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Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
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2:39 pm - Funny Thing
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| Friday, July 11th, 2008
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3:10 pm - Since Only A Few of You Read My Other Blog...
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| Monday, July 7th, 2008
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10:39 pm - The Play's The Thing
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So, about ten years ago, I directed this locally written play that went on to be the biggest hit this particular local theatre has ever had.
Don't get excited for me - it was because the playwright is hilarious and the play is hilarious. A trained monkey could have done just as well as I did.
Anyhow, that theatre is remounting it this year. Six months ago, I was asked to direct the play. I said "no thank you - done with scripted theatre. Kthxbi."
Last week, the Artistic Director of the theatre calls me up and says "Hey, the guy we asked to direct the play quit on the second day of auditions and we're really desperate for a director and the playwright and I really, really, really, really, really, really want you to do it."
That is an artistic interpretation of the conversation.
Anyhow, Mrs. The Wife and I discussed this and agreed that she and I would take on this project. I haven't directed a play with a script since 2006.
Every time I think I'm out they keep pulling me back in!
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In other news, months and months ago, Memo and I started writing about every song on our iPods over at SadClownRep.com. Even writing four or five posts a day, I'm only up to Billy Bragg. The current index is here. Memo is going backwards, from Z-A and is up to Primus. His index is here.
If you are interested, check it out, leave a comment, and if you want, contact me and you can start your own ludicrously long list of songs. Memo and I will even try to listen to them, though we're both struggling to keep up with each other.
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Last bit of news, on that RPG project front. I've done an assload of work on it and my co-author (the lead author) seems to be sitting on it for a variety of reasons. I really want to get paid for this because Mrs. The Wife and I have started talking debt, savings and property. We want the cash!
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, July 6th, 2008
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6:09 pm - Today's Busy Schedule
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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1:14 pm - Quats, Post- Butt Trauma
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7:45 am - Entirely Completely Not Safe For Work Not Kidding
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| Monday, June 30th, 2008
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5:18 pm - The Hood
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Since my wife and I have started talking about having kids, all sorts of people have been offering advice to us. One of the topics that comes up most frequently is the topic of "Free Range Kids."
Now, when I was growing up, I was a free range kid. This means that I was able to go pretty much anywhere I wanted to go without adult supervision. This would mean I'd get to go through the woods, through the swamp, pretty much all through the cow pasture, and all over the neighborhood. I was given some rough guidelines - like "be back in an hour" or "be back by dinner."
Anyhow, the times have changed and now kids aren't really allowed to wander around the way that they used to wander around. In fact, kids are escorted pretty much everywhere they go. That first trip that they get to take by themselves, at whatever age they do it, has got to be terrifying for them.
I like to ask my relatives what age would be an appropriate on to let my kids wander about freely. I've been given numbers from "8" to "Never."
My Aunt Gertie is especially vocal in regards to this situation. She insists that she doesn't know the correct age, but that "12 is too young."
This is because of something that happened with her daughter, Rose.
You wouldn't know it to meet her today, since she seems entirely normal, but Rose had a rather traumatic experience involving a solo trip to our grandmother's house when she was 12.
Grammy had been ailing - skin cancer - and my Aunt Gertie was her primary care taker. Grammy insisted on staying in the old family house, which was in a wooded area on the outskirts of Bethel - our hometown. Gertie lived close-by - it was about a 30 minute walk - and would visit her daily.
Anyhow, Gertie was caught at work one day and had a bunch of stuff she needed to get to Grammy's place. She called Rose and instructed her to put the various items into a basket and take them to her.
"Stay on the left side of the street so you can see cars coming. Go directly to her house. Don't talk to strangers. You know the drill."
Well, Rose knew the drill, but she had never been called on to actually do the drill. These rules were a little abstract to her. Its hard to follow a rule if you don't quite understand why the rule exists. The first rule was pretty clear, since it allowed her to see oncoming traffic. But as to the second rule, she knew that the shortest way to the house was through a bad neighborhood. Surely her mom didn't mean for her to go through there? And if she didn't go that way, she was going to have to ask for direction from somebody. No, the rules, as laid out by her mother, seemed to be in direct conflict with logical safety choices.
Rose decided to go around the bad neighborhood, to the best of her ability, by cutting through a local nursery - as in trees, not as in babies. She knew the owners and said hi to them and told them what she was doing. They pointed her in the right direction and praised her for wisely avoiding the bad neighborhood.
Clearly, she concluded, not all of her mother's rules were to be followed to the letter.
As she crossed the field, she encountered an unleashed dog. A dachshund, to be specific. This was startling! The leash laws were very strict in Bethel. This was basically as close to a wild animal encounter you were likely to have in this town.
And then the wiener dog spoke.
"Hey kid. Whatcha got in the basket?"
"Just some stuff for my grandmother..."
Rose realized that she was now engaged in conversation with a stranger, but in light of the fact that it was an animal and not a human, it seemed like this was not an unreasonable action to take. How many times was she ever going to be able to talk with an animal in her life?
"Hey, yeah, your grandmother! Old lady! I know her! Lives around here, right?"
"Yeah! She does! How do you know her?"
"Oh, she and I, we're old buds. Hang out all the time. I can't quite recall the address..."
"1171 Oak Ridge Road."
"Yeah, that's it! Hey, kid, not to sound critical, but you're going the wrong way here."
"Am I? This is the way the Andersons told me to go?"
"The Andersons? Yeah, good people, good people. Confused, though. This is the long way. Follow that path there? That will take you there more directly. Must have been trying to keep you out of the flowers. Can't blame them, you know? Well, bye!"
"Bye! Thank you!"
Rose went trouncing onto the path that skinny dog suggested. The dog, meanwhile, made a beeline for 1171 Oak Ridge Road.
Now, why he didn't try and steal the basket then and there is a topic of some debate. One camp in our family thinks he was hoping for a bigger score at Grammy's place. Another feels he wanted to commit his crimes indoors, in private. A third camp thinks he was just playing with her. But there's also one camp that thinks that he'd had it in for my grandmother for some time and saw this as an excuse to take action.
Nobody knows for sure what happened between my grandmother and the dog when he arrived at her house. The police found my grandmother's body in the closet, a single bullet hole in her head, teeth marks all over her from where the dachshund had dragged her into the closet. The initial media reports suggest that he'd tried to eat her, but the forensic experts found no human flesh in his stomach.
When Rose got to Grammy's house, it was already getting dark. She cursed herself for listening to the dog over the Andersons. She was covered with scratches from pricker bushes and little, prickly seed things from half a dozen plants.
The door was open.
"Grammy?"
"Up here, my dear," cried a voice - obviously, the delinquent pooch.
"Grammy, you sound funny."
"I have a bit of a cold, dear."
"No, your word choices.
"Oh, I've been watching a delightful BBC series about the Queen, don't you know. Just trying to talk like her. The better to mix in with polite society."
"And why are you upstairs? I didn't think your legs could handle the stairs?"
"Oh, yes, well, that, you see, I've been exercising. The better to live a long and healthy life, don't you know?"
"And why is there a pistol in the middle of the floor?"
"DIE BITCH!"
According to Rose, the dog rushed down the stairs, partially dressed in grammy's clothes - and none of us totally understand that point - and lunged at her. The shock made Rose step back and trip over the couch, which the dachshund promptly crashed into. It yelped a bit.
"My nose! Smashed my goddamn nose! I was going to make it easy on you, but now, I'm going to make this slow and really enjoy this."
The dog grabbed the gun and, just then, a neighbor who'd been out back chopping wood, burst into the door. He saw the dachshund with the pistol. He saw Rose in disarray. Without thinking, he chopped that dog right in half, like a skinny log.
"Just wanted the damn goodies," mumbled the dog as his life's blood poured out.
Now, it is a stretch to blame all this on Rose - in fact, it smacks of blaming the victim, after all - but she was grounded for like six months after this. Rose commented that being grounded wasn't significantly different from her life before her one big day of freedom. In fact, she said she was grateful that she didn't have to go out, so in that sense it wasn't really that much of a punishment. When her mother finally "lifted" the grounding, she actually asked if it could be extended another six months to two years, but Aunt Gertie refused.
I've asked Rose when she thinks a kid should be allowed to go free range. She advocates dealing with this on a case by case basis.
"Some kids are ready when they're 8. Others? Well, I wasn't really ready when I was 12 and I'm not even sure I'm ready now."
She still lives at home, though her Mom has been encouraging her to get her own place.
Yeah, so Gertie says - and says rather sadly - "12 is too young, but eventually... eventually they have to go out on their own. Don't they?"
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, June 29th, 2008
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2:39 am - TMI Cat Post
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So, Grey Kitty has had this problem with her ass.
If you don't want to read about it, pretty much stop right here.
In essence, her butt has been swollen for a couple of days. She's been cleaning it very gingerly and it started to get red and inflamed.
So, today, we took her to the vet.
Our vet took a look at her and said sarcastically, "Oh, great my favorite thing to do."
He produced a glove and some lubricant and proceeded to feel around inside the cat's ass. He had a cloth next to the glove and it took both him and the assistant to keep the cat from fleeing. She was pissed off.
He announced "It's full."
I thought he was suggesting she needed to poop, but no! He was referring to something called an "anal sack." Apparently, cats and dogs have these things next to the anus that release something smells far worse than poop. Grey Kitty's had filled up.
Our vet basically squeezed it clean. There was like a three tablespoons of non-poop brown stuff that came out. That smell must have been dreadful because the Vet's eyes were tearing by the end.
He explained that this was a common cat problem that God created to keep vets humble. He also explained that it was his favorite thing to get to do first thing in the morning - or right before lunch. Sarcastically, I might add.
I figured Grey Kitty would be pissed off at us, but as soon as we got home, she was back to her old self almost immediately. In fact, she was happier and friendlier than she's been in weeks.
Also, we learned that she has this odd jaw situation, but I'm not sure I can really explain it. Suffice to say, she's ok.
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(18 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, June 28th, 2008
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1:11 pm - Careful Where You Drop Your Laundry
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| Thursday, June 26th, 2008
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5:42 pm - The Shoes
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I don't think they're malicious. Not anymore. Just industrious and, maybe, a little oblivious.
When I moved into the little cottage in Bonn, it wasn't because I especially wanted to live in a cottage, but the price was right and, honestly, it was the first place the real estate agent showed me. She spoke almost no English and my German really wasn't what it should be so, before I really understood what I'd done, I'd agreed to put a down payment on the place.
Really, I just wanted a quiet place to write. I'd gotten it into my head that I wanted to write in Europe and since my stories tended to be, well, Gothic, I figured I should go somewhere that felt Gothic to me. That would be Germany.
Anyhow, for about a week, maybe two, nothing of particular interest happened in the house. I wrote a little - deleted more - and spent a lot of time cruising around the Interweb, as per normal.
One day, I was on the phone with my mom back in the States and was complaining that I was having a hard time making my mortage payment. Not because I didn't have the money, but because the bank had screwed up (or maybe I'd screwed up) and my checks weren't clearing. I think this was the conversation that triggered what happened next.
I slept fitfully that night and when I woke up, I tripped over something.
A pair of little leather shoes.
The size of the two shoes didn't match and they weren't quite in the same style, but there they were. There was a note in German attached to them which read "Sie sind arm. Verkaufen Sie diese Schuhe" or something like that. Apparently, that means "you are poor - sell these shoes."
I was baffled, but I took the little shoes with me when I ran my errands. At the bank, I put them on the counter and the teller asked "where did you get those?" I told her my story and she replied, "Ah, Die Elfe."
"Die Elfe?"
"Like Legolas."
"Elves?"
"Ja."
She took the shoes off my hand with a smile for a few bucks, which I deposited into my account.
The next morning, I woke up and there were 15 shoes on the ground. Each one was a different size and a different style. One didn't have a sole. I gathered them up in a bag and figured I'd see if I could see them at the local, well, it wasn't called a pawn shop, but that's what it was. Since it was a cold day, I went to get my leather jacket and discovered that it was cut to pieces.
Ah, this was the source of the leather for the shoes.
I went to put on my shoes and discovered that every pair had had their soles cut out. This, I figured, must be why they stopped at 15. When they made the 15th and discovered they had no more material to make soles out of, they stopped.
I managed to sell the shoes, though it took some haggling. When I got home, I left a thank you message and said that I didn't need to sell anymore shoes. I left them out a bowl of milk, since that's what the pawn shop dude suggested.
Well, apparently, milk is like booze to elves. When I got up the next morning, I found the place trashed. Not maliciously trashed, but "woo hoo party" trashed. They wrote something on the note, but since the whole thing was soaked in elf vomit, I couldn't read it.
I cleaned the place up. The next morning, my suitcases and several of my hardcover books had been made into shoes. There was a note in German apologizing for their rudeness the night before. I managed to sell these shoes to some tourists.
"Real elf shoes," I explained.
I left the elves a note explaining, once again, that I really appreciated their efforts, but that I really didn't need anymore shoes.
Perhaps they figured I was just being polite, because the next day, almost all my furniture had been converted into footwear. I also found several skinned rats and noted that there were rat skin shoes. There must have been about 60 pairs, if "pairs" is the right word for them. Apparently, the elves weren't especially good at making shoes. They didn't really have the sense that there were such things as left feet and right feet. All the shoes were more or less the same shape, though the lengths and widths varied outrageously.
I had a hard time selling all of this batch and ended up giving most of them to a local orphanage. The unusual shapes and sizes didn't seem to bother the monk who received the shoes from me.
That night, my friend Steve crashed on the remains of my couch. He was eating cereal and, apparently, left the bowl with the remaining milk in it next to the bed. I woke up in the middle of the night to Steve screaming bloody murder.
Well, bloody was the right word. Much of Steve's skin had been stripped away and there were some new pairs of "Steve" shoes strewn about the room. Since the elves had been milk drunk, they were even more bizarre than usual. They'd weaved Steve's hair into laces, for example.
I got Steve to the hospital where the doctors started preparing skin grafts. I gave the doctors the shoes, figuring that maybe the skin would be useful, but the doctors told me that the elves had managed to actually tan the skin - the way you'd tan leather.
"Elven magic," one suggested.
I was very anxious when I returned home, but there was a note for me when I got there explaining that, once again, they'd gone kind of crazy with the milk and that there was no excuse for what they'd done and that they were especially sorry since they knew nobody would buy shoes made out of human skin - not even in Germany. They asked that I not keep milk in the house anymore and that I most especially not leave out any dairy products, including cheese.
Before the week's end, everything I owned - and all the objects in the apartment - had been converted into shoes. I couldn't write, I couldn't sleep, and my food choices were extremely limited. With regrets, I called the real estate agent and arranged to sell the house.
I left the elves a note thanking them for everything they had tried to do for me and informed them that, thanks to their efforts, I could afford to move back to America.
Maybe I was too nice in the note, because packages of shoes starting arriving from Germany - C.O.D. I had to move again, this time to a little cabin in the woods, but the elves tracked me down again. A UPS arrived with fifteen boxes of shoes after I'd been there for two weeks. According to the note, they'd tracked me using the GPS in my phone. They also apologized for taking so long to get the shoes to me.
Anyhow, I'm resigned to this now. I try to sell their shoes whenever I can, though not a whole lot of people in America want to buy elf made shoes - particularly poorly made, non-matching elf made shoes. I no longer try to determine what the shoes are made out of, since that way lies madness.
You look like you could use a pair. How 'bout it?
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(10 comments | comment on this)
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| Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
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2:31 pm - Nothing New
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We opened a improvised one act show last weekend and it is a pretty decent show. In other words, I feel good about it. Good cast, funny stuff.
The thing I realized, though, was that, because the line-up of our group is always changing, we are always sort of starting from scratch again. Sure, I've done a ton of these shows and so have three or four other members of the group, but for a couple folks, this was their first attempt at improvising a play.
I hadn't realized that I was frustrated about this until recently when i started working on a side project with a pair of very experienced improvisers. In like two weeks, we were doing stuff that it took my regular group two months to learn - and they are still wobbly at it.
I'm not putting my performers down - they are awesome - but several of them are beginners. My friend Anthony theorizes that it takes three solid years before an improviser really comes into their own on stage - and I think he might have a point.
Anyhow, we'll start working on our next major show sometime in the next few months and I know that, since our line up is going through some minor changes again, this means we'll be starting from scratch again. Oi.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, June 23rd, 2008
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3:13 pm - TMI
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So, recently, my "stool," as the doctor's call it, has been black.
I'm thinking "one too many oreo cookie shakes."
I jokingly mention this to a friend and he replies "that is often a sign of bleeding in your upper digestive system. You should have this checked out."
Come to think of it, I have had this odd feeling below my stomach the last week or so. Not pain, per se, but a feeling that something is moving through there. I'd figured "gas." Or "tapeworm."
Anyhow, I was going to see the doctor this morning, but I ended up staying up until 6 finishing the damn character stats for that RPG thing and then slept a few hours and had to get to work.
Anyhow, if I do have internal bleeding (which, since I'm not dead after a week of it, would probably be code word for "ulcer") going on, I'll have to survive until tomorrow.
Junk.
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(9 comments | comment on this)
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| Sunday, June 22nd, 2008
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4:04 pm - Avoidance
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I have to create 40 or so characters for this RPG thing I'm working on and the character creation system requires a PhD.
This is why I'm reading LJ and - yikes - updating it,
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(7 comments | comment on this)
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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11:57 pm - Kitty Michaels, Hunter of Mice
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| Friday, June 13th, 2008
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2:35 pm - How Did You Play Sports As a Kid?
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So, a recent thing I wrote at Metafilter got me thinking about playing baseball as a kid.
We had all sorts of our own home rules since I loved in a pretty rural area and there were never enough kids for a full game of anything. Football and baseball were always the favorites, and we had ways of playing with as few as three players for baseball (and we even had three player football, though we always preferred five person football).
Here's what I wrote at Metafilter:davejay: surely you played three person baseball? If not, you missed out on one of the great joys of youth.
You need a batter, a pitcher and a fielder. Batter recovers the pitches himself. Fielder is the outfielder, pitcher is the infielder. When the batter gets a hit, he runs bases. If he is stopped at second, for example, it is agreed that he has a runner on second and he goes back to bat. To push that runner to third, he needs to get at least another double; to push him home, he needs at least a triple, etc.
Each player gets to bat, pitch and field. Basically, you are keeping scores for three. You play nine innings or until you reach a certain score. We usually played "first to 11," which would take three or four innings of trash talking and hi-jinks.
This was usually played with whiffle balls or, barring that, whiffle bats and tennis balls.
Good times, good times. So what about you? How did you alter sports to make them appropriate for your particular location or group of friends?
Edit: Since Mrs. Michaels and I are planning an anniversary cookout thing and I'd like to play some youth-era sports, I also posed this question here.
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(4 comments | comment on this)
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| Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
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11:24 pm - Oh Noes! Test Of Emergency Quat Picture System!
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3:44 pm - Today's Quat Ficture
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| Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
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4:33 pm - RPGWTF
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So, one thing I've learned in the last month is that I don't really know how contemporary RPG adventures work. Well, I know more now, but I didn't know a whole lot a month ago.
See, my live RPG salad days were in the early 1980's. I ran dungeons by Gary fricken Gygax for AD&D and AD&D v2. These dungeons were largely mazes. The adventure more or less started when you entered the maze and more or less ended when you exited the maze.
Oh, sure, they weren't always literally mazes (though one of my all time favorites, Tomb of Horrors, was absolutely a maze - as was the whole "Against the Giants, Against the Drow, Against Lloth" series), but there was a always a map and a discussion of what was in each room. That was the "dungeon" part of "dungeons and dragons." Dungeon as understood to mean "location where nasty evil creatures lived" not as in "torture room at the bottom of the castle."
Anyhow, the major difference between the dungeons of my day and the dungeons of today (for, lets be honest, in my terminology I was writing a dungeons) is that the maze is more of a maze of time than a maze of space. I was writing an adventure where the encounters don't necessarily happen in specific rooms, but in a specific order in time. In essence, while there is some free play, the actions of the villains happen in real time even as the actions of the players are happening.
It is a much more challenging beast to create because one needs to walk a line between allowing the players maximum freedom but not allowing them to mess with the story so much that they negate the possibility of the next encounter. There's a lot of "if the players did this earlier, then this happens now" sort of stuff.
Anyhow, the dude who asked me to help write it now has my rough draft and is turning it into something that actually resembles a usable work. At this point, the main thing I want is a fatty paycheck out of this. The next thing I need to do is run some stats for the characters in the adventure. This is the first adventure written for this particular RPG system, so I'm a little clueless on what will be too strong or too weak an encounter.
Hey, I guess I'm as qualified as anyone, though. Nobody has ever written stats for this series before. They don't even have character sheets yet.
/dork
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(5 comments | comment on this)
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| Monday, June 9th, 2008
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3:19 pm - The End of Quality
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I proclaim the death of quality in the arts.
I do not mean that quality items are not being made or that people are not striving for quality.
I mean that the term "quality" is ceasing to have a meaning.
Many years ago, I took a class titled "Trance, Possession and Shamanism." Our goal in this seminar class was to come up with definitions of the three words from the course title. My fellow classmates came to the conclusion that everyone is in some sort of trance, is possessed, and is a shaman. I argued, at this point, that if everyone was already those things, those things didn't actually exist anymore. The words were meaningless because the definitions were so broad.
So it is with the word "quality."
There was a time when "that which is good" could be separated from "that which is bad." These definitions of good and bad tied in with "high art" (what the educated elite enjoyed) and "low art" (what the commoners enjoyed). For many years, we've held on to definitions of "quality" that were tied in to this antiquated way of thinking.
As the common man has become more and more powerful, that which was once considered quality art has been increasingly marginalized and reviled. What need have we for Shakespeare, one might ask, when we have Sam Raimi. In 2007, a poorly reviewed second sequel to Spiderman would still make more money and have more viewers than any Shakespeare festival in the world.
Yes, yes, anecdotal and I have no evidence to back it up.
But that leads me to my next point. When the printing press was introduced, every could own a book. When typewriters were introduced, everyone could write a book. Xerox machines meant everyone could publish a book. The Internet means everyone can distribute a book - and distribute it instantly.
There was a time when education was necessary to read or write. A time when there were editors and publishing houses to vet quality. Now, everyone can distribute anything to anyone. The filters are off, the guardians of quality are gone. Heck, the guardians of accuracy are long gone.
It doesn't matter if the art one creates is "quality" or not. Nor does it matter if it is accurate or not. One only needs a group of people who agree to read it and, for whatever reason, enjoy it and it is, ipso facto, good art.
There are people who like slash fiction.
Good art.
There are people who like making episodes of Star Trek.
Good art.
There are people who like to put YouTube videos of of themselves playing their original music while accompanying themselves incompetently on a folk guitar.
As long as somebody likes it and listens to it - including the creator - good art.
Since quality in art is measured subjectively and virtually anything placed online will find some sort of happy audience, all art is "good" to somebody.
If everything is potentially good depending on the viewer, then "good" has no meaning. If good and bad have no meaning, then it stands to reason that "quality" - also a subjective term - has no meaning.
If there is no objective standard by which quality is measured, then I argue that it only exists in relationship to one viewer and one piece of art. Your home video of your baby niece spitting up on your fiance's shoulder is, in effect, absolutely equal to The Godfather.
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4:53 am - To Celebrate My Finishing The Last Section of This RPG...
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joeymichaels's journal
