Thanksgiving Discovery

I know how swamped you've been, Norm...or at least I can imagine. Toddler, baby on the way, pregnant wife, very important jury service wrapped up...and then there's the j-o-b. On top of all that, there's books and reading.

Bleeding Edge I imagine is occupying whatever reading time you have for yourself, and then afterwards if you're still inclined is that skinny Mishima book, The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea.

So, here I am with some days off, and I took a sojourn from my housework and went down to my friendly Dollar Bookstore. I was perusing the disheveled shelves and saw a book by an author whose last name I recognized, Flanagan. A quick glance showed that it wasn't the author I thought, it was someone named Bob Flanagan. Hah, I thought, wouldn't it be cool if there were a Richard Flanagan book in here...that's why, after all, I was even looking though the "F" section.

Since the "F" section is pretty ragged, and around the edges last names starting E and G are easily seen, it's easy to imagine that within the section itself, nothing is really alphabetized. As I started to leave the aisle, my eyes caught another Flanagan name. It even looked like a Richard...could it be the same?

I grabbed the copy from the shelf and snatched it up, and before I even read the title of the book I noticed underneath the author's name it said, "Author of Gould's Book of Fish." Sold. I carried it around until I left and bought it.

I didn't bother to read the back to find out what it was about. Wanting is the title, and the lady with the rose on the cover only registered in my brain long after I was home and deciding to check out the meat of the story.

Here's a rundown, and Norm, since you know how Flanagan structures his stories, you can imagine how this one can turn out: In real life a guy named Sir John Franklin took his wife and left for Tasmania where, after a while, his wife fell in love with an aboriginal girl. Later, in real life, Sir John and his entire crew went missing on a trip to the North Pole--cannibalism was suspected.

Those are the real events that Flanagan uses to frame this book...

...And now I have to force myself to focus on other shit and not read it until later. It is just over 250 pages, though...

Another book to add to your already-too-long list, brother.

Not Really About Pynchon, But...

Here's one of a few pictures I'm trying to do something with:

III and IV, being blinded by the sun...

Just in Time...

It was a Tuesday. In September, but not a bright autumn day back in '01. The namesake for this blog was dropping a new novel upon his readers on September 17th, and for once I got to be excited for a book release.

Excitement over book releases are rarer these days---and then I remember all of the teeny-bopper unconsummated-love horror-pop genre fiction and I say, "Oh yeah...some folks really care about that stuff..."

So, I guess, if you like serious books about heady things, or like authors that are celebrated by heads and scholars alike, then when one of those authors delivers something new, you get excited.

I had plenty to do on that particular Tuesday, and checked to see when the book store closed---their website said 11 pm. It turns out that that was only for Friday and Saturday, and if I wanted to get there on this Tuesday in September, I had to make it by 10. When I realized this, it was, like, 9:38.

Where's the car parked? Do you really want to go right now? Can you even make it? Do they have a copy?

This is all pretty stupid, I was telling myself, but Corrie reminded me, "Hey--it's about the adventure, right? Screaming across town late at night might just be worth it..."

So, scream across town I did. I called as I huffed it out to the car to have them hold me a copy, then drove basically along the beach the entire length of our city to get to the one corporate bookstore I know about around town. Sitting at the last few stoplights, cursing and sweating, yelling at the lights and the randomly placed slow drivers, I was constantly aware of the car's clock, four minutes fast, mind you, but reading 10:01.

I tore ass into the parking lot, nearly skidded into a spot, 10:02 on the clock, I ran up to the door. The lights inside illuminated the fact that the door hadn't yet been locked, and the transient examining the bargain books by the door let me know they were still open. I smiled to myself, loosened up a bit, and let myself in.

I went right to the counter--I wasn't going to be wasting any of these workers' nights--and visually located the copy with the name "PATRICK" written on a piece of paper and rubber-banded together with it.

It was on a discount, too. Pretty sweet... My receipt says 9:58. Just made it, baby!

I texted you, Norm, as I got back to the car:

I'm just past 200 pages, which is almost halfway through it, and, damn, there is so much to say about it...

While my post isn't about a Tuesday in September back in '01, that hangs over this story like the proverbial ominous storm cloud. There is a disaster being brought upon the world by a type of evil that is manifested in greed and power struggles...nobody is quite sure what this disaster might prove to be, but of course we know.

You get the idea, reading it, that Pynchon began writing the book in his head, or maybe just working it out in his head, as a way of catharsis maybe right after the towers fell. It's like Against the Day meets Doc Spotello's investigation agency--by which I mean that you get the perspective of a transition era (in AtD it's the 19th-20th centuries) snuggled into a mysterious dilemma. It's also like Vineland in that it offers perspective on an era (the late '90s), but from less of a vantage point (right before 9/11, where in Vineland it's the '80s perspective on the '60s). But, like Mason & Dixon, since you know historically what the outcome will be, you get to supply your own perspective as well.

And, of course, he knows New York very well.

AND, the hero, or protagonist, like in The Crying of Lot 49, is a lady, a divorced Jewish mom, which is pretty cool. We should be able to amend our conversation about Pynchonian ladies all (mostly) being whores.

Masterpiece in the Mail

I haven't sent this yet, Norm, but I will be sending it soon. I know you have too much to do and read, but I found this book serendipitously enough, and was able to support the independent Phoenix Books in San Luis Obispo by purchasing it.

I only wanted to post about it after I mailed it, but that didn't work out. Yo:

I'd dragged Corrie into Phoenix Books on Monterrey without any idea about buying anything. Sometimes, things tell me they want to be purchased. Nearly done with the visit, I glanced down at the table with the newest stuff in, the stuff that had yet to be filed away. If you're looking for old Pynchon or old Denis Johnson, that's where'd you look since it wouldn't last long (unless it's Vineland).

Staring up at me was this copy of The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, a tightly wound look at the homicidal tension that Mishima feels is at the base of the Japanese psyche. One of the three main characters, a thirteen year old boy, is named Noboru, which is the same name of the antagonist from Murakami's Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

The book revolves around a wealthy widow, her son, a sailor with whom she has an affair. I don;t want to ruin too much, but it is very taut and has some gruesome scenes, and Mishima's theory about the fundamental violence at the base of the Japanese is executed well here. Also, as a writer myself, I really do enjoy Mishima's ability to seamlessly shift between points-of-view in scene, and be able to keep each character's secret thoughts authentic and distinct.

Do you remember Corrie's cousin, Josh? His wife, Elizabeth, had a copy of this book at their house in Beacon, and I saw it and told I was reading the exact book, pulling out my copy to show her. She had many Yukio Mishima books, and said that this one, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, was her favorite. It is quite excellent, if slight.

Ushikawa?

It's the funky looking, off-putting, chain smoking character that Murakami named "Bull-river," Ushikawa.

I got to page 426 in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, and by 427 when the description comes in I remember thinking, This has to be Ushikawa, and then on 428 he introduces himself: "'The name is Ushikawa. That's ushi for "bull" and kawa for "river". Easy enough to remember, don't you think?'"

I mention it because, depending on how far along you've gotten in 1Q84, you'll have run into Ushikawa again.

This also highlights a few random thoughts I was having.

Like with Against the Day and Pynchon, this was another time of reading a later work before an earlier work. With Pynchon, I didn't know that Bodine was one of the recurring names of a set of characters.

With having read 1Q84 before The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which itself was written maybe a dozen years prior, this Ushikawa made his first impression on me in the newer story. Had I read Wind-Up... first, I believe that I surely would have recognized him in 1Q84 before his name came up, as did other Ruke-man fans.

Another thought I was having was the pace at which I'm making it through Wind-Up Bird...

I started it back in December when I was busing it to tutor sessions on the PV peninsula. It's not like the book is difficult and reading it is a slog (see Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon), and, for the record, nothing by the Ruke-man that I've found could ever really be considered a "slog."

Something about it though...it never gripped me, or at least hadn't as of the 420 pages. Maybe it is starting to now, at least, with  the random 3rd person breaks about the boy and the "newspaper articles" filling in some holes. (The Broom of the System by David Foster Wallace also has a multi-pronged narrative approach with transcripts and articles and such...)

And it's not like I haven't had time to read. If that had been the case, like I imagine it is with my blog-mate, I could understand the lag better. When the Bleeding Edge comes out in September, what with my schedule being what it'll be, that could easily be the case at that time. But, while I've been reading this book by Murakami I've also read: Adventures in the Screen Trade by William Goldman; half of a Tesla bio by Margaret Cheney; And Still We Rise by Miles Corwin; As They See 'Em by Bruce Weber; The Dinosaur Heresies by Dr. Bob Bakker; and The Tao of Baseball by a Canuck writer and thinker who goes by Go. The Goldman and Weber books were both gifts from Uncle Dan and Auntie Peg; and along with the Corwin book and Bakker book, everything is non-fiction, which is easier for me to breeze through on my LA Metro rides than even something as smooth as Murakami.

So...what...

Seeing Ushikawa in multiple spots is the same for me as seeing the Traverses in multiple spots, or even my own character Cooper. I have a character named Cooper who has bit roles in both my short The New American Patriot as well as in the current novel I'm working right now.

So, I was excited anyway. I've been busy with a different writing project lately; I'll go into it in detail a little later...

See you at the Birthday Party!

PIPD2013

Today marks Pynchon's birthday, and so (apparently) it's celebrated by Pynchonophiles as Pynchon In Public Day.

Scribble a muted horn on something; talk at a random stranger about the climbing a hemp plant like Jack on a beanstalk; imagine yourself crammed into a V2 or on an airship or throwing pies from a hot air balloon over the Alps.

Celebrate the Oeuvre!

2013 Shaping Up as Nice Year for New Books

Along with Bleeding Edge, we're also getting (maybe, depending on the translation) Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage from the Ruke-man himself, Haruki Murakami. I hadn't even heard about the book until today, even though it's selling a million copies a week since it was released in Japan in April.

Here's a link to an article about a rare public appearance and talk about the book's story.

I'm not sure if this means anything, but...

So, I know on this site there's been a certain focus on Pynchon (of course), as well as Murakami, and I've mentioned David Foster Wallace, Chandler Brossard, and Richard Flanagan on occasion as well. Flanagan wrote Gould's Book of Fish, and once I'd finished it, I  remember thinking that it had surpassed Mitchell's Cloud Atlas as my favorite non-Pynchon, non-Murakami novel.

Since then I think it may have crawled up the list, and rivals some of Murakami's best work. It's seriously good, and I've been thinking about getting a copy for you, Norm, but that's not relevant to this discussion. Before I got it I thought it was about a guy, or a family, fishing. I couldn't have been more misguided. Still, easily the best book I read in 2012.

In any case, there's a post here. I remembered the other night that Flanagan has his chapters each revolve around his main character's painting of a specific fish, about how that fish represents one of the weirdos he's met on his prison island, and about how he breaks down the sections of the chapters: he uses Roman numerals. That was the one thing I wanted to take another glance at: the Roman numeral breakdowns. I remembered that in my own book, Robot Crickets, in the last section I used Roman numerals as well for the sectional demarcations. It wasn't apparent at the time for me that it was in direct homage to Flanagan, but it would now be hard to argue that it wan't.

I noticed that I had used periods at the end of the numerals, and when I opened up Gould's... I saw he hadn't. But then I noticed something weird about the random pages that I opened each book to:

I'm not sure if it's easily seen here, but both pages have, on the left side, section VIII, and on the right side, section IX. In Gould's..., this is the page 200-01 spread, in chapter Leatherjacket (since each chapter is named for one of the twelve fish Gould paints, the numbers assigned to those chapters come from the reader, meaning this is chapter 5). In Robot Crickets, this is the page 82-3 spread, when the two tiny aliens Silde and Nafil and readying the meatball.

So, like the title of this post says, I'm not sure this means anything. Just one of those random moments...

I Missed this on the First Day it was up...

Straight gaffeled from GoodReads.com:

"
Thomas Pynchon brings us to New York in the early days of the internet

It is 2001 in New York City, in the lull between the collapse of the dot-com boom and the terrible events of September 11th. Silicon Alley is a ghost town, Web 1.0 is having adolescent angst, Google has yet to IPO, Microsoft is still considered the Evil Empire. There may not be quite as much money around as there was at the height of the tech bubble, but there’s no shortage of swindlers looking to grab a piece of what’s left.

Maxine Tarnow is running a nice little fraud investigation business on the Upper West Side, chasing down different kinds of small-scale con artists. She used to be legally certified but her license got pulled a while back, which has actually turned out to be a blessing because now she can follow her own code of ethics—carry a Beretta, do business with sleazebags, hack into people’s bank accounts—without having too much guilt about any of it. Otherwise, just your average working mom—two boys in elementary school, an off-and-on situation with her sort of semi-ex-husband Horst, life as normal as it ever gets in the neighborhood—till Maxine starts looking into the finances of a computer-security firm and its billionaire geek CEO, whereupon things begin rapidly to jam onto the subway and head downtown. She soon finds herself mixed up with a drug runner in an art deco motorboat, a professional nose obsessed with Hitler’s aftershave, a neoliberal enforcer with footwear issues, plus elements of the Russian mob and various bloggers, hackers, code monkeys, and entrepreneurs, some of whom begin to show up mysteriously dead. Foul play, of course.

With occasional excursions into the DeepWeb and out to Long Island, Thomas Pynchon, channeling his inner Jewish mother, brings us a historical romance of New York in the early days of the internet, not that distant in calendar time but galactically remote from where we’ve journeyed to since.

Will perpetrators be revealed, forget about brought to justice? Will Maxine have to take the handgun out of her purse? Will she and Horst get back together? Will Jerry Seinfeld make an unscheduled guest appearance? Will accounts secular and karmic be brought into balance?

Hey. Who wants to know?

"

Woo-hoo!

"Mathematical!"

So Norm, I started watching "Adventure Time" on Netflix. I remember you showing me that one episode with the dimensional bubble blower, and when I found the show deep in the innards of Netflix, I was like, Sweet! Even with only the first 26 episodes of the first season there, I figured I could get a good grasp of the pacing and the beats and the sens of humor, beyond my memories of that first episode you showed me.

So far I've watched maybe the first five or so episodes, and I like it. Jake and Finn crack me up, and their dynamic is fun. Finn reminds me another character I have discovered on another show that I've started watching, their connection being wearing an eared cap of sorts:

This is Louise Belcher, the youngest of the Belcher kids on Fox's animated series Bob's Burgers. I wanted to write a long post about the show, about how out of all of the animated shows on television now, Bob's Burgers is the only fitting heir apparent to the mantle that was created by the Simpsons in their first four seasons. This show is more realistic and honest than most live-action shows, just like the early Simpsons, and does things that the Simpsons of today can't do or achieve (and I still watch the Simpsons).

But Louise is nine years old, right between Bart and Lisa in age, and is the best thing about the show. She's a mix of Lisa and Eric Cartman, and is one of the main antagonists of the show. I recommend it, if you feel like another show to invest time into.

ALSO

I read that Bleeding Edge seems like it could be Pynchon's 9/11 book, as well as his Internet book. I read some commentary a while back that mentioned, accurately, that in all reality Gravity's Rainbow is his 9/11 book, and The Crying of Lot 49 is his Internet book, even if a facsimile of Arpanet made an appearance in Inherent Vice.

GR deals with the ramifications of a society that is in love with death; and Lot 49 deals with an underground non-postal service mail delivery system. Pynchon is just ahead of the curve.

Left for the Good People of Bed-Stuy

I found this picture in the other computer a few days ago and realized I needed to share it, the muted horn being a little more permanent:

This is from Macon Street, just off of Patchen, which was one of our cross streets, and Macon was just a single block down from Halsey, our street. Basically, this was super close to our place, somehow I made it early, and, stranger still, no one else dirtied up the drying concrete.

Interesting historical tidbit: Across the street are rowhouses, and, if one looks to the right and imagines more rowhouses, one would be looking at Chris Rock's childhood rowhouse. Chris Rock grew up on this exact block of Macon street, at least that's what the newspaper said. They gave the address of the house that his family owned and from which they rented rooms, like in the sit-com "Everybody Hates Chris", a good show, but filmed on the Universal set in Hollywood, and not in this neighborhood.

I noticed that the address was for Macon St, and that it must have been very close. That information came to me much later than this photo opportunity. I took picture of the house itself, but I haven't found them yet.

Maybe You Saw This Already...

It looks like 9/17 for Bleeding Edge, and it sounds like it's set during the time in between the dot com bubble bursting and the 9/11 attacks, in the "Silicon alley" section of NYC. 

Oddly enough, that was the industry I was looking for work in when we moved to New York--the tech industry. Also, oddly enough, the name "silicon alley" is a bit of a misnomer, as there aren't any alleys in New York. 

When You Get Some Time...

I know finding time to read is difficult, and right now I'm having trouble finding time to write, either on my book or on my many blogs. But...

...I submit for you, Norm, a list of links of pretty well written history, a so-called Winners' History of Rock 'n Roll. Rock criticism has centered around how commercialism through radio and MTV basically destroyed the music scene, and if you like the major popular bands, you're a sucker or you don't understand history.

I'm pretty unfamiliar with rock criticism in general, but I do have a sense of the Lester Bangs-ification of skewering the most popular rock bands and complaining that everything's sucked since punk became commercialized in something like 1980 or 1983.

It was with that in mind that this writer named Steven Hyden decided to look at the long arc of rock history from the advantage of what he considers the Winners, and for their time, the undisputed Lords of Rock. These are bands I've heard of. These are the bands I know. My understanding of the "true rock scholarship" is as lacking as plenty of folks' understanding of the importance of Chandler Brossard on the world inherited by Pynchon and Foster Wallace.

There are seven pieces total, and each has a contextual history concerning the age in question. Each is quite long and, for me at least, quite enjoyable. But in all honesty, I haven't been able to read through entirely any of them beyond the first one. One reason I'm putting the links here is so I can get back to them later. I felt like if anyone should read these and this perspective, it'd be you, Norm.

So, here we go with some jump links:

1) Led Zeppelin
2) Kiss
3) Bon Jovi
4) Aerosmith
5) Metallica
6) Linkin Park
7) Black Keys

 Hyden can explain his background and motives better than I, but I'd imagine you won't be disappointed when you get to it.

"Yo Mama!" and Pynchonian Journeys

Okay, Norm, I've been trying to get to writing a Pynchon post for some time now. At first I wanted to detail how Tommy P deals with women. I quickly realized that that endeavor would take far more space and time that I was really willing to give at this point...at least to do it justice.

See...watch:

Rachel Owlglass: not a whore, right?
Oedipa Maas: not a whore, but she does drunkenly sleep with that child-actor-turned-detective while trying to be faithful to her losing-his-shit husband.
Katje: a government assigned full-on dirty whore.
Frenesi: Family ruining, bad-guy boning whore.
Lake Traverse: has regular threesomes with the two guys who murdered her father.
Shasta: not a whore, right? Just not into Doc.

See? Who wants to write a whole bunch of words about that? While Jess and Tchitcherine's girl (who's also a bit of a whore) don't balance Katje by any stretch of the imagination, there's Prairie and DL, and they may actually balance the amount of time given to Frenesi. And Dally certainly outshines Lake.

Whatever.

Bleeding Edge? Bleeding Edge!

I am still planning on going by some of the local bars in the morning hours in Venice Beach (and even out here) to rouse some of the old timers to see if any of them know our man. I know that's crazy, but hell, if the man lived out here and was a head, then someone may have smoked dope with him before he moved to Mexico. And if they got him talking? Well, from everything I've read, he didn't do much talking to random heads he partied with. See? I talk a lot more with random strangers about writing and storytelling than it seems Pynchon ever did, and I don't really reveal any story tidbits to those same random heads, so the Venice Beach trip seems likely to not turn up much.

I did find a coffee roaster in LA near Silver Lake and Echo Park that calls itself Trystero Coffee. Their logo is the muted horn. I'll be arranging a visit with them (that's how they operate).

Rambling Man...

I was looking up something that now I can't remember, but it lead me to a collection of pages in specific works that had Pynchon's characters engaging in "Yo mama..." style trash-talking. The one listed from the earliest book is also the earliest chronologically, from Mason & Dixon.

On page 445 two ax-men's conflict devolves into shouting rhyming couplets that insult each other's mothers. The ax-men scene takes place during the ax-men section of the book, when M&D were making the state line between Pennsylvania and Maryland official and cutting it into the forest.

In Against the Day, on page 12, Lindsay, one of the Chums, is chastising the young Darby, threatening him with a head-butt, using a colloquial phrase "Liverpool Kiss", and then remarking that up to that point in young Darby's life, only his mother, a likely disaffected and lonely woman, would have shown him that kind of attention. On page 48 Franz Ferdinand, the archduke who's assassination sparks WWI, is getting drunk in a Chicago bar during the Columbus Exposition and World's Fair in 1893, and trying to start a bar brawl by claiming one of the patron's mother plays for the Chicago White Stockings (which didn't exist at the time? Maybe a minor league team...).

The last was a page 155 reference from Inherent Vice, from a song "Soul Gidgit" by "one of the rare entries in the 'black surf music' genre", a lyric about "frontin' for your mother."

I guess I'm just a rambling dude...

I've been using Against the Day recently as a pacing guide for my novel, as it's easier to keep my head wrapped around than Gravity's Rainbow. I had been using GR for certain things I liked, but it's too fragmented or splintered and out there...it'll be more useful later on in my writing I guess.

I'm getting worked up about Bleeding Edge...thirsting for information, but Pynchon is secretive with his own people, let alone Penguin Press twitter-account-updaters.

Uh, Something needs Googling.......

Bleeding Edge.  Discuss!!!!

Preemptive Explanation

Ma will probably be telling you about this at some point, Norm, so I thought I'd jump the gun. Let me preface this by saying I don't know anything about kids, really. I've never spent that much time around them, and I'm confident enough in my interpersonal skills otherwise to admit that.

Also, I'm a lagger. And the Decemberween gifts are just chillin' here on the table, and I hadn't sent them because I was sure that Liz and I were going to make a trip, and then I got busy...you of all people know how it is.

But I had stuff wrapped and in boxes and I thought about giving something special to Norman, so I pulled down a box of gear you and Dan marked "Mop's Toys" and started rummaging.

Later on I was on the phone with ma for an unrelated reason, and then brought up a question about appropriate toys for the boy, but more along the lines of, "Would they be cool with this type of toy?"

She said, with that famous what in the hell are you talkin' about voice, "He's not even two years old," like I was a moron.

And, uh, I am a moron, I guess. I didn't even think about him being such a little person, a tiny rambunctious little creature. I had action figures, like an old Han Solo guy and a hairy He-Man villain and a glow in the dark dinosaur and a little Hot-Wheels Ferrari 308 GTB (the car looks pretty cool--I'll save it for him for later).

It never occurred to me that his age would make him likely to try and swallow the Ferrari or Han Solo. What can I say besides I don't really know anything about kids.

It also makes me excited to be getting closer to that adventure.

I hope you realize how much Uncle Pat loves his nephew, right? I think my heart was in the right place...

(I'm still having a laugh about it.)

Left For the Good People of Long Beach

Nothing new here from me, besides the picture:

A Glimpse of the Twenty-Thirteen

As I started to get little tiny posts up here and there, I realized that I hadn't been over here in a while. I have a file folder on my lappy that has pictures of books specifically for this site, pictures of Pynchon books, Murakami and Foster Wallace and Flanagan's works, pictures of books by Murong and Mo Yan and Brossard. The Chandler Brossard's were the last pictures I'd added to the folder. I even started Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but time grew short between all the things. It sits on my front table 200+ pages in, and not abandoned, just, you know, time...

Meanwhile, I'm speeding through a book that Auntie Peg and Uncle Dan got me, a memoir from a novelist who somehow spent twenty years (at the time of publication, in '82-'83) in the screenplay writing business. I can say that I didn't plan to read it in between the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but this Hollywood book is like sugary popcorn with extra MSG; it's so fast, but lightweight. Uncle Dan, upon hearing my answer to his question of whether I had ever considered writing a screenplay (me: "Well, sorta...I know there's a good Nikola Tesla movie out there, just waiting to be made"), loaned me a nice bio of the Serb with a laugh. "Here's some source material for you," he told me. Folded in half and stuck in the Tesla bio was a Scientific American article about Tesla.

And I've got to say, this is as close as I've ever come to considering actually tackling a screenplay. Here they are:

William Goldman wrote Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and that screenplay is included in the book. He also has a section where he takes a story he wrote, forgot about, and was reintroduced to by his daughter and contorts it into a screenplay. That kind of mechanical work instruction, for a guy like me, is pretty much what it takes to get me considering a screenplay.

In any case, I'm still a lagger with the Decemberween gifts. Originally I wanted to bring them up myself on a visit with Liz, but with tutoring, the CBEST test, a meeting with Dominguez Hills CSU, and the face to face hocking of Robot Crickets in my region, I haven't been able to get away, or to the post office to mail the stuff. You know how days fritter away...

Happy New Year Brother, to you and yours!