ed_rex

Random Gloats:

Return to the personal

And then there's meme

I got a telephone call from Philadelphia last night, from one of the best friends I have that I've not met in person.

Among the things we talked about was Raven. "I've never seen a picture of her," quoth Ms Philadelphia.

"Nor will you any time soon," I said, "Raven is pretty strict about limiting her online exposure. I'm awfully sweet on her and I'd love to show her off to the world, but well, I ain't allowed to."

But it's also true that I am allowed to speak of her in general terms. And it is even more true that I really am sweet on her. 我爱 Raven indeed.

( Cut for mushy stuff off little interest to most of you. )

Meanwhile, back at the meme, ( Young Geoffrey tries to make sense of the term 'character interactions'. )

( Click to see all the questions )

Antagonists? We don't need no stinkin' antagonists!

I'm going to be off to arrange for a new pair of glasses when I finish keeping my daily appointment with this meme.

Which reminds me: I went to an optometrist for the first time in nearly three and a half years a week or so ago.

As we were finishing up, I mentioned to the doctor that I wanted glass, not plastic, lenses.

"Well," she said, "it's hard to get glass lenses now."

"I know. But surely it's not impossible?"

"Plastic is a lot safer, you know."

I laughed (as long-time readers are aware, I most certainly do know of the risks posed by glass lenses!) and pointed above, and then below, my right eye. "I do know," I said. "An angry drunk taught me that lesson very well," I added, then told her about the time I'd been punched up so badly my right orbital bone was shattered along with one of the lenses of my glasses.

"But I still want glass lenses. I'd swear — listen, isn't there actually some kind of difference in the quality of the vision provided by plastic or glass?

The optometrist hesitated, then admitted, "Well, yes. Glass does provide a somewhat clearer image, but —"

"I knew it!" I said, "I knew it! Ever since I switched, I've had the vague sense that things aren't as clear as they used to be! I want glass, I'll take the risk. It took 35 years for me to have an accident with glass the first time; and I'm less likely to get into a barroom brawl now than I was when I was yhoujng. I'll take the chance," I said again.

The optometrist smiled. "I should make you sign a disclaimer."

"I'll sign anything you want," I said. "I'm a big believer in taking responsibility for my own actions."

She didn't make me sign the waver, but she did add, "Glass lenses for optical clarity" to my prescription.

And now, back to the meme. ( Young Geoffrey discusses why his fiction often does without antagonists at all and why that isn't necessarily a good thing, the nature of genre and why so-called literary fiction, or slice-of-life fiction are a genre in themselves. )

Edited to fix ridiculous repeat typos (thanks, Raven!) August 10, 2010.

( Click to see all the questions )

Sex!

Writing love, writing sex

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey talks about the ins and outs (as it were) of sex and love and fiction and the dangers that arise (as it were) from combining even two of those three things.

16. Do you write romantic relationships? How do you do with those, and how "far" are you willing to go in your writing? ;)

There are times when I want to punch those who write these god damned memes — what's up with the fershlugginer smiley, for instance?

Presumably, the originator is an American and so vaguelly embarrassed even by brushing past the very concept of sex.

Well, I'm a Canuck of half-Finn descent, and so ( you'll find no smiley's below the cut! )

( Click to see all the questions )

Making up the real:

Middle-aged white guy writes teenage black girl as heroine, tries not to offend or to Mary Sue

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey talks about culture, making use of the familiar, making it up and (sort of) appropriating the other.

( Click for Question 13, 'What's your favorite culture to write, fictional or not?' )

( Click to see all the questions )

More memeage: In this edition, Young Geoffrey discusses the act(s) of creation.

( Click to see all the questions )

9. How do you get ideas for your characters? Describe the process of creating them.

Character creation usually comes in two forms for me, and is greatly dependent on the where the story they're in will be coming from. In other words, my ideas for stories generally come in one of two flavours: situations or characters.

Situations are more common and, in that case, they often come with characters attached, particularly if I'm inspired by either a real-world (read: authobiographical) situation or a wish-fulfillment situation (think: smut).

Basically, characters and plots are, for me, most often developed intuitively. A situation occurs to me and I begin to think about what sort of person — someone I know, someone I've heard of, someone entirely made-up? — might be involved in it.

Or, and maybe more interestingly, I will deliberately set out to write a certain kind of piece and then struggle to find a suitable character for it.

Most recently, with The Jewel of Eternity, I was inspired by my then 15-or-so year-old neice's enthusiasm for the revival of Doctor Who. Simply put, I wanted to write and adventure story along similar lines, something that would please my neice.

Said something, I determined, would be even better with a female protagonist, and so I began to write, with only the vaguest idea of who that heroine might actually be.

If I remember rightly, she was first physically-based on a girl on whom I had had a mad, unrequited crush while I was in high school. But the character never seemed right, she never came to life; she was only a cypher with a physical description, being put through the paces of a generic fantasy novel.

In short, the lack of a fully-realized character meant the novel was going to suck.

I don't remember when I realized that my heroine's father was a Nigerian immigrant, and that she was a dark-skinned half-black girl, but when I did everything else fell into place (well, much else; if everything else had fallen into place, I rather imagine the second draft wouldn't be moldering away in a drawer somewhere. I need to pull it out and finish the god damned thing — which is the sort of feeling I was hoping this exercise would give me). I realized her mother had died very young, that she had been raised by a loving but stern father and had fought hard for her indendence from him. She was a loner and a bit of a nerd, but capable of socializing and even becoming good at the latter when the novel opened.

She became a person in my writer's eye and that made a great deal of difference not just to her but to the plot, somehow.

Which, I realize, is mostly a very long-winded way of answering Question 9 by saying "I don't know, most of the process of creation is sub-conscious."

But that seems to be what happens in my case.

I was going to post an up-date explaining what's going on with the store (electrician's coming in on Tuesday, after which we'll really be able to start building!) and how I don't have a life worth blogging about — then I decided not to blog about them. Meanwhile, sooguy has provided me with inspiration in another form. To whit, a meme (as always, I will not be tagging anyone, but feel free to steal if you're looking for a similar reason to type):

Fifteen films in fifteen minutes!
(May not actually be do-able in 15 minutes!)

Rules: Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen movies you've seen that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall with no more than 15 minutes. [Sheesh! Why are these intros always barely literate? And no, I'm not blaming you, sooguy!]

1. Star Wars, 1977: Of course this film takes pride of place on my list! I was 12 years old when it came out and there had never been anything like it before. Even more, I was a science fiction reader and so was doubly-thrilled not just by the spaceships but by the aliens. Pure magic for me then, and the memory of the experience will never entirely fade.


2. The Philadelphia Story, 1940: I think I was lucky enough to first see this at a rep-theatre. Knowing Cary Grant only from his handsome mug I had long been under the misapprehension he was "only" a romantic lead, rather than the brilliant physical comedian he also was. With a cast including Catherine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, The Philadelphia Story still holds up as All That A Romantic Comedy should be: emotionally gripping, witty, clever and populated by characters, not stereotypes, so that the inevitable happy ending nevertheless feels real and well-worth the voyage to get there. If you haven't yet had the pleasure, for god's sake see it soon!


3. Bolero (Les uns et les autres), 1981: Saw this in my early teens and don't remember it in detail — indeed, I suspect I didn't much understand it at all, despite the subtitles and my own command of French — but two elements of it are indelibly inscribed in the brain of the man I am now. First, Ravel's hypnotic and haunting "Boléro", which weaves in and out of the soundtrack like some wonderfully demented broken record. The second is what I remember being a fifteen-minute dance by a muscular, bare-chested man who by that performance convinced me that dance could be, yes, sublime.


4. Atanarjuat, 2001: A "foreign" film from my own country. Atanarjuat is an Inuit-made film about an ancient Inuit myth ("The fast runner") and as such is a fascinating look into a culture that lived as hunter-gatherers within living memory. It is also (if memory serves) a brilliant piece of film-making, with plot, character and the nearly infinite white landscape all coming together for an unforgettable cinematic experience.

But as the first item in this list shows, I am not here attempting to list the 15 "best" films I have seen, but the 15 most memorable.

5. The Raven, 1963: I first saw this on a black and white television with my father and younger brother. Those were the days when our television set was (even then) an ancient black-and-white floor-model that literally took three minutes to warm up and for which my brother and eye took turns playing remote control. "Ding! Ding!" dad would call when a commercial was about to start, and one of us would rush to the screen to turn off the sound.

   One of Roger Corman's many B-movies of the time, this bizarre tale of two wizards (Vincent Price! Boris Karloff!) engaged in a battle to the death has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Poe's poem, The Raven also features Peter Lorre and (!)Jack Nicholson(!), looking very out of place in one of his first roles. (Where Price and company were hamming it up for all they were worth, Nicholson looks like he's trying to act, seeking motivation for a character that simply doesn't have the depth to support any.)

   I've seen it a couple of times since, and it holds up well as an idiot's delight.



6. 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968: Boring, pretentious and non-sensical are three adjectives I've seen hurled at this remarkable movie and I can't argue with any of them. Kubrick was falling from (or rising towards, take your pick) being an artist whose primary goal was to communicate with a mass audience, to one simply in communion with himself — come along for the ride or not, Kubrick didn't care.
   
   I'm one of those who did and does find the film crawls at times, and who thinks the ending makes no sense at all. But I still think it's a magnificent piece of film-making. Mating "On The Beautiful Blue Danube" with space travel, made those ships (all obeying Newton's Third Law, something also un-heard of in SF films before or since), made the silent mechanics of space travel into nothing less than a balletic ode to the future.
   
   This is not a movie for the twitter generation, so be prepared to sit down and really watch it, if you're going to give it a try (which you should do). While there's much to criticize, there is also much to think about and much to simply enjoy.


7. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964: Another Kubrick, this time in black and white and this time almost without flaw. Peter Sellers plays the titular character, a semi-paralyzed "former" Nazi scientist now working for the Petagon; the President of the United States; and an upright English army officer and an innocent viewer would probably assume three different actors. But that's merely trivia.
   
   Kubrick's satire skewers the military and political worlds with a keen and vicious eye, managing to provide the viewer with all the suspense of a good thriller and the belly laughs of the best of the Marx Brothers. "Gentlemen, please! You can't fight in here! This is the war room!" Oh hell, if you haven't seen it, then repair that flaw now.


8. The Great Dictator, 1940: I was nine or 10 the summer the CBC played just about all of Chaplin's major movies, probably on Saturday nights. In any event, it was must-see television for our entire family, and a revelation to me. The closest I had then seen to Chaplin's physical comedy was Don Adams' Get Smart, and good as the latter was, it was clear to me then (it's actually less clear to me now, but that's a digression for another time) that Chaplin's work was simply on another (higher) level entirely. In the years since I've blown hot and cold on Chaplin, but the "dance" in which his Hitler parody plays with a giant balloon marked with the world's continents and oceans will stay with me always.


9. Duck Soup, 1933: What can I say that hasn't been said a thousand times before? This is the Marx Brothers at the top of their game — anarchic satire, pratfalls and wordplay with scarcely a musical interlude to slow things down. See it in a theatre if you can, with a few friends who like to laugh if you can't.


10. The Petrified Forest, 1936: My first exposure to Bette Davis and one of my first to Humphrey Bogart, The Petrified Forest was all about the threat of violence, rather than violence itself. Stagey, perhaps, but compelling as hell when I saw it on television and one I've revisited a few times since. Based on a stage-play, it's definitely primitive film-making, but primitive doesn't mean bad.


11. Bliss, 1985: I saw this on first release and have seen it again and again and again. This painful depiction of love, lust and the traps one can set for oneself, this movie is at once a painfully funny black-comedy, a heart-breaking romance and withering social critique, with bits of surrealism thrown in for good measure. It has a closing seen almost as powerful as Sam returning home after seeing Frodo sail off to the Grey Havens in Tolkien's version of The Lord of the Rings. I still start weeping minutes before that devasting closing voice-over: "He was our father. He told stories, and he planted trees." What an epitaph. What a movie.


12. Henry V, 1989: When I first saw this movie, I was convinced that Kenneth Brannagh was the reincarnation of Orson Welles; sadly (and like Welles), Brannagh doesn't seem to have managed to live up to that promise. But still, his Henry V is a bloody brilliant adaptation of Shakespeare's play, respectful of the original source material but fully aware that film and stage are two very different beasts indeed.


13. The Wizard of Oz, 1939: I saw it as a wee boy-kid, as an adolescent, as an adult; I've seen on television, on video and in the theatre. The Great American Fairy Tale, this is one of those movies that speaks (and sings!) to just about everyone. The Wizard of Oz is scary and goofy, cynical and maudlin — all that, and much, much more. You know: a classic. Really.


14. Casablanca, 1942: Speaking of American fairy tales, Casablanca has to be on any such list. Humphrey Bogart's reluctant hero, the brooding, cynical and tortured Rick Blaine is utterly compelling, as is his supporting cast (which includes not nearly enough Peter Lorre for my tastes; but that's almost always the case with him). Some of the sexual politics have, um, not aged well (I can no longer manage anything like a sympathetic smirk when Claude Rains' Captain Renault takes yet another young and attractive refugee into his office for an exchange of sexual "favours" for a visa) and, yes, the story manipulates its audience with no more shame than Captain Renault, but — damn it! — when the manipulation is as good as it is here, it's hard to complain too much. As for Bogey and me, Casablanca surely was "the begining of a beautiful friendship".


15. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, 1999: I'm almost embarrassed to end my list with this one, but what the hell — it is a mighty memorable movie. Foul-mouthed 3rd grader heroes, political satire, great songs, a plot that actually makes sense (more or less) and a generally hilarious anarchic sense of humour all serve to make this movie one for the ages. But be warned: If the very idea of songs with lyrics like, "Shut your fucking face, uncle-fucker" twist your undies into a knot, it might not be your cup of tea. For the record, both my brother and my mother agreed it was one of "the dumbest" movies they'd ever seen after I'd foisted it upon them. My mileage, obviously, varied quite a lot.

Hell. Where's Rushmore? Where's Election? And what about Apocalypse Now? Or Manhattan? Or Jésus de Montréal? Or Citizen Kane or The Meaning of Life or High Noon or, or, or ...

Well screw it. This was supposed to be done in one sitting ("15 minutes" was the original formulation) and so I have done. Maybe someday I'll put together a list of "best", rather than "most memorable". For now, this serves pretty well as a snap-shot of what I currently think of as memorable movies.

Woke up around 5:00 this morning, feeling a lot of pain. I lay there for a few minutes, staring into the darkness, loath to move but also noting that — since I was awake — my bladder was sending me signals, urging me upright.

Groaning aloud, I rolled — carefully, I thought ‐ from the futon and onto the floor.

That's when the spasms grabbed my lower back and wouldn't let go.

When breathing is painful, moving is pretty much out of the question.

I was on my side and, through sheer force of will, after about five minutes managed to turn myself onto my stomach.

By this point I was making so much noise, including such pithy terms as Owww! and Oh Christ it hurts! and Owww! again (and again and again), that I was more or less expecting someone to knock on my door, either inquiring after my health or else demanding that I shut the fuck up.

No such luck either way.

Gasping, I slowly pulled my knees up and that eased the pain a little. And within only 15 minutes or so I was able to get to my feet. Another 15 minutes — hanging for dear life onto the back of a chair with one hand and a low shelf with the other, while very gently lifting my knees in front of me, trying to work out the bastard that had hold of my back like a pit-pull on a poodle — and I was able to shuffle like a very old man to the bathroom, where I answered my bladder's call and downed 1400 mg of ASA.

When I got back to my room I found I'd managed to lock the door. Fortunately, it's more for show than anything else and easily opened via the use of a driver's license.

Which was in my office.

It took my probably another five minutes to make it there and back, but at least I was moving.

I wanted nothing more than to return to bed, but knew that would be the worst thing I could do. When your back goes out, the best thing you can do is keep moving. And so I've done, including a trip to a local drug-store for some pain-killers stronger than aspirin.

I really need to start exercising more regularly ...

Meanwhile, since I'm half-floating on the aforementioned pain-killers and so not feeling particularly productive, ( a meme, the idea for which was stolen from at least a couple of you. Click if you too are passing time idly rather than being productive or socializing. )

Time to procrastinate with a bloody book-meme. Feel free to skip ahead to the next entry on your list. For the record, this was yoinked from coffeeandink, on whose journal I've been lurking for a week or three.

Apparently the list is from David Pringle's Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels, which was released in 1984 or thereabouts, thus explaining the preponderance of relatively Ancient Books. ( Read on, Mac! Read on! )