Well I watched the premiere Episode of “Lost” the other night and I am so glad: not only did they explain what's been going on but they’ve given us a taste of what's to come.
In the next few episodes this is what will happen:
The whole island will turn out to be in a great big glass snow globe that is owned by some giants on a planet in the “Battlestar Galactica” galaxy, and every once in a while the giants shake it, which is what the white-outs are about, and why the island periodically disappears. The giants will be revealed to be the characters on the island, played by the actors playing the people on the island (for which they will demand and get raises).
The snow globe itself will be found in the backpack that comes floating off the steamship that blew up killing everyone on board except for like, forty or fifty of them who will show up later, to help rebuild the village which has disappeared because it was never built, or perhaps because the snow globe hadn't been unwrapped from under a Christmas tree somewhere in San Francisco because the parents bought it on a trip to Hawaii and then wrapped it in, like, September and then forgot about it in the bottom of the boot box (where they usually hide their Christmas gifts).
The little child who finds the snow globe will shake it, and be transported to the island where he finds he’s Claire’s child and that he’s not going to get to have a love interest on the show because he’s too young and also happens to be the surrogate child (in fact the “lost” twin) of Jin and Sun who had a baby they didn’t know about when they had sex in the Green Room before they were appearing on “The View”. The fact that she (the child) is white is explained by the fact that she has some DNA from one of the polar bears who used to be Locke when Locke was a white polar bear, very early in his career.
Huh? And we’re supposed to follow this?
The whole thing reminds me of how I used to love "The X Files" and then grew to actively hate it because there was absolutely no care taken to anchor the world of the show with rules of the road, so to speak. Like, here's a rule: people may only walk on the ground, head up, feet down. Now let's say you're watching a show and everyone starts walking sideways, up walls. That's a broken rule, because there have to be things that you can accept, things that are a given (like: "this is a world that has gravity"), so you can build your expectations off the truth. (This particular breach didn't happen, or at least not while I was watching it, but other equally grievous breaches did occur and I stopped watching “The X-Files” because there was absolutely nothing at stake at a certain point. No death was permanent; therefore there was no point in feeling anything at all when someone faced it).
I assume the writers would use as their excuse the fact that it (“X Files”) was a show about the supernatural. And that's all well and good, but even when you’re dealing in a supernatural world, you've got to play by the rules that you must also establish at the beginning. And near the last few seasons of the X-Files, the protagonists, Scully and Mulder would sometimes get infected with an incurable black dripping eye disease, that was 100% fatal. The show used to have the B actors or the guest stars get infected with this thing and they would die or simply disappear (i.e., get better parts on “Law and Order”) and that was wonderful – I couldn't get enough of that dripping black eye disease!
But then, the writers started giving it to Scully and Mulder even though it was THE DEADLIEST THING IN THE UNIVERSE. And I think once or twice they actually died, or were shown in one of the last scenes in a given episode dying (or “dripping", which implied they were going to die), and then the next episode, they'd be back, having a hot dog at the Diary Queen, with nothing to show for having died a horrible death the previous week except for maybe a pair of progressive lenses.
Well, this is where “Lost” is headed. It will always be popular solely because of the characters and the small issues they face and the relationships between them. But the writers seem to have no respect for the rules of their world; in fact those rules are completely flexible and pliable and it seems in terms of constructing the "Lost" world, that any element that a writer found cool or scary at any point in his life is welcomed with open arms.
I imagine this dialogue in the writers' room:
Writer 1: Ok, I think I've got something here. What if we had, like, black smoke that just poured out of the jungle like a genie from a lamp only no genie?
Writer 2: Genius! That sounds great! What would it do?
Writer 1: Um, nothing! it would just pour out and we’d have scary music and then it would, oh my God, it would go backwards!
Writer 2: Oh my God, I'm in love with you! Backwards!
Writer 1: (modest) Don't forget, I went to Harvard.
Writer 4: (annoyed) How can we forget?? You bring it up, like every two minutes…
Writer 2: But what about white mist? Things with mist are scary and the word "mist" reminds me of that movie called "The Mist" and that movie was scary too.
Writer 1: Well, we can have mist too, can't we? (directing this question toward the show runner)
Show Runner: I have got to tell you guys, it may be a lack of sleep but I think we're breaking new ground here. I've seen shows have black smoke, and I've seen shows have white mist, but to have BOTH in the same show? I see an Emmy.
(the two writers high five)
Writer 1: And they say network TV sucks!
Writer 3: Hey, I used to have a big stuffed bear, only it was a polar bear that my parents gave me cause I liked teddy bears, but they didn't realize that I was scared of it because it was too big to even pick up and had teeth, so I basically locked it in the closet and never played with it once. So I think in addition to human characters who will have backstories and personalities and all that dumb stuff, let's have big white polar bears on this tropical island and if we don't like them later, we can just never have them on again!" [...even though they're like 15 feet high and must leave piles of polar bear shit absolutely everywhere and if this was an honest show, the islanders would constantly be stepping in it and swearing about it.]
I’d say my first experience with a show that left me in the dust (or the sand) because of over-exuberant plotting (or, as we laypeople call it: “throwing everything we can think of into the pot because that’s what we were smoking last night when we should have been discussing plotlines”), was the Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows”.
Dark Shadows was a weird and cool aberration on afternoon TV: a gothic soap opera, a genre that is long over-due to be resurrected. The basic premise was a community of characters that lived almost exclusively in this mansion (probably somewhere in Long Island now that I’m older and know where mansions are) which turned out to be haunted, or at the very least, filled with actors who couldn’t get work on anything legitimate and so were wandering onto the set for the free craft service table food.
It started out in the present (the present of 1966), with a young governess who comes to the mansion to work (passing time before going to grad school at NYU I assume). All kind of mysteries and ghosts started popping up which were really cool and fascinating (at least to my young mind). Pretty soon there’re all sort of floating bodies, kidnappings, people emerging from portraits on the walls (my favorite effect!).
In later episodes they added time travel to the mix, and characters were traveling back in forth in time and becoming different versions of themselves in the 18th century (as opposed to themselves at an earlier time in their lives), bumping into different versions of other people in their social circle who didn't know those "other versions" existed, having not gotten together the existential airfare to make the trip.
Does this make sense?
Well, it apparently didn't either to the writers of Dark Shadows who admitted years later that they had completely lost the thread of the stories they'd constructed and didn't know who was stuck in what era or really what was going on anywhere (since on top of everything, they permitted people to travel forward in time as well, like those side-by-side escalators in an action movie where if you're a cop, you can jump from the "UP" onto the "DOWN" escalator if the bad guy is getting away, or if you just left your wallet in the airport bar).
To make things worse (or "better"), they added a vampire thread, and the lead vampire Barnabus was constantly biting people on the neck having them join him in the land of the dead, sometimes in the 20th century and sometimes in the 18th. After a while, you couldn't remember who was a vampire and who wasn't, since everybody was biting everybody (the STDs of gothic literature) and of course since people were kind of ashamed of being a vampire, it was all a big secret who was and who wasn't and then, sometimes, just to totally screw with your head it would turn out to be "just a dream".
So I Wikipedia’d “Dark Shadows” just to see if I could recall some of these details, and guess what? The entire first episode began, as “a dream”! So the whole show was, like, a hallucination. Brilliant! Relieves everybody of the responsibility to have any connection to reality.
So if you’re trying to follow “Lost” (what a great title now that I think of it), you’d better be prepared for the big reveal at the series finale, which I have a sneaking suspicion is going to be very much like “Dark Shadows”, if you know what I’m sayin’.
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Woman in Minnesota Said to Give Birth to 167 Infants
FOX news was first on the scene early this morning to report that a woman in northern Minnesota has given birth to 167 babies, or more accurately, is still actually "in childbirth" with 54 little infants left to recover from her distended uterus.
Apparently (it has not been confirmed) the mother had been ingesting Clomid and injecting progesterone for several months in an attempt to steal the recent record of 96 live births set by Kelly Davis at the Wisconsin State Fair last spring. Ms. Davis herself was the only entry in the widely promoted competition, being the only contestant who fulfilled the minimum qualifications of at least 12 simultaneously delivered children prior to the event. (Apparently this will not be the case next year as several women are in training now for the event and the reported $500 first prize; second prize being a brand new humidifier). Ms. Davis sheepishly told the judges that she originally had wanted to compete in the Apple Pie baking competition but her oven broke down last year and she hadn't had the money to have it repaired so she figured she might as well enter the Live Birth competition.
The as yet unidentified mother of the 167… oh wait, we're getting news that it's not 167… looks like there was a chamber in the cavernous uterus which has just recently been discovered and there are apparently between 20 and 25 additional babies in there, playing jump rope with the mother's lower intestine (along with a treasure chest filled with gold dubloons). This will make the delivery tricky as there were only 116 doctors on call for this event and experts say in a delivery of this size, it would take between 120 and 125 ob/gyns to assure the safety of the mother and her newborns.
Fox News reports however that Mrs. Helene Johnson from the Millstein Middle School has offered her third grade class who were coincidentally visiting the hospital on a field trip, to help catch the babies as they pop out and carry them to the giant Bouncy House where they are being stored until someone can figure out what to do with them.
It's reported that the new mother's other 45 children are healthy and happy at home with her husband who has converted their garage into something resembling an egg-laying factory, with six stacked rows of box-like structures, each child having their own 3x5 enclosure and watered and fed with a series of hamster water bottles.
The mother, who is in excellent health and enjoying the attention of the press even while she squeezes out her 15th set of triplets, is granting interviews on a selected basis, with Larry King in line just behind Katie Couric and Barbara Walters, each of whom have come bearing gifts; in Katie's case, 175 stuffed yellow bears presently stored in an Allied van parked in the hospital loading dock. (The 72 scrub nurses standing by apparently asked Couric if she’d lend a hand changing 41 of the babies who need clean diapers, but Couric demurred, citing journalistic objectivity.)
There were earlier reports this morning of a small group of protesters standing outside the hospital calling the competition despicable, arguing that no one family could possibly handle more than 85 infants at one time, but these naysayers were quickly shouted down by hundreds of fans of the young mother, smiling and waving even more stuffed yellow bears.
When asked what she planned to do once she healed from the grueling ordeal of delivering now what seems at last count, to be 182 premature infants, the young mother smiled and said, "There are a lot of people out there who want children to love and I plan on finding them, either through Craig's list or Ebay."
Apparently (it has not been confirmed) the mother had been ingesting Clomid and injecting progesterone for several months in an attempt to steal the recent record of 96 live births set by Kelly Davis at the Wisconsin State Fair last spring. Ms. Davis herself was the only entry in the widely promoted competition, being the only contestant who fulfilled the minimum qualifications of at least 12 simultaneously delivered children prior to the event. (Apparently this will not be the case next year as several women are in training now for the event and the reported $500 first prize; second prize being a brand new humidifier). Ms. Davis sheepishly told the judges that she originally had wanted to compete in the Apple Pie baking competition but her oven broke down last year and she hadn't had the money to have it repaired so she figured she might as well enter the Live Birth competition.
The as yet unidentified mother of the 167… oh wait, we're getting news that it's not 167… looks like there was a chamber in the cavernous uterus which has just recently been discovered and there are apparently between 20 and 25 additional babies in there, playing jump rope with the mother's lower intestine (along with a treasure chest filled with gold dubloons). This will make the delivery tricky as there were only 116 doctors on call for this event and experts say in a delivery of this size, it would take between 120 and 125 ob/gyns to assure the safety of the mother and her newborns.
Fox News reports however that Mrs. Helene Johnson from the Millstein Middle School has offered her third grade class who were coincidentally visiting the hospital on a field trip, to help catch the babies as they pop out and carry them to the giant Bouncy House where they are being stored until someone can figure out what to do with them.
It's reported that the new mother's other 45 children are healthy and happy at home with her husband who has converted their garage into something resembling an egg-laying factory, with six stacked rows of box-like structures, each child having their own 3x5 enclosure and watered and fed with a series of hamster water bottles.
The mother, who is in excellent health and enjoying the attention of the press even while she squeezes out her 15th set of triplets, is granting interviews on a selected basis, with Larry King in line just behind Katie Couric and Barbara Walters, each of whom have come bearing gifts; in Katie's case, 175 stuffed yellow bears presently stored in an Allied van parked in the hospital loading dock. (The 72 scrub nurses standing by apparently asked Couric if she’d lend a hand changing 41 of the babies who need clean diapers, but Couric demurred, citing journalistic objectivity.)
There were earlier reports this morning of a small group of protesters standing outside the hospital calling the competition despicable, arguing that no one family could possibly handle more than 85 infants at one time, but these naysayers were quickly shouted down by hundreds of fans of the young mother, smiling and waving even more stuffed yellow bears.
When asked what she planned to do once she healed from the grueling ordeal of delivering now what seems at last count, to be 182 premature infants, the young mother smiled and said, "There are a lot of people out there who want children to love and I plan on finding them, either through Craig's list or Ebay."
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Sarah Palin's Hurt Feelings
"I consider it cowardly. It's not true. That's cruel, it's mean-spirited, it's immature, it's unprofessional and those guys are jerks if they came away taking things out of context and then tried to spread something on national news that's not fair and not right."
(Sarah Palin, responding to attacks by McCain Aides, NYT 11/8/2008)
I always marvel at conservatives who get hurt feelings when someone says something untrue or outrageous about them even after months of their doing the very same thing against someone else.
Palin’s hurt and surprised reaction to the barbs being cast toward her by her own party, in fact the crew of her own campaign partner, would be pathetic and disingenuous if they weren’t also so funny.
Why should she be surprised, when the campaign that she and McCain ran was dishonest and vicious, accusing Obama of “paling around with terrorists” (when he didn’t), inciting cries of “kill him” at her rallies without comment or criticism of those cries, and ridiculing Obama’s community organizing efforts (see Giuliani’s notorious snickering disdain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HahW5Qd_-7o&feature=related).
(I love the irony that Obama’s skills at community organizing were the very things that buried Palin and McCain in the national election!)
The Republicans have for the last 8 years at least, been extremely skillful at creating moods, atmospheres, climates wherein a certain psychological playing field is encouraged within which the rules for engagement are carefully established.
Cheney created a climate of fear, so that anything that seemed to challenge his definition of what constituted a terrorist threat, including any kind of negotiation or peace-seeking round-tables, could be labeled un-patriotic or dangerous to national security.
Bush created a culture of acceptance and excuses for blatant stupidity, and by that I mean actual stupidity, not just bad decision-making, encouraging suspicion against intellectuals and in fact, any sign of intelligent thoughtful consideration. Over time, Republicans managed to re-create a new America in which intellectuals were to be distrusted and ridiculed.
Since America exports nothing more than services, entertainment and money, we have fallen behind China and Japan (which we also spent many years making fun of). When was the last time you bought anything – I mean anything! - that was “Made In the U.S.?
Our last actual exportable product was cars, but our cars couldn’t compete with Japanese imports, which were pursuing fuel efficiency for 10 years before American carmakers stopped to think about it. The only things American cars had to offer was brawn, sort of the image of America itself, and since ‘”brawn” has become the last thing a consumer (other than someone who hauls or farms for a living) wants in their vehicle, our car companies are failing. Executives of these companies had all the same information available to them as the rest of the world (news of global warming, knowledge of increasing fuel prices, the fact that we are dependant on unfriendly countries for oil) and yet they ignored the handwriting on the wall, and, because our Republican administration encouraged a climate of American distrust of innovation and a blithe ignorance of the concept of “the Future” (as well as “The Past”: see 1970), they kept building the same big cars, consumer desire for which was soon to be obsolete.
[I feel enormous sympathy for those who work for GM and Ford. They trusted their executives to do the right thing; after all weren’t these executives making millions for their good judgment? This year alone, the CEO of GM will make, as base salary, over $1.5 million. But then again weren’t the executives of Enron and World Com and Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual and Tyco and all those other tanked companies doing the same? And didn’t their employees end up on the same unemployment line with nothing to show for their loyalty as car workers will soon be standing?]
Now of course, after years of Republican disdain for negotiating and coming to the table to try to understand America’s problems along with her enemies, the current Administration has finally recognized their folly. They’re finally listening to their generals in the field of war (something Rumsfeld was notorious for refusing to do), as General Patraeus tells them that one of the best strategies for achieving stability in Iraq (and, ostensibly, Afghanistan) is to meet with our enemies and negotiate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1FK-JdLEN4).
So perhaps when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld created and honed a new American sensibility of fear and paranoia, along with the dismissal of the possibility of war fought not only on the ground, but in the hearts and minds of the enemy, maybe they wasted some time. Maybe they wasted 7 and a half years.
When you create a culture of loathing for new ideas, for distain of alternate strategies, for the castigation of whistle-blowers, for hatred of those who ask questions, and an utter disrespect for truth, you reap what you sow.
And so, to Sarah Palin who is shocked, shocked! when her own team turns against her with anonymous attacks that resemble nothing more than schoolyard backstabbing, I say: “Welcome to Your World”. Welcome to the world you and your party created. Deal with it. Or better yet, change it. After all, now is the time for change. Yes, you can.
(Sarah Palin, responding to attacks by McCain Aides, NYT 11/8/2008)
I always marvel at conservatives who get hurt feelings when someone says something untrue or outrageous about them even after months of their doing the very same thing against someone else.
Palin’s hurt and surprised reaction to the barbs being cast toward her by her own party, in fact the crew of her own campaign partner, would be pathetic and disingenuous if they weren’t also so funny.
Why should she be surprised, when the campaign that she and McCain ran was dishonest and vicious, accusing Obama of “paling around with terrorists” (when he didn’t), inciting cries of “kill him” at her rallies without comment or criticism of those cries, and ridiculing Obama’s community organizing efforts (see Giuliani’s notorious snickering disdain: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HahW5Qd_-7o&feature=related).
(I love the irony that Obama’s skills at community organizing were the very things that buried Palin and McCain in the national election!)
The Republicans have for the last 8 years at least, been extremely skillful at creating moods, atmospheres, climates wherein a certain psychological playing field is encouraged within which the rules for engagement are carefully established.
Cheney created a climate of fear, so that anything that seemed to challenge his definition of what constituted a terrorist threat, including any kind of negotiation or peace-seeking round-tables, could be labeled un-patriotic or dangerous to national security.
Bush created a culture of acceptance and excuses for blatant stupidity, and by that I mean actual stupidity, not just bad decision-making, encouraging suspicion against intellectuals and in fact, any sign of intelligent thoughtful consideration. Over time, Republicans managed to re-create a new America in which intellectuals were to be distrusted and ridiculed.
Since America exports nothing more than services, entertainment and money, we have fallen behind China and Japan (which we also spent many years making fun of). When was the last time you bought anything – I mean anything! - that was “Made In the U.S.?
Our last actual exportable product was cars, but our cars couldn’t compete with Japanese imports, which were pursuing fuel efficiency for 10 years before American carmakers stopped to think about it. The only things American cars had to offer was brawn, sort of the image of America itself, and since ‘”brawn” has become the last thing a consumer (other than someone who hauls or farms for a living) wants in their vehicle, our car companies are failing. Executives of these companies had all the same information available to them as the rest of the world (news of global warming, knowledge of increasing fuel prices, the fact that we are dependant on unfriendly countries for oil) and yet they ignored the handwriting on the wall, and, because our Republican administration encouraged a climate of American distrust of innovation and a blithe ignorance of the concept of “the Future” (as well as “The Past”: see 1970), they kept building the same big cars, consumer desire for which was soon to be obsolete.
[I feel enormous sympathy for those who work for GM and Ford. They trusted their executives to do the right thing; after all weren’t these executives making millions for their good judgment? This year alone, the CEO of GM will make, as base salary, over $1.5 million. But then again weren’t the executives of Enron and World Com and Bear Sterns and Washington Mutual and Tyco and all those other tanked companies doing the same? And didn’t their employees end up on the same unemployment line with nothing to show for their loyalty as car workers will soon be standing?]
Now of course, after years of Republican disdain for negotiating and coming to the table to try to understand America’s problems along with her enemies, the current Administration has finally recognized their folly. They’re finally listening to their generals in the field of war (something Rumsfeld was notorious for refusing to do), as General Patraeus tells them that one of the best strategies for achieving stability in Iraq (and, ostensibly, Afghanistan) is to meet with our enemies and negotiate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1FK-JdLEN4).
So perhaps when Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld created and honed a new American sensibility of fear and paranoia, along with the dismissal of the possibility of war fought not only on the ground, but in the hearts and minds of the enemy, maybe they wasted some time. Maybe they wasted 7 and a half years.
When you create a culture of loathing for new ideas, for distain of alternate strategies, for the castigation of whistle-blowers, for hatred of those who ask questions, and an utter disrespect for truth, you reap what you sow.
And so, to Sarah Palin who is shocked, shocked! when her own team turns against her with anonymous attacks that resemble nothing more than schoolyard backstabbing, I say: “Welcome to Your World”. Welcome to the world you and your party created. Deal with it. Or better yet, change it. After all, now is the time for change. Yes, you can.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 6 (Finally!)
7:30pm (one week later)
I return to my apartment from yet another visit to the local Starbucks to see the telltale flashing light on my answering machine. I listen. Oh my God. It's Peter Mehlman. He's calling me, himself, to give me the date and the name of the article ("Star Trekking", The New York Times Magazine, Oct. 16, 1988). It’s like that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” when Indy just gets annoyed with all the flash and flourish of saber and knife combat and just shoots the guy. One quick call, and my search, my agonized, obsessive search, is over. Deus Ex Answering-machina.
He’s surprisingly relaxed and open for someone who is as famous as he, calling someone who is as not famous as me. Mensch that he is, he even left me his phone number. My hand is trembling as I fumble for a pencil to write it down. This phone call has me swearing that, down the line, I myself will call some other fledgling writer and do this pro bono gesture for them. If only I could become someone whom they’d actually care to hear from. I lean in and listen as each digit is offered.
“… 4-3-7 [beep]” “Beep”? BEEP? Wait a minute, “beep” on the 8th digit?? What have I ever done to my answering machine that it hates me so much it must cut off the last digits of Peter Mehlman’s phone number?
I become very still. Perhaps this is not my path. Perhaps I am not meant to write in the world of Hollywood where there are so many layers between the writer and the writing. Perhaps I should just be watching TV, perhaps “The Office” where this kind of stuff happens in a really hilarious way that ends up with some kind of gentle moral.
10:00pm:
Called it a typical day as a New York freelance writer. Turned on the TV. Finished wine. Tomorrow I’ll go back to work on my play, perhaps adding a scene wherein the woman with one too many cats finds a message on her answering machine from an old boyfriend, asking for her hand in marriage, only the last two digits of his number get cut off.
You gotta admit, it’s not a bad twist.
(Coda: I called Mehlman’s agent back, gave him my email address and Peter and I emailed for a while, and eventually actually met. We became friends of a sort; he’s a great guy by the way.)
Friday, October 10, 2008
Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 5
4:31pm:
I stand, sling my backpack jauntily over my shoulder and then freeze, as I realize that I never closed my change purse and that loud, Vegas-slot-machine clanging and rolling and loose-metal-hitting-tile sound is coming from me. The actors in the room (of which there must be dozens, this being New York City) must truly envy me now, because all heads are turned my way and all eyes are on me. This would be a great time to break into song. Trouble is, I don't know any songs and I can't really sing. So, feeling the bad kind of deja-vu, I find myself back on my knees, picking up nickels.
4:34pm:
Clutching the treasured article to my breast, I quickly find the Xerox machine, which, in this new millennium, no longer takes coins. It needs a card of some sort which one can find only in another room (far, far away), at the end of another line. I'm learning the ropes of the Library Universe, a microcosm of the City where things, good or bad, come to those who wait at the end of interminably long lines.
4:50pm
Repeat line experience from 12:20pm. Now, instead of a pencil, I have a "copy card", the equivalent for a Library patron of a backstage pass to an Elton John concert. Eager to get this over with and now, of all times, overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to write, I swipe the card on the copier, slip the original into the copy machine's maw, make the copy, return the original, stuff the Xerox in my back pack and run.
5:50pm:
Home! Where a writer ought to be. Where, if I had been this day, I might have something to show for these past six hours.
And as I empty my backpack onto the desk next to my closed laptop, it slowly dawns on me that if I had spent the last six hours writing – doing my own work - instead of looking for some other writer’s work, I might have the jump on my play, a really profound and touching piece about a woman who owns just one cat too many. But here it is, dusk, and once again when someone asks me how it’s going, I’m going to have to answer, “Well, the big news is that I decided to move the page numbers up to the upper right hand corner from the bottom of the page and I feel like the rest is just going to be smooth sailing.” There’s nothing worse to a writer than that empty feeling of not having written.
I guess when they say if you want to be a writer you’ve got to write, they’re, well, right.
But wait! I do have something to show. I have the Mehlman article! I did research today, and research is intrinsic to the writing process! It’s actually almost writing! I realize that instead of berating myself I should be patting myself on the back. This document is going to help me, inspire me, teach me the true definition of compelling.
I pour myself a glass of wine, sit myself down, unfold the article and... I turn over the piece of paper to its front side. I turn it over again. The article seems to have two backs. No front. I've Xeroxed nothing. I've paid to copy a white sheet onto another white sheet resulting in two white sheets. I look up at my ceiling in time to see a little drop of water forming at the far corner.
5:59pm
Just under the water droplet, my eye is drawn to my bookshelf, where I notice a book listing the names of Writer's Guild members. I look up Peter Mehlman and find the name of his agent. The agent seems to be St. Peter at the Gates in this particular world. I write up a letter describing my day, seal it in an envelope and mail it. To the agent.
I stand, sling my backpack jauntily over my shoulder and then freeze, as I realize that I never closed my change purse and that loud, Vegas-slot-machine clanging and rolling and loose-metal-hitting-tile sound is coming from me. The actors in the room (of which there must be dozens, this being New York City) must truly envy me now, because all heads are turned my way and all eyes are on me. This would be a great time to break into song. Trouble is, I don't know any songs and I can't really sing. So, feeling the bad kind of deja-vu, I find myself back on my knees, picking up nickels.
4:34pm:
Clutching the treasured article to my breast, I quickly find the Xerox machine, which, in this new millennium, no longer takes coins. It needs a card of some sort which one can find only in another room (far, far away), at the end of another line. I'm learning the ropes of the Library Universe, a microcosm of the City where things, good or bad, come to those who wait at the end of interminably long lines.
4:50pm
Repeat line experience from 12:20pm. Now, instead of a pencil, I have a "copy card", the equivalent for a Library patron of a backstage pass to an Elton John concert. Eager to get this over with and now, of all times, overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to write, I swipe the card on the copier, slip the original into the copy machine's maw, make the copy, return the original, stuff the Xerox in my back pack and run.
5:50pm:
Home! Where a writer ought to be. Where, if I had been this day, I might have something to show for these past six hours.
And as I empty my backpack onto the desk next to my closed laptop, it slowly dawns on me that if I had spent the last six hours writing – doing my own work - instead of looking for some other writer’s work, I might have the jump on my play, a really profound and touching piece about a woman who owns just one cat too many. But here it is, dusk, and once again when someone asks me how it’s going, I’m going to have to answer, “Well, the big news is that I decided to move the page numbers up to the upper right hand corner from the bottom of the page and I feel like the rest is just going to be smooth sailing.” There’s nothing worse to a writer than that empty feeling of not having written.
I guess when they say if you want to be a writer you’ve got to write, they’re, well, right.
But wait! I do have something to show. I have the Mehlman article! I did research today, and research is intrinsic to the writing process! It’s actually almost writing! I realize that instead of berating myself I should be patting myself on the back. This document is going to help me, inspire me, teach me the true definition of compelling.
I pour myself a glass of wine, sit myself down, unfold the article and... I turn over the piece of paper to its front side. I turn it over again. The article seems to have two backs. No front. I've Xeroxed nothing. I've paid to copy a white sheet onto another white sheet resulting in two white sheets. I look up at my ceiling in time to see a little drop of water forming at the far corner.
5:59pm
Just under the water droplet, my eye is drawn to my bookshelf, where I notice a book listing the names of Writer's Guild members. I look up Peter Mehlman and find the name of his agent. The agent seems to be St. Peter at the Gates in this particular world. I write up a letter describing my day, seal it in an envelope and mail it. To the agent.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 4
12:20pm:
I arrive at the New York Public Library in all its cavernous, intimidating glory and proceed to look for the reference room, aka "the room with all the answers". Not too surprisingly, that room has a line snaking out of it thirty people long and when I approach the counter in an attempt to ask if this is the "right" line, the Man at the Desk, the Master of the Line waves me back as if I were a gate crasher jumping the ropes at a celebrity wedding.
"You see the end of that line?" he asks me. "Yes, but..." "That's where you go." I wait for the cheers from those already lined up but fortunately they're on my side; all they want to know is if they're in the right line. The people in front look slightly happier than those in back who are just hoping someone else gets behind them. That's where I come in.
12:45pm:
I'm first in line! The Line Master gestures me forward. For some reason, I feel like Oliver about to ask for a second bowl of gruel. "How do I find articles by specific authors?" I ask, and he lifts a bony hand and points… back to the end of the line, right by the entry doors I passed thirty minutes ago on my way here. "Back there. Computers. Use this." He hands me a pencil that's not even a whole number 2 but more like a fraction. It has no eraser. That's O.K, I think. I'm getting closer. Soon, it will all be worth it.
12:46pm:
The Library computers are so ancient they look fake, like the computers on a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise upgraded its technology. Touching the sticky keyboard makes one think not twice but six times. In order to spare my fingerpads the Ebola virus or whatever else might be stuck on the smudged keys, I decide to type with my knuckles. Looking like a smartly dressed Neanderthal, I enter "M-e-h-l-m-a-n". Several catalogue numbers appear and I jot enough numbers down that I feel like I’ve covered all the possibilities. I ask the guy next to me, "What do I do now?". He answers "Give 'em to the guy. He gets you the articles." "What guy?" Yes, you guessed it. The Master of the very same thirty-person line I was, only minutes ago, at the head of.
4:30pm:
Hours later, seated at a wooden table that could seat sixteen in some Hamptons French farmhouse-style kitchen, I'm beginning to feel faint. My research has expanded to the point that I have now looked in every periodical going back to immediately after Mehlman's birth. The chances of him having written an article before he was 10 years old are slim I realize, but I am obsessed. He's written plenty of items, all amusing, but none seem to have that naïf-in-New York City, pre-LA quality that I'd heard about.
Almost everyone else who was at my table has gone, having found what they came for. Each time one of my tablemates stands to leave, I feel a pang of jealousy and a strange sense of abandonment. "I thought we were in this together! What do you mean you're leaving?" I think. My jealousy springs from the knowledge that soon they'll be breathing air that doesn't feel like it's been strained through a sock.
In four hours I've only found one article by Mehlman specifically about New York (a practical guide to summer shares). But I'm tired, the wooden seat is getting hard, and I don't want to be the last one who gets to slam her books shut, shelve them and depart. I'll take it! I'll copy it here and pore over it at home. I tip one open side of the big green book atop the other, resulting in a soft slam. My companions look up at me briefly, jealously. "Yes!" I exude silently. "I'm done. I get to go home!"
I arrive at the New York Public Library in all its cavernous, intimidating glory and proceed to look for the reference room, aka "the room with all the answers". Not too surprisingly, that room has a line snaking out of it thirty people long and when I approach the counter in an attempt to ask if this is the "right" line, the Man at the Desk, the Master of the Line waves me back as if I were a gate crasher jumping the ropes at a celebrity wedding.
"You see the end of that line?" he asks me. "Yes, but..." "That's where you go." I wait for the cheers from those already lined up but fortunately they're on my side; all they want to know is if they're in the right line. The people in front look slightly happier than those in back who are just hoping someone else gets behind them. That's where I come in.
12:45pm:
I'm first in line! The Line Master gestures me forward. For some reason, I feel like Oliver about to ask for a second bowl of gruel. "How do I find articles by specific authors?" I ask, and he lifts a bony hand and points… back to the end of the line, right by the entry doors I passed thirty minutes ago on my way here. "Back there. Computers. Use this." He hands me a pencil that's not even a whole number 2 but more like a fraction. It has no eraser. That's O.K, I think. I'm getting closer. Soon, it will all be worth it.
12:46pm:
The Library computers are so ancient they look fake, like the computers on a Star Trek episode before the Enterprise upgraded its technology. Touching the sticky keyboard makes one think not twice but six times. In order to spare my fingerpads the Ebola virus or whatever else might be stuck on the smudged keys, I decide to type with my knuckles. Looking like a smartly dressed Neanderthal, I enter "M-e-h-l-m-a-n". Several catalogue numbers appear and I jot enough numbers down that I feel like I’ve covered all the possibilities. I ask the guy next to me, "What do I do now?". He answers "Give 'em to the guy. He gets you the articles." "What guy?" Yes, you guessed it. The Master of the very same thirty-person line I was, only minutes ago, at the head of.
4:30pm:
Hours later, seated at a wooden table that could seat sixteen in some Hamptons French farmhouse-style kitchen, I'm beginning to feel faint. My research has expanded to the point that I have now looked in every periodical going back to immediately after Mehlman's birth. The chances of him having written an article before he was 10 years old are slim I realize, but I am obsessed. He's written plenty of items, all amusing, but none seem to have that naïf-in-New York City, pre-LA quality that I'd heard about.
Almost everyone else who was at my table has gone, having found what they came for. Each time one of my tablemates stands to leave, I feel a pang of jealousy and a strange sense of abandonment. "I thought we were in this together! What do you mean you're leaving?" I think. My jealousy springs from the knowledge that soon they'll be breathing air that doesn't feel like it's been strained through a sock.
In four hours I've only found one article by Mehlman specifically about New York (a practical guide to summer shares). But I'm tired, the wooden seat is getting hard, and I don't want to be the last one who gets to slam her books shut, shelve them and depart. I'll take it! I'll copy it here and pore over it at home. I tip one open side of the big green book atop the other, resulting in a soft slam. My companions look up at me briefly, jealously. "Yes!" I exude silently. "I'm done. I get to go home!"
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 3
11:17am:
I rise to the disappointed shaking of heads and the sense that I've let the team down. Sullenly, we file onto the platform, into the sad silence of a platform without a train. It doesn't matter that in three minutes there'll be another one: the train you miss is always the "best" one. I avoid the eyes of my fellows and keep myself busy thinking about the treasure at the end of this tunnel, metaphorically speaking: the Mehlman article and the secrets it will reveal about the what makes the written word grab someone's, besides one's own mother's, attention.
11:20am:
A local pulls in and I step inside. Oddly, even though it's 11:20am on a Wednesday, there is not a single vacant seat. I realize at that moment that I've never actually seen "a seat" on the Number One line. True, I've seen hints: a 5 inch strip of orange between two sets of American thighs, but that 5 inch beam of color is quickly blotted out by the not-to-be-trifled-with hips of a middle-aged woman who would certainly complain if her seat on an airplane was only 5 inches wide but here on the subway, seems overjoyed.
The resulting effect is a sort of checker-boarding of passengers all the way down the row, knees protruding in and out as people try to retain a portion of the bench; the pattern shifting as one passenger stands and another slides back. It’s kind of like the Wave, only performed horizontally instead of vertically. I stand, because I'm only passing through, just until I can catch the express.
11:23am:
We pull into the platform just as the express does. Perfect timing. Only our doors aren't opening. "How ironic!" we all exclaim in our different ways, some grinding their teeth into nubs. Some travelers lean on our doors, watching like children with noses pressed against a candy store window as the express opens, and then closes its doors.
"I can wait," I think, "Let someone else fight this battle," and I sit.
Suddenly, our doors explode open. I look up with only the slightest curiosity -- this is typically a tease. But suddenly the express across the platform re-opens its doors. In spite of my naturally low blood pressure, my subconscious throws out the challenge: "You can make it!"
As one, the entire human contents of the local scrambles for the openings -- The Great Subway Escape -- just as our doors begin to slide shut. It's right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark": the squeezing doors, the second set closing just beyond; the ever-narrowing passage to freedom! All that's missing is rolling boulders. Are we quick and agile enough to get out before the poisoned spears appear?
Twang! Evidently not. My body's out, but I'm not moving. The doors have closed on my backpack. My fellow commuters, always eager for a free show, surround me, some trying to yank me out, some shoving me from behind and, as always (this being an entertainment capital), a few watching, Snickers bars in hand. Helpless, I watch as the doors on the express, barely 10 feet away, slowly hiss closed. It sits there briefly, taunting me.
Suddenly, the local opens its doors and spits me out onto the platform. I'm free! From my knees I look up, just as the express shudders to life and begins to chug away. Quickly, I spin back around just as the local, insulted no doubt by my abandonment, slams its doors shut and departs.
Back on the island of "Missed Trains", I wait.
I rise to the disappointed shaking of heads and the sense that I've let the team down. Sullenly, we file onto the platform, into the sad silence of a platform without a train. It doesn't matter that in three minutes there'll be another one: the train you miss is always the "best" one. I avoid the eyes of my fellows and keep myself busy thinking about the treasure at the end of this tunnel, metaphorically speaking: the Mehlman article and the secrets it will reveal about the what makes the written word grab someone's, besides one's own mother's, attention.
11:20am:
A local pulls in and I step inside. Oddly, even though it's 11:20am on a Wednesday, there is not a single vacant seat. I realize at that moment that I've never actually seen "a seat" on the Number One line. True, I've seen hints: a 5 inch strip of orange between two sets of American thighs, but that 5 inch beam of color is quickly blotted out by the not-to-be-trifled-with hips of a middle-aged woman who would certainly complain if her seat on an airplane was only 5 inches wide but here on the subway, seems overjoyed.
The resulting effect is a sort of checker-boarding of passengers all the way down the row, knees protruding in and out as people try to retain a portion of the bench; the pattern shifting as one passenger stands and another slides back. It’s kind of like the Wave, only performed horizontally instead of vertically. I stand, because I'm only passing through, just until I can catch the express.
11:23am:
We pull into the platform just as the express does. Perfect timing. Only our doors aren't opening. "How ironic!" we all exclaim in our different ways, some grinding their teeth into nubs. Some travelers lean on our doors, watching like children with noses pressed against a candy store window as the express opens, and then closes its doors.
"I can wait," I think, "Let someone else fight this battle," and I sit.
Suddenly, our doors explode open. I look up with only the slightest curiosity -- this is typically a tease. But suddenly the express across the platform re-opens its doors. In spite of my naturally low blood pressure, my subconscious throws out the challenge: "You can make it!"
As one, the entire human contents of the local scrambles for the openings -- The Great Subway Escape -- just as our doors begin to slide shut. It's right out of "Raiders of the Lost Ark": the squeezing doors, the second set closing just beyond; the ever-narrowing passage to freedom! All that's missing is rolling boulders. Are we quick and agile enough to get out before the poisoned spears appear?
Twang! Evidently not. My body's out, but I'm not moving. The doors have closed on my backpack. My fellow commuters, always eager for a free show, surround me, some trying to yank me out, some shoving me from behind and, as always (this being an entertainment capital), a few watching, Snickers bars in hand. Helpless, I watch as the doors on the express, barely 10 feet away, slowly hiss closed. It sits there briefly, taunting me.
Suddenly, the local opens its doors and spits me out onto the platform. I'm free! From my knees I look up, just as the express shudders to life and begins to chug away. Quickly, I spin back around just as the local, insulted no doubt by my abandonment, slams its doors shut and departs.
Back on the island of "Missed Trains", I wait.
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