A Month in the Life of a Writer

It’s been an unusually emotional month, professionally speaking.

It started with a rejection letter from the anthology, Corpse Blossom. Not all together unexpected, but it hurt nonetheless. By “not all together unexpected” I mean that the news didn’t send me into the typical spiral of “I can’t write”, “I’m not meant to be doing this,” “Why would God give me this so-called gift if no one wants to read me?”, “Maybe this is a sign that I ought to find a different outlet for my writing.” You know, that spiral that makes it hard to be as happy as I would like for my friends who get acceptances (Jen Orosel, David Wilbanks). That bitter, jealous thing.

Luckily, the month picked up. I got an acceptance into Dark Dreams II with my story “Black Frontiers” (the middle story of my black horror western trilogy). The fun of signing contracts, anticipating money, counting down to seeing your story in print, that’s why I got into this. The validation of others. Let’s face it, writers are egotists to varying degrees. Why else yearn to see our names in print? Why else would some go so far as to pay companies to put their work in print (and why so many companies exist to prey on those same egos)? We’re wired, and I don’t think writers are by any means alone in this, to seek something outside ourselves to give us meaning. So, now I’m cool and can stay in this game another minute.

Then I got the acceptance letter from Walt Hicks over at DeathGrip: Exit Laughing for my story “Since We Can Die but Once.” Now, I’ve never been in the position to have two stories accepting within weeks of each other. Well, then I was just insufferable. I was God’s gift to writing. I was ready to call up my web guy and revamp my web site so that I could declare myself “the new master of horror.” You know, put up something catchy like “why wait for the next Steven King? He’s already here!” (The key being to misspell Stephen King’s name, by the way). Maybe, just maybe, I was so bad that a friend of mine left me a voice mail that said “Little people calling pompous ass: get over yourself!”

Which means that maybe my rejection notice from Damned Nation did me a favor and brought me back to reality. It was one I really wanted in, but part of me knew that the story I sent was flawed (yeah, you get that sense about some of your work. Too bad that didn’t hit me until AFTER I sent it out). For some reason, I can't stop humming "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life."

And I’m hard at work on a new novella. Devil’s Marionette. I’m digging it. Writing is still fun.

It’s been a good month.


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I Need a New Image

All my life, I’ve been saddled with this nice guy vibe. Go check at my web site picture. Look at me. I’m going for that “he might be dangerous”, “vaguely angry Negro” look. Apparently though, there’s something about my eyes that says, “nah, just kidding.” I can’t escape it. Total strangers, whether at conventions, informal gatherings, whatever, have been known to curl up with me or start opening up and confessing the most personal things. I guess I have one of those faces (if you haven’t read Gary Braunbeck’s “Rami Temporalis”, find it and read it).

Of course it hampered my dating life. Women want to date the dangerous guys. Nice guys are who they settle down and marry. I always wanted to be dangerous. At least for a solid month or so.

It was put most bluntly too me when I was hanging out with my singles group, specifically, at a table full of women (clue one, women feel comfortable enough to flock around me). One of them pointed out that they loved hanging out with me because not only was it great to have a guy friend, but I was as harmless as a big brother. Harmless. Yes, that completed my eunuchization. Please place my testicles in a jar and put them u p on a shelf because I won’t be needing them anymore.

Sure, I’ve been a LaMaz coach for friends of mine (a practice my wife said is done now that we’re married). I’ve been their matron of honor (the official title, by the way, is “honor attendant”). Sure, on occasion I’ve been known to organize mommy play dates because I get bored during the day and can’t find it in me to watch anymore Jerry Springer. These shouldn’t mar my resume of possible dangerousness.

I can be dangerous. I’m in my basement laboratory now, working on my new, more dangerous persona now. I may be unveiling this soon. Watch out, I’m gonna be edgy.

Dang it, (hmm, clue two, he says things like “dang it”), like my mom* used to say, “if you have to say that you’re something, you probably aren’t.” I’m so screwed. Destined to forever be ... nice.






*Okay, my mom didn’t say it. I say it, usually to wanna-be Goths who think that they’re soooo dark and evil. My mom’s Jamaican. All her sayings involve fruit, talking animals, and words not in any dictionary I own.



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Something of Mine My Wife Will Read

My wife finally found something of mine that she reads regularly. My blog. You see, my wife’s not much of a reader. Never really had an interest (she hates reading and games. All games.), but she wants to raise the boys to have the opportunity to develop a love of reading. That, you know, goes a long way on that “maybe we can overlook this quirk of yours” train. It used to bug me that she never ready my stories, my children, the things I poured myself into for hours on end with the pains of mental birthing.

It’s a frustrating thing when you’re a writer. It’s not like I’m desperately insecure and needy. There’s not a sign on my head that reads “please validate me.” However, as a writer, I communicate through the written word, but it has to be read in order to be heard. Ladies, you can relate to this: it’s like wanting to talk through your emotions or problems and your boyfriend/husband is tuning you out.

Early in our marriage, when the classes really started in the school of learning your spouse, I would try to involve her in that part of my life by reading to her. We’d lay in bed, I’d read my nearly final draft, editing for flow as I went. Then, as artists are wont to do, I started to working on stories that drew on our experiences together. Then the questions started: where’d that idea come from? Is that character you? Didn’t I say that once? I soon made peace with this quirk of hers, quickly tiring of the whole “no, that’s not you,” “no, that’s not me,” “yes, you once said soemthing like that, but no one will know that you did.” Heck, I actually grew to appreciate, even count on it (depending on how personal a story I was working on). Moreso when my barber, my collaborator of my African-American romance went through similar things with his wife (who was a reader ... especially of African-American romances). He stopped showing her chapters after the third one, once the questions started coming fast and furious. It didn’t help that we made one of the characters a philandering barber. There’s a freedom to not having to write in fear.

It helped realize something. Spousal support takes different forms. I kind of envisioned someone who would read everything I ever wrote and would offer valuable feedback or critique. Then again, they could, not quite understanding that spiritual alchemy that is the creative arts, simply believe in you. Suffocating you with praise and encouragement. Maybe they carve out time (keeping the kids out of your hair while you’re off in your imagination) or space (a den, a writing cave) to let you do your thing. With the occasional bragging about you to their friends and family.

Or maybe, just maybe, their support could simply take the form of them loving your neurotic, needy butt for who you are, as you are, and what you do.

Well, things finally came full circle. I came home and Sally had that look on her face. You know what I’m talking about. That “you’re in trouble” look. That look that says “I’ve been reading your blog.” That look that says I have to cook something special tonight. That look that says though I decried women’s boxing, I certainly veered into stream of consciousness ramblings about her. I informed her that I deleted the line in my pro-women pronouncements about me not only springing from my mothers loins and greatly enjoying my wife’s.

She then mentioned something about some need of mine not getting met for a long, long time.

Oddly enough, that doesn’t weird me out as the idea of her reading my blog.


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Don't you hate it when people just post song lyrics?*

Whenever life gets you down, keeps you wearing a frown
And the gravy train has left you behind.
When you’re all out of hope, down at the end of your rope
And nobody’s there to throw you a line.
If you ever get so low that you don’t know which way to go
Come one and take a walk in my shoes
Never worry ‘bout a thing, got the world on a string
Cause I’ve got the cure for all of my blues ...




I take a look at my enormous penis
And my troubles start melting away
I take a look at my enormous penis
And the happy times are coming to stay
I’ve got a sing and a dance when I glance in my pants
and the feeling’s like a sun-shiny day
I take a look at my enormous penis
And everything is going my way

(one more time )

I take a look at my enormous penis
And my troubles start melting away
I take a look at my enormous penis
And the happy times are coming to stay
I’ve got great big amounts in the place where it counts
and the feeling’s like a sun-shiny day
I take a look at my enormous penis
And everything is going my way.
EVERYTHING IS GOING MY WAAAAAAAAAAAY!

(Da Vinci’s Notebook “Enormous Penis”)



*And if you think I got in trouble when I had the boys singing “I’m Wanna Pee on You” (from Chappelle’s Show) in the children’s nursery at church, them running around saying “Daddy play the penis song again” is gonna get me killed.

The Spirituality of Smoking

I have friends* that are struggling to quit smoking. As I read their accounts of their ups and downs of their battles, and trying to figure out how best to support them if I can, I can’t help but be reminded of the differing spiritual battles that we all face.

Yeah, I see spiritual implications in everything.

One of the things that I wrestled with for a long time, even without realizing that this was crippling my spiritual walk, was the idea of perfection. You see, the Bible seems to not only demand perfection, but it seems to imply that perfection is attainable now. In following Christ, I know that I have things that I struggle with. No, I’m not gonna share my issues here, that isn’t the point. Nor are they all that pretty, thus why I’m not in the sin judging business. [Not that smoking is a sin. Yeah, I’ve heard some people try and say that the Bible says that smoking is a sin--the body being a temple and all that--but you can only say that if you do some twisting of context that would make young Romanian gymnasts envious].

Then someone pointed out to me that I had a screwed up view of “perfection.” When we read the word perfection, through our modern mindset, we see the Greek ideal of perfection. We can’t attain that. Yet for most of my spiritual life, I was tormented by the guilt of failure because I couldn’t reach this goal of perfection. My life was littered with seemingly endless failures. But when you read perfection more through the eyes of the original audience, you find the Hebrew idea of wholeness. Being complete is something that we can attain.

How might that look?

The thing about journeys is that more times than not, the journey is the point, not necessarily the destination. It is through the struggles that we learn a lot about who we are. Yes, we may stumble, fall down, fail, but it’s what you do after that happens that’s the important thing. Do you quit your journey? Do you find an entirely different path to take? Or, do you get up, dust yourself off, then continue on your way? Wholeness can be found in continuing your battles, despite the occasional setbacks.

The bottom line is that my prayers (best wishes, positive energy, whatever makes you comfortable) are with you guys.



*Darn that Bible. We’re to love our enemies (Nick Kaufmann), those who’re easy to love (Stephanie Simpson-Woods), and those in between (John A. Burks).

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Smelly Cat

I have a pissy cat.

I used to have two cats (when we got married, it was pointed out to me that all my stuff was now “our” stuff, but the cats were still mine. Translated: I had to change the litter). Bob, named for an episode of Black Adder, was the older one. A friend of mine was a mechanic working on a car. When she popped the hood, she found Bob. Bob was small enough to fit into the palm of her hand (and she’s all of 5' 2" and 100 lbs when wet). She called me up, begged me to take the poor kitten, and coupled with my inability to say “no” to my female friends, I ended up with a cat. But I had to put Bob to sleep mid-last year.

My other cat, Dinsdale, named after a Monty Python sketch, I also inherited due to my inability to say “no” to my female friends. She found him at the Humane Society and insisted that such a cute cat with such an expressive personality had to have a home. And she already had four cats.

Dinsdale is jealous of me. Well, for me. When I first got married, he didn’t take kindly to someone else sharing the house. So he kept peeing on Sally’s stuff. If she had our laundry in a basket, he’d pee on her stuff. If she left clothes around the room, even next to my stuff, he’d pee on only her stuff. If he were particularly moody, he’d pee on her side of the bed. Now, if I came to her defense, he’d pee in the middle of the bed. So I quit defending her.

When each of the kids were born, he’d pee on their stuff. That almost got him kicked out the house. Luckily for him, we had to move, and our neighbors had a mouse problem. So he proved necessary.

Finally, he accepted everyone, or at least grew comfortable with the idea of there being other people in my life. Yet I hate that he relapses as his way of telling me that it’s time to change the litter. He’s taking it out on my couch. I spent today scrubbing my couches, trying to get the smell out of them. One may be past the point of saving. I’ve been told that citrus smells will keep him at bay, but I’m hesitant to spray my couches with lemon juice (I get ill thinking about the smell of residual cat piss mixed with lemonade).

Plus, I’m afraid of where he’ll start peeing next.


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My Wife’s Soul Mate

So I was reading this month’s Ebony magazine because, you know, that’s what Black people do. Actually, it was my mom’s Ebony, but I needed it for research (long story. Hmm, a pun: it’s for a long story, a novella in fact). Then I stumbled across the article “10 Ways to Tell if He’s the One.” So I posed the signs to her–because I’m such a girl–to see if I passed:

1. He Listens to You. “Before your man opens his heart to you, he has to first open his ears.” Well, hate to start the test off on such a rough note. Almost didn’t pass this one, but she gave me a (reluctant) passing grade on this one.

2. There is a Natural Ease and Flow. “...a natural chemistry that defines your interaction.” Check.

3. You Don’t Have to Compromise Who You Are. Relationships are hard enough without having to change who you are. I’m all about letting her be the best “her” she can be. I mean, sheesh, I ain’t changing, why should she. Ah, relational laziness got me a check here, too.

4. You Trust Him. With a bit of hesitancy, I passed.

5. He Enriches Your Life. “Your Mr. Right should stretch your imagination and ...” blah, blah, blah. I had her right there.

6. He’d Be Your Friend Even If He Wasn’t Your Man. Luckily, and unluckily, this was often tested. (Um, the longest we were together without breaking up was the time of our engagement, all six weeks of it. But hey, we were great friends).

7. He Pampers You. Got no choice, I’m broke, so a little pampering goes a long way.

8. Both of You Share Common Ground. Similar religious backgrounds, and more importantly, similar worldviews. Check.

9. You Become a Part of His World. Yeah, though that’s not a place she often wanted to go.

10. He Sacrifices for You. “The right man will consider sacrificing for you an honor, not a burden.” See broke comment.

Her parting words: “Good thing you turned out to be my soul mate, otherwise we were screwed. Next time check this BEFORE we’re married.”

My Sister, Venus

So I finally broke it to my oldest sister that I’m doing the whole pastor thing. (Well, she may be older. At some point in our youth, I distinctly remember her being four years older than me, but I haven’t checked lately. You see, once she hit 30, she started aging backwards. I don’t know how, but every time I heard her tell someone how old she was, she kept getting younger and younger. I don’t think anyone knows how old she is anymore.)

Even though we were raised in separate households, (I don’t have a family tree, I have a family bush) we’re like twins separated at birth. We have the same taste in television shows, movies, and books. We have frighteningly similar personalities, we’re equally vain, and we’re driven by the path of least resistance (read: lazy).

If I were a woman, I’d be her.

So not surprisingly, the fact that I was doing ministry work caught her off guard. After all, she knew me. The refrain of our conversation was “This is not going to end well.” For some reason, all she said she could picture was “the minister from Poltergeist, scenes from Constantine, and Jim Jones.”

She asked me if I was ordained. The bigger debate for me was whether I should do the whole seminary thing. Ordination, as it turned out, is not that big a deal. Anyone could do it with 15 minutes and the Internet. I told her that pastors were like vampires: each one could turn another.

“This is not going to end well.”

Then she asked if the family was behind me? Again, because they actually knew me. Now, I don’t exactly look to my family to support me in most of my endeavors. In this case, they looked at me with that same arched eyebrow skepticism that signaled “you will soon be in jail for some sort of tax evasion crime.” However, I told her “who do you want telling you how to lose weight: the skinny guy who’s been skinny all his life no matter what he eats or the fat dude that’s lost weight? I’m the fat dude, the sin expert. I put the “mess” in “messy spirituality”.

“This is not going to end well.”

The thing I run up against the most is that people have a very specific idea of what Christians are like and what pastors can do. Especially church folk. Then they torture themselves by being locked into that idea of spirituality. That’s just not me. I might drink more often than they think is okay. I might use language more coarse than they think is acceptable. To quote Michael Yaconelli in his book, Messy Spirituality, “Spirituality is not a formula; it is not a test. it is a relationship. Spirituality is not about competency; it is about intimacy. Spirituality is not about perfection; it is about connection. The way of the spiritual life begins where we are NOW in the mess of our lives. Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we LET GO is seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness.”

Long pause.

“This is so not going to end well.”

You Don't Know Hell ...

... until you've spent a whole weekend with the song "Ebony and Ivory" stuck in your head. To the point where I've been randomly breaking into song at inappropriate moments.




This is almost as bad as the weekend I spent with Tesla's re-make of "Signs" in my head.

Coloring Up Your Lives

Back to my friends who are adopting trans-racially. They are a white couple that I love dearly who are having to jump through hoops as they seek to adopt across racial lines. This has led them into the process of adopting a baby from Japan who is half black, half Japanese. There’s been a hiccup in the process, as the baby in question was born with some “health issue.” The adoption agency wants to know if they would want a different baby, as if they had gotten a screwed up order at McDonalds. [I realize that it’s the nature of the beast, but to my mind it all sounds eerily too much like a slave auction block (but that’s probably just me).] They explained that one) they are Christians and two) if this had been their own child, “health issues” wouldn’t have deterred them. So they are still on course to adopt trans-racially.

This is not something that they’ve jumped into blindly. They’ve been studying and preparing as much as they can. An adoption specialist told them that the best way to prepare to adopt across racial lines is to start “coloring up their lives” now. They don’t do anything half-assed and are really taking this whole “coloring up their lives” challenge to heart. The question is: how?

So they turn to me.

You see, I am their black experience. I get that: I’m the “only black friend” to a lot of people. You know, that one friend they feel comfortable enough to ask all of their questions, no matter how dumb they may sound. [And over the years, I’ve gotten some doozies. One person wondered whether or not black people ate salad. I had to keep in mind that they hadn’t met a black person until they turned 21. Their only experience with any minority was via television. Welcome to Indiana! My other favorite was “why don’t black people swim”? Okay, I was less sympathetic and I told them that if black people were good swimmers, we wouldn’t be in this country in the first place.]

I explained to them that they have a luxury that I don’t. They live in a suburb of Indianapolis. Not that they’ve been guilty of “white flight”, but my side of town has seen quite the exodus of white folks with the recent influx of Hispanics. They work at a mostly white company. They go to a mostly white church. Basically, they could go most of their lives and not bump into minorities in any meaningful way. I doubly don’t have that luxury since I have made a commitment to cross-cultural ministry (since I’m sick of the 11 o’clock hour on Sunday mornings being the most segregated hour in this country). I struggle maintaining color in my own life.

Hmm. This kind of puts us in similar boats.

I know that I make it a point to drive. I drive to a multi-cultural church on Sundays. I drive to my barber shop weekly (you don’t think this look comes naturally do you?). I drive to some of the black organizations that I belong to.

How do you color up your lives?

Horror vs. Sci-Fi Fans

There was a time when taking more than two baths a week was considered arrogant. Now, before you think that I’m rationalizing my odd showering schedule, hear me out. When television ads became dependent on soap advertising (you know, the reason we often refer to daytime television as “soap operas”), that started a cultural shift in how we viewed the regularity of bathing.

And gave us leverage to make fun of the French, but that’s not the point of this blog.

I’m making my preparations to attend the World Horror Convention in New York City in April. That got me to thinking about the other conventions that I’ve been to and the difference between horror fans and sci-fi/fantasy fans.

There was a sci-fi convention held here in Indy that I went to a few years back. In their program guide they had listed “Rules of Conduct”. Rules of conduct? What kind of fascist convention had I walked into? Well, scanning down their rules I came across rule number six: “Please bathe.” (Rule number nine was “please go home.”) The sad thing was, there are rules for a reason. When you think about it, there had to be a reason that in the book of Leviticus God has to say “don’t have sex with animals”. Now, we were talking about a convention of a few thousand people.

And there were several violations of rule number six. (A violator fit for some sort of jail sentence was this comic shop owner way too into his Magic: the Gathering cards.)

Maybe I haven't been doing this long enough, but you just don’t have these kind of issues with horror fans.

24

We live in the age of the anti-hero. The time of the Constantines, the Punishers, the Dirty Harrys. Webster defines hero as "a person noted or admired for nobility, courage, outstanding achievements". The picture that you should probably see next to that definition is that of Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) from the television show 24. Jack Bauer lives the story of one man out to save the world (though in this case, the world usually means America).

24 is an action thriller paced in real time (one minute of the show is one minute for the audience), the 24 in question being the number of hours in Jack's tumultuous day. The show seems to have reinvigorated itself this season. Few cast members returned from last season (of those that survived), most being relegated to recurring characters. For the past three seasons, Jack was a member of the Counter Terrorism Unit, but now he's assigned to the U.S. Secretary of Defense. With a new president, a new CTU staff, and their requisite stories, there are plenty of new faces to get to know and, as usual, no one is who they seem to be. As an aside, I don't care what you people say: I like Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub). We all know a Chloe (maybe the source of many people's dislike of her): a socially awkward (read: clueless), by the book, straight shooter (because she can't pick up on social cues), who's brutally efficient at her job.

Sometimes you have to "buy into" some of the story twists (as they sometimes strain the "implausibility meter", our ability to suspend disbelief). How much bad stuff can possibly happen to one man during one day (never mind that this is the fourth such day)? However, such concessions to narrative are necessary to make the roller coaster effect work. Starting with the kidnaping of the Secretary of Defense, leading into the nuclear reactor meltdown crisis, leading up to the revelation of the true bad guys, this season the show seems to be firing on all cylinders. Previous seasons have been marred by detouring, 3/4 of the way through, into lulls marked by such filler storylines as Jack's wife getting amnesia (season one) or his daughter being trapped by a cougar (season two).

The show ran into some controversy over its depiction of women and Arab Americans. Kiefer Sutherland even had to break character to give a public service announcement regarding the portrayal of Muslims as terrorists on the show. Assuring the public that 24 was fictional and that Muslim-Americans stand firmly against terrorism, the PSA addressed concerns from the Council on American Islamic Relations, who objected to the depiction of the Araz family on the show. Dina Araz (Shohreh Aghdashloo, House of Sand and Fog) continued the line of evil women in the show. This season we also saw another African American woman scheme her way into power, Marianne Taylor (Aisha Tyler), a combination of reigning villainesses supreme: David Palmer's former wife Sherry Palmer (Penny Johnson Jerald) and Nina Myers (Sarah Clarke). Women on the show tend to be powerful, like this season's Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) or victims (Jack's wife, daughter, or love interest du jour).

On the other side of the coin, a reason that they receive so much attention is because bad people are flashy. Being good is often quiet. Being bad not only is more fun for an actor/actress to play, but can be more difficult since they have to imbue their character with something sympathetic for the audience to latch onto. By that same token, it's rare that women, especially African American women, get opportunities to play strong, complicated characters, good or bad. That being said, the writers for the show aren't stupid. Though racial stereotypes are indulged on occasion, such as Muslims as terrorists, they are often played against the audience's expectations. Turning the tables because appearance can often be deceiving.

THE HEROIC JOURNEY
Jack does what it takes to get results, often with a consequence be damned attitude. It helps that he's conveniently rarely wrong and always seeks to do the right thing. No matter how it looks to his peers and superiors. Not quite overturning tables in the temple, as Jesus did to shock the religious culture, but heroes often upset the entrenched system, the status quo. The "pharisees" of Jack's world are bureaucrats. Jack has often sacrificed his reputation for the sake of the job, such as in season two when he risked being branded a traitor by the nation for his actions, bringing to mind the image from Hebrew custom of a man having been hung on a tree being seen as under God's curse. He proved that he was as human as anyone else with his drug addiction during season three that culminated with his death and resurrection.

David Palmer, the president for the previous few seasons, was a different kind of hero. His is the moral hero, as unreal a political hero as Jack is an action one. Read: to good to be true. As his then girlfriend, Anne Packard (Wendy Crewsen) says to him, "you've never been about what's easy. You've been about what's right." This being an action show, the political intrigue usually took the back seat (and it's virtually non-existent this season), but he underwent similar heroic tests. Sometimes this led to political compromises, but morally, he drew the line and stood by his convictions, again, ready to face whatever consequences.

They share many similar traits that make them heroes: noble, trustworthy, loyal, just, and good. A mix of patriotism and professionalism, as they are both true to their country and their jobs. Joseph Campbell, in his landmark work The Hero With a Thousand Faces, outlined the prototypical path of the hero's mythological adventure. Campbell defines the journey this way: "A hero ventures forth from the world into a region of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

Put another way, the essential story, the monomyth, echoes the story of Christ.

We see this pattern--separation (the reluctant hero taken from the world that he knows), initiation (the hero tested), and return (the hero returns as conqueror) in many of our great heroic epics: Luke Skywalker (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, RETURN of the Jedi) and The Lord of the Rings (Fellowship of the Rings, The Two Towers, RETURN of the King). For the hero's task to be worthy, he must overcome various trials and temptations. The more grand the goal, the greater the difficulties. For the action hero, the challenges are physical (as opposed to the moral challenges that David Palmer had to face). In season one, Jack chased down international war criminals. Season two found him tracking a nuclear device. There was a virus threat in season three. This season, he faces the threat of nuclear reactor meltdowns.

24 is not relaxing television, unless your idea of relaxing involves screaming at your television. Sure there are bombings, car chases, and shoot outs, but tension can be found even over a family having breakfast together. In 24, the serial suspense thriller has returned to television in fine form. Though the show is mostly about enjoying the ride, through 24 we're reminded that there are bad people out there and they can look like anyone. There's no racial profile for evil. All they need in order to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Being good is more than feeling like you're good, being good demands action. doing good, doing the right thing, requires sacrifice.

Jesus Loves the Little Racists

One of the tricky things in a multi-cultural household is the subtler aspects of discussing issues of race. We have two boys and, despite them obviously taking after their mother in terms of color and hair, we work at balancing the images of race that they see. We hang pictures of our friends on our walls so that they can identify our friends and see that many races are represented. We buy toys with various races represented. We buy books with pictures of different races in them. We’re very intentional about recognizing both heritages and being proud of each. Actually, some friends of ours are adopting trans-racially and one of the things they were told was to “color up their lives” by being intentional in developing friendships across the race line. So that’s been my catch phrase to people: “color up your lives”.

That being said, I never thought about how stupid race sounds to kids.

And I blame Jesus for this topic coming up.

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red, brown, yellow, black and white,*
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

This song inspired the following conversation between me and my three year old, Reese:

Reese: “Daddy, who’s white?”
Me: “Mommy’s white.”
Reese: “What’re you?”
Me: “I’m black.”
Reese: “No you’re not. You’re brown.”
Me: “Uh, you’re right.”
Reese: “Who’s yellow?”
Me: “Well, no one really wants to be called ‘red’ or ‘yellow’. But aunt Jen’s Filipino, so she’s Asian.”
Reese: “She’s brown like you.”
Me: “You know what, you’re missing the point of the song. Go to bed.”
Reese: “What color am I?”
Me: “Ask your mother.”
Reese: “Am I white like mommy?”
Me: “Uh ... how about I tell you about sex?”

Needless to say, that’s now his favorite song.




*Is it just me or did this line used to only be “red and yellow, black and white”? It always did remind me of the future presented in Star Trek: something bad must happen to brown people because you don’t see them in the future.

I Haven’t Seen Her Wrestle ...

I hate women’s boxing.

I hate the whole idea of women’s boxing. Laila Ali, Muhammad Ali’s daughter, is a professional boxer and there is a move to legitimize this sport (judging from the Diane Reems interview I heard the other day). I realize the irony of using “legitimize” and “boxing” in the same sentence, but that’s a different blog topic. This on the heels of news of Tonya Harding to wrestle a transvestite. Any story with lines like “[Her opponent] never told me she was a he when we were talking on the phone” and "As long as Harding doesn't wear boxing gear while she is engaged in pro wrestling, the promoter is not breaking the law" has to be read to be believed.

But I still hate women’s boxing.

Catfights are one thing, after all, everyone knows that they’re kinda hot. However, boxing, the deliberate pummeling of an individual, especially a woman, for the sake of bruising a brain to the point of losing consciousness is nothing short of barbaric. I do love men’s boxing. Heck, I’d be for bringing back gladiators, but as we’ve seen, cultures and cultural tastes evolve and different things fall out of favor.

My double standard makes me inconsistent, you say. Maybe. I don’t think women (should feel the) need to participate in every dumb thing that guys do. Yes, I think this includes war. I’m not a big fan of women serving in the front lines of the military. I’m of the simple philosophy of why have the best of mankind (women) participate in the worst of mankind (war). Granted, in theory, I’d have trouble if I found myself in a war and the enemy has female combatants. Though I suspect that I’d get over it, or at least make exceptions, if she was toting a gun aimed in my direction.

Sue me if you think my language is too sexist. Put simply, I love women. I love everything about women. My love of women makes me deplore the rising tide of a mentality of violence against women in our culture. It may sound like a leap from women’s boxing to porn to rape, but I see them of symptoms of the same desensitization. I’m pro-self-defense, but the idea of inflicting abuse for the sake of sport troubles me.

Don’t get me wrong, I like a woman who’s strong ... but not too strong. My wife sometimes gets a little cocky (my, what an unfortunate turn of phrase). She has two inches on me and can probably bench press me. She’s like Monica from Friends: freakishly strong. And she knows that I’d never lay hands on her, because though I am many things, a bullying coward is not one of them. Though, if something should go down, to echo the sentiments of that great philosopher, Chris Rock, I might have to shake her like a British nanny. You know, so that I don’t upset the balance of power in the relationship. Male chauvinist that I am.

Men and women are different. It’s true. Vive la differance and all that. Call me sexist or patriarchal all you want. I open doors, I try to stand in the presence of a woman, and I pull out chairs.* There’s room for the lost art of being a gentleman. I think we can balance that and the fact that woman are equal, capable, independent, should earn the same pay for the same work, but are different. Sure, they are soft and squishy in all the right ways, but I think you can measure a lot about a culture by the way they respect their wives, mothers, and daughters.




*Yeah, I know. A long way from my more charming days when I used to say “your arm ain’t broke.”

Hey Comics Fans

Just got this notice through Warren Ellis' Bad Signal:

For the next ten days -- from Sunday March 6th thru Tues March 15th -- Top Shelf is having its biggest web sale ever. When you visit the site, you'll find over 90 graphic novels and comics on sale, with fifty titles marked down to just $3 (!), twenty titles marked down to just $1 (!), and a slew of other key titles just slashed! All we ask is that you hit a $30 minimum on sale and/or non-sale items (before shipping). It's a great opportunity to load up on all those graphic novels you've wanted to try, but just never got around to picking up. Get 'em while supplies last!

Please note that this sale is GOOD for "direct market" retailers as well, and comic book shops will get their wholesale discount on these sale prices. Certain minimums apply, so retailers please email us for details.

Chris Staros
Top Shelf Productions
PO Box 1282
Marietta, GA 30061-1282
USA

Parenting and L’art Pour L’art

I'm guest blogging for horror maestro, Brian Keene. To read today's blog entry, go visit his blogspot here.

(Then buy his books. He likes that sort of thing.)

***
For posterity's sake, here's the entry:
***
Guest Editorial #15

“Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. ”
–Proverbs 22:6

My brother used to draw.

He wasn’t a big comic book guy, that was me, but he enjoyed art, pictures of all kinds, especially drawing. As a teenager, I could squirrel myself away in my room for hours scribbling in my teenage angst-ridden imitation of Poe. My brother would draw. Not only would he draw, but he decorated his room with this eclectic collection of picture clippings and random pieces of art. It was wonderfully imaginative: you’d walk into his room and be met my this collage of images.

My mother hated it.

Now, it wasn’t the fact that some of the art that he cropped and put on his walls came straight out of my father’s extensive Playboy collection (my father was less likely to miss a whole page from a magazine as opposed to my brother cutting out the particular drawing or cartoon that intrigued him), it was the fact that my mother didn’t get art. To her, art was not practical. It was a complete waste of time, effort, energy, and resources. To say we grew up poor might be an insult to poor people. Story has it that, when we lived in England, BBC did a special on poverty in England ... from outside our home. That was when my mother decided we had to move. We came to America and, by the time of my teenage years, had become a middle class family. Something, to my mother’s way of thinking, we couldn’t have done if she’d indulged a muse.

She was right.

Writing, despite our most fervent daydreams, it is not exactly the fast track to riches. We write, we indulge our muse, because we have to. In order to still the voices in our head. Because something in the core of our being crawls up and takes hold of us to move pen to paper. I sympathize with any parent who sees their child toiling away at any “worthless” endeavor, because they want the best for their children. The French call it “l’art pour l’art,” art for the sake of art, and it isn’t practical.

So down came the wall of images and we were encouraged to pursue real careers. Me something in science, preferably something in medicine, and my brother anything else he was good at. He eventually joined the Marines. Art may not have had any practical value, but the thing that always stuck with me was how my brother was never the same. It was like, once his creative side had been squashed, the light had been driven from his eye. I, too, fired my muse, but only for five miserable years.

Raise a child in the way he is bent. I am bent to write. I don’t know how my children are bent, but it’s my job to be on the look out and encourage, even support, their natures. I won’t tell you that I don’t stay awake at nights fearing that my oldest will one day say to me “Dad, I want to be a dancer.” Pragmatically, no matter how much that may make him happy, it’s not exactly the best way to support himself or a family (and he’s not living with us once we sing “Happy Birthday” for the eighteenth time). However, I also know the cost of discouraging his creative side.

This all came back to me because I went to visit my mother the other day. Over a civil cup of tea, she managed to squeeze in a bit of commentary asking when I would quit wasting my time with this writing thing. After all, I wasn’t making any real money doing it. She never saw herself as being particularly discouraging; this was just her typical brand of “negative encouragement” as she tried to steer me back on a course she judged to be more realistic. I only smiled at her.

And remembered how happy drawing made my brother.

MAURICE BROADDUS comes from a family that includes several practicing obeah people (think Jamaican voodoo), so he was destined to write horror. A full-time scientist and part-time pastor, he claims to only wish to become famous enough to snub people at horror conventions. To that end, he's already practicing referring to himself in the third person. Short stories coming out this year include a tale featured in IDW Publishing's comics during February and March and a story in Weird Tales.

Diary of a Mad Black Man

So I was reading comic book scribe Christopher Priest's weblog when I ran across a few of his comments about the movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

Chris Rock’s Academy Awards monologue, while falling flat for the most part on the dead Oscar crowd, nevertheless had the sting of truth to it: movies created for black audiences have been, by and large, workplace comedies, mostly dumbed down or fairly absurd. His location shoot, where he poled black moviegoers on what films they’d seen in the last year, made me hang my head in shame, that none of the interviewees had seen the brilliant Million Dollar Baby, which co-stared the brilliant Morgan Freeman, but nearly all of them had seen the Wayans Brothers lowbrow “comedy” White Chicks. My favorite film is Oliver Stone’s chilling conspiracy film JFK, followed closely by David Mamet’s seminal work Glengarry Glenn Ross, two films that had virtually no black characters at all. I’m sure none of Rock’s interviewees have seen either film.

There seems to be two factors at work: one, that Hollywood rarely makes intelligent films for black audiences, assuming that we won’t go. Two: that Hollywood’s assumption is largely correct: we won’t go. We want to laugh and party and have a good time, or deal with da hood and thug life and who got shot. It’s as though we have no intellectual curiosity, no cultural aspirations beyond a lowest common denominator baseline. Don’t get me wrong, I think Madere is funny as heck (though I’m not entirely sure it’s not both exploitative of and mocking of black church goers at the same time). I just wish more of us had seen more intellectually challenging films (and read some books while we’re at it). And I wish Hollywood had maybe made some films for our community that required an IQ over 40.

I’m really not bashing Diary… I will probably see it myself. But I’d feel better about going if I knew even one black person who’d seen Laurence Fisburne play Othello.

I saw Laurence Fishburne in Othello. Loved it: Shakespeare with a pimp walk. It didn't hurt that Othello is my favorite play by Ol' Willie S.

While I agree with Mr. Priest in spirit, my gut tells me that the brutal fact is that most entertainment is dumbed down across the board.

There is the matter of scale: there are a lot of "white" movie options. Plenty of Million Dollar Babys and The Aviators to offset the Dude, Where's My Car?s of the world. We've only the occasional Ice Cube flick to offset White Chicks and Soul Plane and other minstrelism.

I love to support good movies, especially good black movies, when I can. The hope is that by voting with my dollar, Hollywood would make more of them. That being said, you couldn't have paid me to go see Diary of a Mad Black Woman on opening weekend. That's like going to an anti-man church. i made the mistake of taking a date to Waiting to Exhale during its opening weekend. I felt lucky to have made it out with my testicles intact.

In the Event of My Death

I’m convinced that I’m going to die prematurely.

By prematurely, I mean eventually. If I lived to be 103, I will have died prematurely (if I can still get it up. If I can’t, then every day is a day too long, but I digress).

I’ve become convinced that the point of life is to have a big funeral. Big funerals mark how many lives you’ve touched. Not being a head of state or anything, I have to do this the old fashioned way: one person at a time. This whole “love others as you love yourselves” thing can be a pain in the butt. Especially, if you love yourself as much as I love me. Let me tell you, I love me a lot. A LOT.

In the event that I die before my kids get a chance to know me, I want to leave behind stuff for them to get to know me through. Hopefully between all of this, they can get a picture of what daddy was like:

1) Home movies. No, I mean literal movies. Every year for my Christmas party/murder mystery, we make a few movies from Broaddus Family Productions. It started with our sci-fi themed party (where Reese, my oldest, played the Alien bursting out of my wife’s belly), then our 1920s party (where both Reese and Malcolm played gangsters. C’mon, “Baby Face Reese”?!?), then this past year we re-created scenes from “Blazing Saddles.” Yeah, those’ll be fun clips to show at their wedding.

2) Sermons. I try to videotape when I give sermons. One, because my wife usually can’t make it to the services and I like to see what I look like (did I mention that I like me A LOT). It’s hard to leave a legacy of spiritual beliefs for them to get a feel for what daddy was like. I figure they will get me partway there.

3) Stories. I try to write, especially in my novels, from a very personal place. Hopefully more of my personality will come through my work.

4) Blogs. What, you think I do this for my health? For some way of further marketing myself? As some new exercise in vanity? Okay, well, yeah. The blogs pretty much give me free reign to do and say whatever springs to mind. It’s as close as I get to journaling. I’d like to believe that it’s hard to be fake when you talk/write so much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of pressure to keep coming up with even semi-interesting stuff to say all the time (I’ve known people to blow up their live journals under the strain). Then again, I’m a writer, so I’m over that worry. I think that everything I write is worth reading.

By as many people as possible.

Preferably with me receiving lots of cash.

But I digress.

I have a death pact with a friend. Whoever outlives the other has to throw themselves on the casket of the deceased (open wailing a must) in order to get the weeping started. After that, I’m torn about what to do with my body once I’m gone. I have two options, each of which my wife has vetoed. She just kind of nods until I quit talking. However, in the event that she goes first, I want to leave the possibilities open (she hates it when I do stuff like this. I even justified me not getting a vasectomy by saying that my next wife might want kids).

Option A: I’m cremated. Then my ashes are put into jewelry, gaudy costume necklaces preferably. Then sold to my friends so that they have a permanent keepsake of me. There could be a whole line of Broaddus Wear.

Option B: I could be stuffed and propped up in the backyard. Then my wife, whoever she is at the time, can say things like “Kids, be good or you have to go outside and play with daddy!” I’ll have to remember to put it in the will that if they move, they have to take me with them.

This is the stuff I think about in the down time between novels.