fine whine

To say that I was discouraged today about my so-called novel would be an understatement. To say that "I am not going to pretend that I’m not doing so well with my novel." as I did Monday is a bad double negative, and in fact an incorrect statement. I'd meant to say that I wasn't going to pretend that I wasn't doing badly with my novel, which in fact I was. Doing badly with my novel, that is.

I am, of course writing this several days from the date that is above this. I left this as a draft and returned to it only after having given up on said novel, attempting to write another (which I also abandoned) and having written two other entries about such (this and this).

This whole lack of motivation/bad novel thing did not make me happy. As such, in Monday's entry I pretty much trashed Bruce Sterling's Zenith angle, and he dropped by my site within hours to leave me words of encouragement.

Seeing his name in my email (I get a copy of every comment before you ever get to read them), I was totally deflated. Here was a guy whose book I'd said was "very, very bad" and he had seen it. In retrospect the book's not very, very bad, but it's not great. I wrote the words in question mere minutes after putting down the book, the last chapter of which I'd sped through due to annoyance and a nasty headache.

For what it is, and that is a fictionalized look at events parallel to the paradigm shift (sorry, just had to use that phrase) up to and after the 9-11 attacks from the perspective of a practicing geek, the book works. It probably feels more dated now that some of the principal political players have been re-cast as evil, and all the more so since there hasn't been any more major terrorist happenings in the intervening years. At least, not on American soil, where it matters.

So Bruce, thanks for stopping by and for the kind words. I didn't hate your book, and I will in fact pick up others from the library.

Also, in the intervening time, another author dropped by and weighed in on the issue. He's Pauly D, author of Consumer Joe (soon to be made into a feature-length blockbuster film, or perhaps just a TV show) and he's stopped by here before. Nice to see you again, Paul! Now I feel bad for aggregating his blog and never visiting it to leave comments.

Shockingly enough these two aren't even the only published authors to have visited my little corner of the web lately. Lee Goldberg stopped by and commented on my entry about his book Unsold TV pilots. At least I didn't insult him too.

Incidently, I'd deleted that comment accidently, but was able to recreate it from my emails. Sorry about that, Lee. Stop by again some time, okay?

Well, I am not going to pretend that I'm not doing so well with my novel. I need to write over 45,000 words in the next week.

On the upside, I just read Bruce Sterling's The zenith angle and it was really, really bad. Not as bad as what I am writing, but Bruce is a pro. In a way it was a little inspiring.

Intent is three quarters of something or other. I've been meaning to mention this for at least two months but haven't done so for no good reason.

I've renewed Lee Goldberg's book of Unsold TV pilots at least twice. It was one of the shows that caught my eye, and only now do I share it with you.

But before I do that, let's see what you can recall. I found the story of a pilot about a former astronaut who had become super intelligent by way of some solar happenstance.

Heat vision and Jack, you say. Not so, I say. What follows is the unfiltered truth (i.e. the exact entry. Please don't sue me!)

55. Northstar. ABC 8/10/86. 90 minutes. Phillips/Grodnick Productions and Warner Bros. Television. Director: Peter Levin. Executive Producers: Clyde Phillips and Dan Grodnick. Producer/Writer: Howard Lakin. Music: Brad Fiedel.

Originally titled The Einstein Man, this stars Greg Evignan as an astronaut who, while on a walk outside the spaceship, is zapped by a solar disturbance. When he gets back to earth, he has superhuman powers--and a superhuman mind--that's triggered by sunlight. But if he gets too much direct sunlight--without the protection of special sunglasses--he'll literally explode from overload. So, like his predecessor "The six million dollar man," he becomes a secret agent. Mitchell Ryan is his boss, Deborah Wakeman is the scientist who works with him.

Cast: Greg Evigan (as Major Jack North), Deborah Wakeman (Dr. Allison Taylor), Mitchell Ryan (Col. Evan Marshall), Mason Adams (Dr. Karl Janss), David Hayward (Bill Harlow), Sonny Landham (Becker), Robin Curtiss (Jane Harlow), Richard Garrison (Agent), Steven Williams (Agent), Ken Foree (Astronaut).

So yeah, Ben Stiller and Jack Black might not have been as original as they thought. So what?

The book's an interesting read albeit an out of date one. I've had a lot of experience with failed pilots and misunderstood shows, having seen everything from the failed Journey to the center of the earth to the Charming family thing and shows about robot girls and fathers from space.

Heck, I was even part of a focus group/feedback thing once wherein I watched bits of TV shows and then answered phone questions about them. It devolved to a screenshot, a pitch and a bunch of smilie faces and I was supposed to say which face represented my reaction.

I mainly went with the "face that is neither happy nor sad".

Hey, I was seven or eight at the time.

I'm slowly sifting through the boxes and folders and binders that comprise my past, the detritus and artifacts portion of it at least. Somewhere in there I'm pretty sure I once wrote down an idea into which I put a lot of stock in high school: that being that I did not have a single personality, per se. My actions and reactions varied by the time of day and present company so much that at one point I had a list of some seven different Mikes (though it'd started out as nine or ten before I narrowed it down) in which I found myself, or bits thereof.

How was I to know that this was not a unique idea to me? Only now, when I flip through a book read on a whim (Tom Blass' The man who shocked the world: the life and legacy of Stanley Milgram) about a brilliant social scientist, that I stumbled across this snippet from his past:

By means which I am far from understanding, different girls cause me to behave differently in their presence. It is not volition that mediates these changes in behavior, but the direct, almost automatic effect of the presence of one girl or another, and it is quite out of my power to alter the effect of the particular girl I am with. So that what I am, my personality if you will, does not exist apart from my present company.

Stan Milgram wrote that in a journal days before Valentine's Day of 1957, long before starting the experiments that would propel him to wild fame and mild infamy. You know, the ones wherein he'd try to get some poor sap to "electrocute" another "test subject" (actually a good actor and confederate) by ordering him to do so. An overwhelming majority of people did so, pushing the "victim" far beyond the apparent limits of comfortable electrical shock. There's a lot more to this story, but I'm not going to talk about it when Tom Blass has already done it so well.

I've been disappointed by two books recently, and oddly enough they're both connected in some form to Comedy Central's Daily show. The first was Jon Stewart's Naked pictures of famous people, and the second was the much older book of sets of five questions asked every guest when Craig Killborn hosted the show.

Both books were, well, not funny. The latter one was a slapdash affair, padding out perhaps ten pages worth of material with bad television screen captures and other feats of bad layout. Moreover, most of it isn't really funny. The interviews on television might've been amusing, but they don't translate well to the written word. These, unlike a book of Dave Letterman's Top Ten lists, do not work in print. What a waste of paper.

Jon Stewart's book is connected to the Show only because he hosts it; it might've been published anyway but not nearly as widely. You see, it's not all that funny either. Jon's a funny guy with a great breadth of knowledge upon which to draw to make jokes, but he's pulling at straws here while I think he's shooting at fish in a barrel.

There's a chance that Dennis Miller would read this and roll on the floor laughing, but it sure didn't work for me. Far too many pages were spent on intricate but laborious jokes (such as the opening diary of a kennedy houseguest) that become tedious before getting a chuckle. Skip these books.

People have lots of reasons why they cannot sleep. As for me, if past experience is any indication, I sometimes cannot sleep because I haven't finished a book. At any given time I'll be midway through two or more tomes, but certain ones seem to keep me awake until I finish them, and only then can I slumber. This is, of course, based purely on conjecture and potential coincidence, but it seems every time that I stay awake far too long to finish a book my restlessness lasts only until that final page.

Two such books in the last week or so were My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn and The Earth abides by George Stewart. It's almost fitting that I read them in that order, as one flows almost naturally from the other. Allow me to explain.

Daniel Quinn is a brilliant guy. My Ishmael is something of a sequel (though it is told alongside) to his debut novel Ishmael, about which I have written earlier, but with the years' accumulated knowledge and further ruminations seamlessly integrated. This, of course, makes no sense to you since you have not read either book.

Well, do it. Read one, then the other. Ishmael is the name of a really smart ape, capable of telepathic communication. He places an ad in the paper saying TEACHER SEEKS PUPIL, must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. This sort of thing does tend to get a response, and each book is about a single pupil.

Anyway, this time around Ishmael takes on a twelve-year-old girl (or vice versa). They focus on education and the wisdom of tribal civilizations and more. It's a bleak book, at least if you think anything in this way of life works. I can't really describe it any better.

The recreation of the tribal lifestyle is also explored in The Earth abides, but in a more practical sense as a mountain climber comes back to civilization to find that a great majority of people have disappeared or died. He faces the challenge of finding out what happened and rebuilding civilization next.

He answers no classified ad, but it might have read SELF STARTER NEEDED for disaster recovery, must work well alone, own tools a plus. if there'd been one.

Anyway, read the books. Pay close attention to the ways that the downfall of civilization would go differently now, in the age of persistent and redundant communications technology. That, more than anything else, dates the book.

In completely unrelated news, I got my name on Boingboing today. I'm just waiting for the karma and the visitors to roll in.