. It’s also a scope issue. This movie felt like a very long episode of the TV series, and not a particularly good one. The scope of the story was not cinematic.
I’ve read a few scripts that had this scope problem — either nothing happens that warrants a cinematic storytelling, or the scope and stakes are so small that no one would bother throwing money at the project. However, none of these scripts were actually made into a big-budget movie. So it’s kind of bizarre that this has actually happened.
I got to eat a lot of popcorn though. That was cool.
Write What You Don’t Know
Write what you know: I believe in this proverb. If you don’t know what you’re writing about, you are going to generate problems. Unless of course you’re very good at making up things that sound plausible, in which case you’re in good shape.
Still, I like to learn new things. So I’ll often get really interested in a subject, learn everything I can about it, and then write about it. Learning about something and then writing about it tends to cement it in my mind — like how they say that they best way to learn something is to eventually teach it.
And as a writer you are constantly trying to find thematic meaning or clarity in the things you write about. The world is an extremely complex place, arguably without meaning unless human beings come along to create that meaning themselves. Evil is banal. People are murdered for no clear reason or for ridiculous reasons — fifty bucks. Road rage. Who knows.
When I learn something I invariably attach meaning to it. It gets added to my database and marked with emotion or memory or something. I think that the meaning that’s attached is as important as the piece of knowledge itself. That’s the part of me that’s making the connection to the outside world.
The Way Which I Adore You
I’m Here to Make Friends: A recent YouTube video let me know that the phrase “I’m not here to make friends” is spoken a lot in reality TV game shows.
By the way, the people on reality TV game shows are the worst people to ever walk the earth. I’m talking about talent-free game shows — the people on Top Chef, Project Runway, etc., are not included in this group. They have skills. But the people on VH1 reality shows are horrific.
Anyway — “I’m not here to make friends”. What a shitty, moronic thing to say. Human beings are intensely social creatures, and all the games that we play involve allies and enemies. The more allies you have, the more likely you are to win. Being excellent at what you do and having lots of allies is a surefire path to success. Being excellent at what you do BUT having an enemy in the wrong place at the wrong time can be disastrous.
Likewise, having a friend in the right place at the right time can be extremely valuable. Wherever you go, you should always be there to make friends. A friend will evangelize for you, pass your name on to higher ups. Humanity is a giant, complex network, and the more help you have the better off you are.
And anyway, even if you aren’t somewhere to make friends, why in god’s name are you saying that out loud and on camera? Shut the fuck up and keep it to yourself — no one needs to know who you’re gonna knife and when you’re gonna stick it in! As the old Klingon proverb goes, revenge is a dish best served cold. Emotionless, and without the victim ever seeing it coming.
In this respect, I try to be a good friend. I try to evangelize my friends’ work, do my part to get peoples’ stuff out there. It’s the least I can do.
And as for myself — I used to hate networking. But now I kinda love it. I realized that the key isn’t to talk about yourself — I always felt self conscious about that. The key is to ask people questions. Find out about them, get them talking about themselves. Connect with them. Then it all sorta becomes automatic.
And it’s also good to have a really great business card. Mine can be used for breaking and entering.
Allow Me to Show You
I’m finally settled at home. All I want to do is study, play video games, watch the rest of the first season of 30 Rock, and write.
Upon returning from a long trip, various administrative tasks always need to be taken care of: Grocery shopping. Getting my car washed. Tending the incubus (his water bottle with the ball bearing tip needs to be refilled with the blood of a virgin). Also my router broke during my trip, so I finally upgraded the WiFi in my pad to G. Yes, I had been operating with an old 802.11a Airport router since… Well… Since Airport first came out. It’s pretty cool how the base station has remained working all this time.
I also need new running shoes. I’ve run on my current shoes for a year now and the treads are wearing and the padding is weakening. They’re Mizunos (I got the recommendation to switch to them from Hieu), and I think I’m going to stick with a new pair of Mizunos to replace them.
I used to be a New Balance man. New Balance shoes are fairly good; they run well and feel good. Nikes are garbage. They fall apart incredibly easily. Slave children are really terrible at making shoes.
Mizunos are extremely light and well put together. The padding is also very good, which is important since I do all my running on roads.
While I was in Chicago I was running every day — six miles in the morning as soon as I got up.
I believe very much in the unity of the mind and the body. You can reset your mind by resetting your body — by running or resting, by changing your state. This can be extremely important when your mind feels “stuck”.
For instance, when I’m stuck on a writing problem or I’m trying to figure something out. I either zero out my mind and body by resting — in other words, not thinking about it or doing something completely different for a while — or I reset my body with a run.
Usually, strangely enough, something will come to me. State changes tend to make new ideas appear.
It goes back to the first rule of programming: You should never do the same thing over and over and expect different results. The state must be changed.
By the way, I installed a Flickr badge just to the left under the control box for my site. I have resolved to take more pictures and upload them. I see a lot of weird stuff and I would like to share these things with you. Give it a click and see what you see.
Home Again
I really like Chicago. I like the food, I like the city and its design; I like Frank Lloyd Wright and the lake and the people. But I’m really glad to be back home.
I don’t think I could leave California. Just stepping off the plane and being greeted by the cool, non-muggy air was wonderful. I like riding the trains in Chicago and NYC but I don’t like smelling other people. I love driving my own car and being in my own little protected pod on the road.
I met a lot of cool people during this trip — made some great new friends. I had been trying to figure out how to make inroads into Chicago for a while now, and doing it this way has worked out excellently.
I’m glad that people are really taking to Year Zero; it’s nice to see people respond so strongly. But now I want to put the piece aside for a week, shift gears and work on something else… Before I have to go back to Chicago again next month to share the piece at Victory Gardens.
Superior Donuts
Superior Donuts is a play that is deeply rooted in Chicago. It was a perfect play to see while visiting. It gives you a history, both personal and of a society, and provides the main character (played by Michael McKean) an opportunity to stand up and fight for a friend. It was the first Tracy Letts play I’ve ever seen, and a very funny one. It makes me think of people that are lost, and somehow find their way back to the forefront of their lives. It also makes me think that it’s never too late to do that.
This was the first show I’ve ever seen at Steppenwolf, and it fits nicely into my little database of neat theater memories. The last addition was Hamlet in Shakespeare in the Park just a couple of months ago. I have to admit, that Hamlet still takes the cake.
Speaking of which, a “Hamelt” sounds like an awesome sandwich.
I went back to Hot Chocolate today to have their vaunted Burger. It was good. Good and dense. The bacon on it was thick, spicy, and superb. I got a fried egg on mine, and its yolk was still soft so it burst and spread yolky goodness throughout. It came with a very nice slaw and chippy chips.
I am sort of a very smart caveman when it comes to food. I want food that is recognizable and created superbly. I think one of my favorite adjectives when it comes to food (or anything really) is for it to be honest. Good, honest, down-to-earth food. I like my food and my friends and the things I see and hear to feel true.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
