» Fringe Blog – Writing on Film, Culture, and Things on the Fringe

And Now, A Musical Interlude

jelewis8 — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 01:58:40 +0000

I am quite proud of the new Fringecast, despite its length and rambling nature. That is all.
Today was about as nice as you can get here, if you don’t count all the other days. So far I haven’t gotten tired of the placidity of this place. It’s as if the entire weather system for the area is more like a warehouse stocked with all of one item except some leftovers from the other warehouses that got shut down and all their workers laid off. We’re stocked pretty well with sunny, mid-level temperature days. Occasionally, someone orders a bit of rain or colder temperatures, but the workers are so cheery, they sometimes forget to pack all the ingredients, and we get a day that feels more Fall-ish than anything, with a dim, pale sun that still manages to exude heat rays when the clouds aren’t scudding across its path.
Naturally, I would begin a blog post about the weather. It’s the poor man’s literary discussion. One can glean all sorts of miraculous and mysterious pearls from conversations such as these, if one is willing to dispense with common sense and well-established science. I’m perfectly happy doing both, as long as it will result in a positive net of amused smiles.
Laughter is also encouraged.
The Super Bowl was oddly low-key, with commercials doing their requisite best to capture my heart, lusting eyes, and deep pocketed wallet. It didn’t work, as I have yet to feel the pangs of desire for cheap Lite beer or the newest super automobile straight from the workers slaving away in the sugar mines of Pretoria. It’s interesting, though, that when we think of the Super Bowl, we no longer first think of football. Commercials hold our interest, which is strange, considering that one of the allures of purchasing tv shows on DVD is to avoid having to watch…commercials.
Then again, there’s always the wonderful parties people throw. We had one at our place; it was but a trifle, with only four of us, so technically it was less a party and more an elaborately staged imitation. We even had a four layer dip, (understudying for the seven layer dip, which was gettin’ jiggy wit it at Will Smith’s house) and three tiny pizzas. It was quite charming.
Saturday I went to Amoeba Music with the roommates minus Tim plus Jonathan Hooker. Music shouldn’t exist in that quantity, but it does. For some reason, they didn’t have one cd that was on my unwritten list, one that I have been meaning to buy for a while, but had forgotten about it until Lileks reminded me of its existence the other day. I first heard Chicane in college, via my recalcitrant roommate, and I lusted after it several times. Then it was forgotten, among the myriad other albums I’d love to own but just don’t yet. So I went on Amazon and bought it. Now I won’t have to sit back and wonder what it’s like to own it. Today I got the notice from the Post Office that it is waiting for me.
What a world in which we live!

I’m a Published Author (Technically)

jelewis8 — Tue, 20 Dec 2005 04:55:02 +0000

The book is done, incidentally. I spent the day editing and fixing up the file and making it ready for PDF-ifying, which is not as easy as it sounds. Because the PDF file has to be a specific size, with bleed margins and all sorts of embedded font nonsense that eventually makes you realize that maybe the reason it’s so hard to get published these days isn’t the competitive market, it’s the fixing of all those bleed margins.
There’s something very satisfying about creating your own cover art, writing a blurb for the back, and putting it all together in a neat little package, complete with shopping cart goodness for the masses to discover via a random Google search. Oh, sorry, I forgot to link it!
Please purchase The Cold Goodbye!
There’s even a one chapter preview, which should entice you and send small electrical shocks to your cerebellum if you click on the link and then decline to purchase. The second part may not work properly, but it is enticing, like a nice hunk of mutton turning on a spit over an open flame, juices spitting and popping like corkers and fireworks. Why mutton? Because it seems like it’s a Christmas-ey kind of meat, and I’m feeling very seasonal right now.
By the way, this is only the “evaluation” version of the novel. Here’s the breakdown. Readers of this version will tell me if I should write Book 2, because honestly, I don’t know if the story’s any good. I suspect it might be, but the real litmus test is unvarnished responses from interested readers. I expect honesty. Should I write Book 2? Should I condemn the whole thing to the dung heap? And if so, where would I find such a dung heap?
So, once again, please, go check out The Cold Goodbye and if you’re feeling extra charitable, drop me a line and tell me what you thought of it.

A Spot of This

jelewis8 — Thu, 12 May 2005 18:26:25 +0000

900 degrees in my room as I woke up, and yet I still shivered slightly as I stepped out of the shower into the cool air. The perfect temperature is a constant battle for us, one we have fought and clawed our way upward for superiority and success, and the best we’ve come up with is air control at the push of a veloured button, the kind that gives a satisfyingly small click when it is pressed.
Here’s a creepy exercise. See if it resonates.
About 75 yards away a young, full-figured woman wanders out from an opening in the fence and onto a running/walking path of sorts that runs next to my apartment. She is dressed in blue coveralls and a dark green shirt, and her hair is in a ponytail. She bends down to scratch her leg, and whilst in that position, rolls the bottom of her pants legs up. I can see now she’s got sandals on.
A dog wanders through the fence and it appears she’s supervising his daily bathroom exercise. She walks to the edge of the woods and picks at a large shrub (or shrubbery) whilst her dog does his thing. She bends again to scratch her left leg.
Now she’s straightened back and turns and does a lazy walk back toward the fence opening. Her dog catches up to her and she bends and scratches it, playfully wagging its rump back and forth as its tail slaps back and forth in a pleased manner. He runs ahead and she follows, still bent in that pose, like a mother might do when playing with a child.
I indulge in a tiny grin, and watch as they pass the brown bomber on the next road up and disappear from my view.
That just goes to show you that even if there are stories everywhere you look, not all of them are worth telling. That’s a good lesson for me, though I doubt there’s any real danger I’ll do anything more than wistfully dream. Some things are worth writing about. I’ll try to stay in that category.
I meant to write about hospitals, as I spent a little time the other day visiting my roommate’s girlfriend, who suffered a badly broken leg–as if some breaks aren’t bad at all, merely annoyances–and was laid up in Montgomery County General. Am I the only one who walks away from a hospital feeling dirty? Not like pornographically dirty, but physically, petrie dish dirty, the kind of dirty that you physically go home from and scrub until you’re reaching that third but all critical subdermal layer of tissues that keeps your muscles from spilling out onto the ground from lack of restraint.
Here comes another pretty girl down that walking path. I love spring!
At any rate, hospitals, and the general feeling of constantly collecting the spores of sickness and surgery and death and leaving as a walking biohazard…the other thing about hospitals that I find unsettling is how quiet things are. I recall, or at least read about, the heady days of Civil War hospitals, which found influxes of men from both sides of the conflict, missing limbs, frantic in their pain, and the sounds which always accompanied them into the halls of healing.
We don’t have that so much anymore, and the quiet of a hospital is like the quiet of a cemetery. Still, over the ages, one thing about hospitals has remained constant, and that’s the bad food. Bad hospital food is almost a tautology, its so universally known. Show me a hospital with good food, and I’ll show you an cell phone that actually works in my apartment.
If I sound a little bitter, it’s because I don’t live the high-octane life of a former Capitol Hill intern who dodges air attacks on the White House by squadrons (or in this case, one) Cessna(s). Now that’s exciting!