Of Swollen Chickens

Have you ever seen one of those squeezable rubber chickens?

Yeah, you know the one: crushing its frame causes its insides to balloon through its skin and form a clear spherical tumor, stretched grotesquely until the pressure is released and the wart can recede, no trace left.

Well.

Not five minutes ago I found a rubber chicken like this at work, and noticed that it had a tumor that never receded. It hung on its neck like a swollen bubble, the edges visibly irritated.

I squeezed the chicken, and this is what happened:

A second tumor began to swell directly next to the first, but with a shiver-inducing pop it released its load, the stretched rubber pimple ejaculating watery fluid through the air, great spurts arcing and falling and splatting across the tile floor with the wet sound of violent contact. I jumped back, startled, but by the time the glistening visuals travelled to my brain the chicken was already spent, hanging limply in my grip as a drop of juice trickled down my fingers.

This is not a metaphor.

I am traumatized.

NYC: Take One

I have witnessed one common strain among all New Yorkers and it is this: they consider New York to be the city, with all other competing metropolises little more than barely mentionable also-rans.  Oh sure, they'll show appreciation for other cities like Chicago or Los Angeles, but it's always accompanied with a half-smirk that makes it clear that you've got a cute city and all but let's not get too carried away, hmmm?

When I caught my first glimpse of the Manhattan skyline I texted my New Yorker buddy: "That's one hell of a skyline."

His reply: "The only one that matters."

It must be said, also, that this common strain has always struck me as incredibly annoying.  New York is a big city, yeah, but for god's sake get over it.  There's a world out there beyond the borders of your five boroughs.

While in New York City, though, I began to see that this New York superiority complex wasn't really the result of narrow-minded arrogance as previously suspected.  New York really is the biggest, boldest city in America.  Love it or hate it, New York has the population to push things further than any other city is capable of.

I am something of a connoisseur of dive bars.  There's something about drinking cheap beer at a dimly-lit hole in the wall that resonates with me on a spiritual level.  I've done a considerable amount of globetrotting during the past two years and a theme throughout has been a need to seek out the best of local dive bars.  It's a way to take off the tourist hat for an hour or two and connect with the denizens of the city.

In New York I was taken to Mars Bar.

The hallway-like interior had no lighting except for that which emanated from the flickering neon beer sign in the window.  The walls were white and covered in graffiti.  I could see open pipes in the ceiling toward the back.

"What do you have on tap?" I asked the bartender.

"Nothing."

I paused.  "What do you have bottled?"

She pointed wordlessly to the towers of beer boxes stacked against the wall.

I paused, and then noticed the smell from the bathroom.

This was New York City's answer to the dive bar.

It ain't boasting if you can back it up.

4:35 PM on a Tuesday

I watched the brilliant day through the breakroom window, green trees saluting a sharp blue sky.  Grass danced restlessly from the wind.  Sunlight reflected a warm world both blinding and inviting.

"Incredible day," someone said.

I agreed.

I then retreated into a stark hallway, my eyes adjusting to darkness as phantom colors danced across my vision and plotted the course that could have been.

One down, five to go

Warning: I am about to blather on about matter that is most likely uninteresting to anyone other than me, because I feel the need to mark the fact that last night I finished writing my book.

This is a pretty big deal in the world of me, you see.

True, I must pare back that accomplishment with a series of qualifiers.  What I have written is still probably a little rough in places and at least a couple editing passes away from true completion.  And then, of course, is the fact that it's a script for a graphic novel, so the book has incalculable hours of sketching, layout, drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering ahead before it can truly be considered complete.  Add to that also that even then this is simply the first installment of a story that will (in theory) span six volumes.

You know what, though?  Fuck the bigger picture.  Four years of character development, world building, and meticulous planning followed by five months of obsessive and labor-intensive writing have finally has paid off in something more than a collection of notes.   I have written a book that has a beginning, a middle, and an end (of sorts).  The words and ideas and characters have survived the translation from thought and ambition to finished page.

I'm not sure I really can adequately sum up the feeling of blissful payoff.  Chipping away at this monster night after night has turned into such an obsession that I hardly know what to do with myself otherwise.  I work and sleep, yes, and take care of other things on the weekends, but I've adapted every other bit of free time into moments tuned toward producing finished pages of script.  Evenings are essentially nothing but writing.  My solitary commute to and from work is when I retreat into my brain and work out unresolved scenes.  Even my cool down relaxation period before bed as turned into me lying in bed and editing dialogue on my netbook.

Writing is really such a self-absorbed and insular activity.  Tapping into that corner of your brain that produces breathing worlds and living characters involves pulling the plug on the outside world, and as such I've spent the better part of the past six month firmly ensconced up my own ass.  All things considered it's not too bad a place to be, but I'm looking forward to coming up for air.

The day in/ day out slog of writing is also a continuous exercise in suppressing the urge to share excitement.  When working on any extended creative work there are (hopefully) moments of inspired brilliance, and the urge is to reap instant reward by enthusiastically sharing it with others, but I firmly believe that giving in to this temptation dilutes the project and robs the people around you of the opportunity to experience the work in its intended form.  This applies to any form of art or entertainment.  Describing a song in progress reduces the finished song to be.  Sharing a written exchange of dialogue starves the moment of context and accompanying visuals.  The best course for anyone in the throes of creation is to shut up, buckle in, and let the finished work speak for itself.

As such, finishing this script is an odd exercise in celebration and reward on a purely personal level.  Nobody but the necessary few will see it, and I'll have to wait months until the rest of the world can read so much as a single word in its intended art-accompanied glory.

Which, to some degree, just emphasizes my sense of accomplishment.  The finished book, while obviously fiercely personal, is for everyone else.

Last night, however, was just for me.

Of voting attempts and church ladies

This morning I voted.

My local polling place is the meeting room of a church, and as such the polls tend to be manned by elderly church goers.

There was one other voter present, just ahead of me with his young son in what technically counted as a line.  He was identified and handed a ballot, the voting-specific transaction thus completed.

One of the eldery pollworkers--a woman--turned to the little kid as I waited in line (technically).  She put on her beaming "talking to children" face and asked, "How old are you?"

"Five," he said.

"Wow!  That's the same age as my grand-nephew!  What's your name?"

"Max."

"Max?" she said, her voice rising in delighted pitch.  "What a great name, Max!"

I didn't want to be rude, but I moved to draw attention to the fact that I was waiting.  Her eyes connected with mine and then turned back to Max.

"Do you know the book Where the Wild Things Are, Max?"

"Yes," Max replied.

"I hear they're turning it into a movie," the father said, his empty ballot tucked under his arm.

"Oh really?" she asked.

I was already late for work.

"I'd like to vote," I said.

Max and his voting dad took the cue and walked away.

The woman held onto her "talking to children face" and addressed me.  "And what is your last name?"

"Salisbury."

She began flipping through her registered voter list while continuing to address children.  "S...E...L..."

"No," I said.  "S..A..L..I..S..B..U..R..Y."

"S...E...L...I..."

"S..A..L..I," I corrected.

"S...A...I..."  she turned from one page to another, having trouble finding the name that is not mine.

"No, S.A.L.I"

She looked up at me, said, "oh," and then turned back to the registered voter list.  "S...A...I..."

The elderly church man sitting next to her interrupted her.  "No, S.A.L.I."

"S...A..." she trailed off.

The man leaned over.  "Top of page two."

She flipped one page, then another.  "Uh..."

"Never mind, I'll do it, " the man said, crossing out my name.

I took the offered ballot and walked to a booth.

Go vote!

The Spiders and the Legend of the Beast

The spiders that live in my basement have a tale that is passed down from generation to generation, a story presented as fact but only in the fashion that all children's stories are.

It is the telling of a massive roaring monster that appears but once every spider eon, a screaming, sucking beast that arrives without warning and massacres everything in its path.  It's long tube-like mouth is unforgiving in its ability to reach even the deepest of spider hiding places, and even the biggest, strongest spider is sucked up with frightening ease.  The beast destroys homes, slaughters families, and gobbles up even children with its bottomless hunger, and it isn't until the previously thriving spider population has been completely decimated that the sated beast finally retreats, lumbering off to god-knows-where to hibernate.  The few survivors who managed to escape the beast's wrath have no choice but to pick up the pieces of their shattered civilization and attempt to rebuild.

Fear can't last forever, of course, and as the spider population begins to recover and generation after generation passes without a return from the beast, the story retreats into legend and transforms from frightening to sexy, something young spiderlings whisper about at slumber parties while shivering under their sleeping bags.

The spiders are mistaken, however, as the beast is real and the passing of time has only strengthened its hunger.

Today is the day the spiders once again learn.

Review: The Hazards of Love by the Decemberists

On some level, Decemberists fans always assumed it would come to this.  Original cast recording-style musical numbers were a hallmark of theirs as early as album two ("Shanty for the Arethusa," "The Chimbley Sweep"), and the band's obvious fascination with prog went from nascent on 2004's The Tain to full blown on the three-part fifteen minute eponymous suite on 2006's The Crane Wife.  Honestly, a seventeen track rock opera about a shapeshifting forest dweller trying to rescue his true love from a villain called the Rake was pretty much an inevitability, and so it is that we have arrived at The Hazards of Love.

The Decemberists almost pull it off, too.  Chief songwriter Colin Meloy is on comfortable and well-tread ground here, simply stretching his penchant for musical storytelling from song to full album.  The labyrinthine plot takes numerous twists, and the music generally oscillates between the mildly pleasant and the demandingly compelling.  Very few songs exist well enough on their own, but they are not without a certain cumulative power, a raw force that pulls you through and occasionally rises to heady peaks with standout tracks.  Almost any band could call this an unqualified success.

And yet it isn't just any band, it's the Decemberists.  Unfortunate expectations, perhaps, but once a band releases an album as perfect as Picaresque there's simply no dialing back to the realm where "mildly pleasant" is good enough.

The first sign that all is not right on The Hazards of Love is the baffling absence of that much beloved chestnut of musicals everywhere: the big opening number.  The Decemberists have belted those out of the park before--"The Infanta," anyone?--and as such it's borderline unforgivable that the album whimpers in with a tonal drone that initially made me wonder if my CD was broken.  From there the album limps into a couple of undercooked songs that are pleasant enough but never really build into anything on their own.  It's a rock opera, fine, not every track is supposed to be a scorcher, but it isn't until ten minutes in that you get the first real hummable melody via the beautiful "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)."  It's a stunning song, yes, but it only illustrates that the first couple songs might as well be called "PLACEHOLDER MELODY: WRITE ROUSING OPENER SOON."

Other highlights manage to be decent additions to the Decemberists canon, but few could survive the Pepsi Challenge against virtually anything else they've recorded in the past five years.  "The Rake Song" is a faux-heavy ode to infanticide that would be disturbing if it weren't so funny (regarding his progeny's birth: "first came Eziah with his crinkled little fingers/ then came Charlotte and that wretched girl Dawn/ ugly Myfanwy died on delivery/ mercifully taking her mother along, alright!"), but ultimately it sounds a bit like an inspired idea in search of a memorable chorus.  "The Wanting Comes In Waves" is fairly standout-ish and yet it is punctuated with digressions (both musical and plot-wise) that render the song conflicted at best.  Meloy is telling a story, I know, but is it really too much to ask for a tune that hangs together from start to finish?

"But it's not about the individual songs!" I hear the hardcore shout!  "This is a concept rock opera, not a greatest hits collection!"

Except nobody wanted this all to work more than me.  I love this kind of ridiculous high-concept shit.  Prog-heavy opuses complete with interludes, four-part movements, and a dense backstory detailed in the booklet via eyeball-shattering microscopic font?  Sign me up; I'm one of the few who still consider Mars Volta albums to be release day purchases, after all.  But The Hazards of Love is caught in an odd rock opera middle ground where the songs aren't quite solid enough to survive on their own and yet the music doesn't form a swelling sonic journey to accompany the plot.  It's a bizarre memento of a stage musical that doesn't exist (and probably wouldn't work very well if it did).

But it also must be stressed that The Hazards of Love--the album--does ultimately work, and it will almost certainly be embraced by a certain subset of their fanbase as The Decemberist's underrated masterpiece.  Swap in a couple songs on the caliber of "We Both Go Down Together" and I might be inclined to agree, but prog epics are all about the balance between build up and payoff and The Hazards of Love rings up a little skimpy on the latter.  It's a success, yeah, but only if you manage to ignore past Decemberists discs to keep from being reminded of what could have been.