Watching Movies, the Old-Fashioned Way...

Hathaway's Drive-In in North Hoosick had a end-of the season closer we couldn't resist: Up followed by Star Trek.

We aren't really drive-in people. The heyday of cars and movies was a bit before our time, and we're not really that in love with our car. It's a small, efficient box that gets us from point A to point B. But it's fun to go and see a film in a venue that is past its prime, to get a whiff of the way things used to be.

The intermission video was particularly interesting. The animated bits looked like they came from Jay Ward Productions (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame). The non-animated parts were also interesting. Mostly, they were an exhortation to visit the snack bar (where the drive-in makes most of its money). Offering hot dogs and burgers was one thing, but watching a 60s-era bag of popcorn get a small pail of butter poured over it was horrifying.

Hathaway's utilizes the two traditional methods of getting the sound to the customer: stands with wired speakers on them (you hang them on your door) and a low-wattage broadcast that can be picked up on the car radio. The speakers are clearly the original material, large aluminum boxes the size an internal DVD drive. We hung it on the steering wheel, it was too chilly to keep the window open. The drive-in is not, incidentally, the best place to see a film with a lot of audio magic. The speaker is mono, so unless your car radio is awesome you're going to lose the audio designed for Dolby Digital or THX.

Fun was had. We cuddled under blankets to keep warm, watched Star Trek for the fourth time on the big screen.

Bottleneck

Well, this kind of sucks. Once again, I have a problem I wanted to have a year ago. My review and rewrite process has run into a bottleneck. I'm writing too fast or something.

I'm polishing several some stories I wrote earlier this year, and I'm bottlenecked by the review process. I've got five stories, all in various positions of revision. The writing group won't meet again until October 13^th. In the meantime, I've got at least three stories I want them to look at. I've also reached a squeeze with the on-line review process. I can only have three stories up, and I've got three stories up. And I need them to look at 'Secret Sisterhood' as soon as I finish polishing it.


Whine, whine, whine. It's difficult to be me.

It's Raining Good Reviews...

Brian Sammons, a good writer who knows Cthulhu from a Cthonian, has posted a review of Cthulhu Unbound at Nanci Kalanta's Horror World.

"I really liked John Goodrich’s The Patriot for many reasons. First and foremost, it is well written and very creepy. Second, it’s a war story, and I love war stories when they’re done right. Third, it’s set in a war mostly forgotten today, World War One. From start to finish, this tale is simply great, but as for that finish, it’s a doozy. While it is tough to pick my absolute favorite of this anthology, this one would be one of the contenders."

Guess who owes Brian and probably Nanci a drink?

A Personal First

I wrote the story I'm threatening to send to William Jones's High Seas Cthulhu II anthology in seven days. That's a personal first, especially considering that there were children in the house for the last two days.

So now it goes through the process of critiques, both on-line and individual. I don't think that the local group will get to it this Tuesday; we're preparing for the Sweating Ink-themed reading on the 17th. Most of the group will want to read their stories to the group before we read to the putative audience at the North Bennington Library.

So now, it's time to polish, polish, polish.

The submission backlog continues apace. Today I send a package out to Asmiov's.

What's Got Two Thumbs and Was Name-Checked by Fangoria's website?

Me.

New Battle Report!

Iren Bear has put together yet another awesome battle report for Youtube. I provide the voices and a few of the special effects, but it's really all him.

And Now the Dreams

Whenever I'm coming off a big pile of stress, I get very vivid dreams I can remember. Most of the time, I sleep soundly, and don't remember my dreams. The week or ten days following something stressful, this changes. So last week was a big one for strange things happening in my sleep.

These aren't anxiety dreams or nightmares, they just seem to be my brain letting off some steam after being put through a wringer. But the nature of them has changed since I noticed this trend twenty years ago. I used to get just flashes of nonsensical scenes mashed together with weird emotional cues. Now I seem to get plots. Not necessarily good plots, but events to definitely chain with each other.

Hm. There's an observation about amateur neurolinguistic programming in there, but I'm not sure what it should be.

Oh Shit

I stocked a copy of Space Hulk last week. I was going to ask the store owner to hold it aside for my brother, but he wasn't in, so I didn't. I put it on the shelf.

Only it turns out I didn't. Because the product is not out yet, and because it doesn't look like I remember.

Holy shit. I know it didn't happen, but I can remember it, I remember being surprised that it was thinner than expected, and I remember the cover art, which was the same art for the computer game which I bought more than six years ago. It is nothing like what the game's cover art used to look like, nor is it like what the game will look like when re-released.

Holy shit, I still can't believe it didn't happen. I remember it. Images and emotions, like I remember kissing the Queen of Science this morning.

And I'm worried. Yeah, stress and all that, but I've never remembered something that didn't happen.

Not Again Soon, I Think

Carmen is a success. Not a financial one, not yet, but certainly an artistic success. Although the audiences have not filled the theater, they have applauded long enough that we have taken two and three company bows. So clearly, a lot of something is going right.

It is not, however, a personal success. I'm not enjoying the performances. I spend a lot of time backstage, and I think about what I want to be writing. Which I would be doing, if I wasn't in this opera. Don't get me wrong, I'm working with remarkable people who are very artistic and completely not divas. They're all down-to-earth and very practical about their work, and good fun to be with.

But I'm not enjoying it. I'm not getting a thrill out of audience attention, I'm not serene and satisfied at the end of the performance. It's just work. Hot, time-consuming, unpaid work during which which I am frequently uncomfortable. What am I getting out of this again?

It feels like acting, like writing, is something a lot of people aspire to, and those who love it will pursue it. As a result, there is a glut of wanna-be-actors, and directors feel that can do as they wish because there's always someone else who wants to act (or, in this case, sing).

It's significant that I didn't audition for this part, as the majority of the rest of the cast did. In fact, I understand the competition to get in this was pretty fierce. But I didn't have to audition, I just walked into the part.

Not again soon, I think.


On a different topic, David Conyers has a thoughtful essay on why he enjoys collaboration. I don't link to this specifically because he mentions me, but he does mention me.

It's All About Me

As from Commentary! The Musical.

I have managed to work my Carmen character, Lilas Pastia, from background character to the major force for all the unpleasantness in the opera. Before, I was simply the tavern-keeper and Carmen's pimp, the stock character of the crooked tavern-keeper cut from the same cloth as Les Miserable's Thenardier. Now, I push Zuniga (Don Jose's commander) onto Dom, Jose's knife, and blame him for it. In the next act, when we fight and he kills me in a fit of vengeance, my death has become the defining break between him and Carmen.

So the spiral of operatic death in this production of Carmen is all my character's fault. Not bad for someone who doesn't sing, and basically came in as a bit part.