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.

Lunchtime at Target

How do you sell a videogame?

I'll tell you how you sell a videogame.

I held it in my hands, strongly considering a purchase.  The color palette (high contrast black, white, and--get this--red) appealed to me, as did its cartoonishly violent promise.

The clerk looked at me, considered his options, and proceeded to say the following: "You can pick up bad guys and toss them in a deep fat fryer and then they throw up."

Sold!

Cancún: round one

Cancún, a summary to possibly be expanded upon later:

The plane trip to Cancún was filled bow to stern with douchebags and as such my vacation was off to a grumpy start.

"Someone's ready for some brewskis!" a woman behind me brayed.

"I'll get the first round once we land!" a nearby guy shouted.  "Who's gonna to get the second?"

"I'll get the second, you get the first on the plane!" another guy answered.

"I'll get the first once we land," the first guy clarified.

"No, I mean the first on the plane," the second guy answered.

"When we land."

"I mean on the plane."

Behind me, the brewski woman decided a brewski was in order but then declined when she discovered that the only light beer options available on the plane was Bud Lite.

Yeah.

There was one saving grace on the plane and the saving grace was this:  the woman sitting directly across the aisle from me was startlingly beautiful.  I don't really remember what she looked like beyond a certain ethereal quality, but once I noticed her I wanted to do little more than gaze at her for the remainder of the trip, drinking in as much as I could before our time together drew to a close.

It was more of a visual fascination than an attraction, if that makes sense.  It wasn't that she was beautiful so much as she was striking.  I would have felt the same had she been shockingly ugly or adorned with a pig snout for a nose.

On second thought, the pig snout would have been more interesting.

********

Cancún was a surreal six days of complete removal from what can reasonably be called "The Normal Life."  No snow, no job, no bills, no driving, no cooking, no appointments, just large expanses of white beach coupled with time stretching off into forever.

And a constant stream of alcohol.

It's not that much of the trip was spent drunk--far from it--but it was rare that an alcoholic drink of at least some potency wasn't being sipped on, regardless of the hour.

This has a bit of a cumulative effect.

"Reality is ripping at the seams," I said somewhere around the fifth day.

********

The lowlight of the trip, or perhaps the highlight, if you ask my friends, was when I awoke sleepwalking around the resort in my Batman underwear.  I had no key-card slipped into my boxer-briefs and was therefore locked outside my room, so I tried to break in via the sliding side door but the chain latch actually proved to be an effective deterrent to breaking and entering, so I eventually had to resort to stumbling down to the front desk--in my Batman underwear, remember--to ask for a new key-card.

This is not the first time my Batman underwear has gotten me into trouble.

It might be time for me to admit I'm not Bruce Wayne.

********

My last plane back to Madison was on a tiny jet with ancient leather seats and landing gear that shook the plane violently with a deafening KRA-KOW whenever they were pried open or closed.

Things you do not want in a plane ride: deafening KRA-KOWS accompanied by violent shaking.

********

Mexico must have been very fond of me because Mexico is proving quite resistant to letting me go, and I apologize and beg for your sympathy if you know what I mean by this.

It started Friday morning and is still going strong, three days later.  I do think I'm on the mend, but I still have to tear for the bathroom with clockwork regularity.

While in Cancún I told some fellow vacationers, "This resort is nice, but you've really got to get off the tourist strip to truly appreciate Mexico.  Take the bus into downtown Cancún and find a small restaurant on a side street to eat a meal.  Dine on some true Mexican food, and drink in the heartbeat of the city.  You won't regret it."

You won't regret it.

KRA-KOW!