I don’t even have the where-with-all to think of a good title (I guess “meeting the family”?)

This past Saturday night, BoyRoommateFriend met the family. (Why, that’s a premise you could shape a Ben Stiller movie around!)

My family has a remarkable way of dealing with new significant others. Mum, in particular, has a knack for staging these so-called Events. When she can’t lure you into the trap of an alleged birthday party,* she resorts to emotional blackmail.

It's like a tagline for a horror movie.

So, she invited the two of us around for a family birthday dinner on Saturday, impressing the importance of the evening with an appeal to familial bonds so simultaneously sincere and full of shit that she could rival the greatest rhetoricians.

When I finally called back the next day to confirm that BoyRoommateFriend was indeed coming, she admitted that it was not really a birthday dinner after all, but (as had been advertised to the relatives) Meet Gregg Night.

So, believing that, come Sunday morning, I would find myself either newly single and/or disinherited, I survived the dreaded anticipation by telling myself that “at least there’ll be a good story at the end of this.”

But, alas, there isn’t. It went off without a hitch.

I don’t have a great story.

Yes, I know I received texts to the effect of: ”Can’t wait to read the blog post!”

So, to you all: I am sorry.

Epic Expectations. Giant Anti-Climax. It's like the evening was written and directed by this guy.

I prepare myself for the worst, not for things going well. Thus, I don’t really know what to do.

Not that there wasn’t the potential for hilarity. Half the family were hungover. The other half were drinking. Dad had a pulled muscle (tragic curling accident). The Boy stripped himself of his pants and spent dinner jumping up and down on the couch with his widgie in his hands.

These were all plot points I fully expected to tie together like a Christmas bow at the climax of the evening: the proverbial gun introduced in the first act, the delicate chess pieces shifting slowly around the board, waiting to move in for the kill.

It’s just that they came to… nothing.

You'll get 'em next time, buddy.

Nothing at all. No racist tirades. No baby sicking up all over everything. No uncle pointing out who has tiny ears or receding hairlines.

My sister even arrived late, bearing a huge flat of fruit from the zoo. It wobbled beneath her weight as she carried it up the stairs. I mean, honestly. A giant flat of fruit. If you were watching at home, by the end of the night you’d expect that fruit to be splattered all over the walls.

But nothing.

Rather, there was a frequent refrain of how nice BoyRoommateFriend was, how tall, funny, etc, etc. The word handsome got tossed around more times than I think healthy for his ego.

I honestly think they were all just shocked I’d done so well and didn’t know how to react. I honestly believe this. So, I guess if you catch them off guard, their knee-jerk response is civility.

That, or they expected I would die alone, and thus were doing their absolute best not to scare him off.

Yup.

___________

*I’m now convinced that my entire twenty-sixth birthday party was a ruse to get the family out to meet my sister’s boyfriend. (This line of thinking was also encouraged by the fact that Mum completely forgot to tell me, the alleged Birthday Girl about said party until the day before.) Sister and her Boyfriend had only known each other two weeks and he arrived in the middle of a drunken menagerie of miscreants, where, due to unfortunate circumstances delaying the end of her work shift, she hadn’t even shown up yet. In the ten minutes between his arrival and hers, he bore witnesses to a drunken Ashleigh bailing over the baby gate; the solemn, horror film-esque stares of ten silent, male relatives; a kitchen full of a dozen gossipy, drunken female relatives; a moth fluttering through the kitchen resulting in shrieks, flailing limbs, and broken glass; and, in all her glory, Mum.

2 Questions With Aaron Moran

A couple of months ago now, Taryn Hubbard, some friends, and I went out to visit Aaron Moran at in Harrison Hot Springs, where he’s the Artist in Residence at the Ranger Station Art Gallery.

We had a great night despite the raging storms and Cholo Ancheta directed this mini-doc about Aaron. (Fun Fact: I shot this. Mostly.)

Aaron’s work is phenomenal and he shares some intriguing insights into his process.

____________

2 Questions with Aaron Moran from thechololo on Vimeo.

only eleven more months until christmas is over again

“Douglas,” our chipper wee friend of a Christmas tree, sits discarded in the backyard. Having completely missed the free tree chipping the second weekend in January, we have no idea what to do with it.

I only remembered the tree at all when the snow thawed last Friday.

“Oh yeah,” I remarked to BoyRoommatefriend, “The tree.”

It looks so pathetic hunkered there in the corner of the yard, tilted sideways against the grass like a tourist who fell asleep on the beach.

Doesn't this tug your heartstrings?

The suggestion was made to cut it up into tiny pieces and squeeze it into the compost, but somehow the sheer brutality of such a feat made me wince.

This is the first time I’ve ever had my own Christmas tree to deal with. In years past, it was either the tree at my parents’ house, or we simply never had a tree.

Do we just leave it there in the corner of the yard until it decomposes into nothing, returning once more to the sodden earth from whence it came? How long till the needles fall from it, leaving bare skeletal remains? Will a forensic anthropologist, like television’s Bones, do a post-mortem, and point a wavering finger in my direction whilst snarling an hollow-but-accustatory: “You….” Will I forever be deemed incapable of harbouring any responsibility whatsoever?

Probably.

Maybe the tree will stick it out until next Christmas.  That would save us a quick $23.

It is less than eleven months away now, you know.

Douglas Adams to a Hollywood executive he has not been able to get a hold of

I love Douglas Adams. I feel we would have been dear friends.

Thus, I needed to share this. Full explanation and source here.

____________________

Douglas Adams
48 Bloomsbury Terrace
London, Nl-6TS

April 14, 1999

David Vogel
Walt Disney Pictures

Dear David,

I’ve tried to reach you by phone a couple of times. Perhaps it would have helped if I’d explained why I was calling: I was in the States for a few days and thought it might be helpful if I came across to L.A. so that you and I could have a meeting. I didn’t hear from you, so I’m on a plane back to England, where I’m typing this.

We seem to have gotten to a place where the problems appear to loom larger than the opportunities. I don’t know if I’m right in thinking this, but I only have silence to go on, which is always a poor source of information. It seems to me that we can either slip into the traditional stereotypes — you’re the studio executive who has a million real-world problems to worry about, and I’m the writer who only cares about seeing his vision realised and hang the cost and consequences — or we can recognise that we both share the same goal, which is to make the most successful movie we possibly can. The fact that we may have different perspectives on how this can best be achieved should be a fertile source of debate and iterative problem solving. It’s not clear to me that a one-way traffic of written “notes” interspersed with long, dreadful silences is a good substitute for this.

You have a great deal of experience nursing major motion pictures into existence. I have a great deal of experience of nursing The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into existence in every medium other than motion pictures. I’m sure you must feel frustrated that I don’t seem to understand the range of problems you have to contend with, just as I feel frustrated that I haven’t had any real creative dialogue with Disney about this project yet. I have a suggestion to make: Why don’t we actually meet and have a chat? I could be in L.A. for next Monday (4/19) or early the following week. I would invite Disney to bear the cost of this extra trip over. I’ve appended a list of numbers you can reach me on. If you manage not to reach me, I shall know you’re trying not to, very, very hard indeed.

Best wishes,

Douglas Adams

Email: dna@tdv.com

Assistant (Sophie Astin) (and voicemail): [Redacted] (between 10 A.M. and 6:00 P.M. British Summertime)
Office fax: [Redacted]
Home (no voicemail): [Redacted]
Home fax: [Redacted]
UK cell phone (and voicemail): [Redacted]
US cellphone (and voicemail): [Redacted]
Other home (France): [Redacted]
Jane Belson (wife) (office): [Redacted]
Film agent (US) Bob Bookman: [Redacted]
Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (office): [Redacted] (UK office hours)
Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (office): [Redacted]
Book agent (UK) Ed Victor (home): [Redacted]
Producer: Roger Birnbaum: [Redacted]
Director: Jay Roach (Everyman Pictures): [Redacted]
Jay Roach (home): [Redacted]
Jay Roach (cellphone): [Redacted]
Shauna Robertson (Everyman Pictures): [Redacted]
Shauna Robertson, home: [Redacted]
Shauna Robertson, cellphone: [Redacted]
Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (office): [Redacted]
Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (home): [Redacted]
Robbie Stamp, Executive Producer (UK) (cell phone): [Redacted]
Janet Thrift (mother) (UK): [Redacted]
Jane Garnier (sister) (UK) (work): [Redacted]
Jane Garnier (sister) (UK) (home): [Redacted]
Jakki Kelloway (daughter’s nanny) (UK): [Redacted]
Angus Deayton & Lise Meyer (next-door neighbours who can take a message) (UK): Work: [Redacted], Home: [Redacted]:

Restaurants I might conceivably be at:

The Ivy (UK): [Redacted]
The Groucho Club (UK): [Redacted]
Granita (UK): [Redacted]
Sainsbury’s (supermarket where I shop; they can always page me): [Redacted]

Website forum www.douglasadams.com/forum

frustration towards an inability to find a suitable writing environment

I think I need an intervention. This post is ridiculous.

Sometimes I can’t even form a coherent sentence. But badly wish to.*

Following a rather messy attempt to write on my lunch-hour, I found this in my notebook. Word-for-word, without editing, this is what my (literally out to lunch) brain ranted about:

Lost in mess of abstract thought, struggling to get the words on the page, choking through the fog of random abstraction, flashes of brilliance, avoiding the minefield of cliche, all while dancing around the true human universal answer – digging into the pathos of sheer existence – a true moment of creative genius glimpsed through the foggy  lens of a chipped tea cup, a pen low on ink, blank white pages stained with coffee in the corners and a quiet desk with only minor auditory distractions – a true moment of creative genius! Edging closer closer! Like running wildly through a hedge maze – just after this turn! No, this one! No! Keep going! Keep going! almost there ———-

                                                                          ————–

                                                                             ————–

                                                                                      ————–

Fuck. What? A cell phone. A creaking door? The wrong sandwich in the bag. “Genius” lost to mediocrity.

NOTE: Nothing I’ve ever written can be considered “genius,” but when you’re trying desperately to get something down before you lose the thought and then indeed lose the thought, it feels like whatever you’ve lost must have been the Best Thing Ever Thought.

I felt I needed to share this frustration, if anything, to make myself realise the utter absurdity of it all.

________________

*Oh, Christ-on-a-cracker, nothing makes sense anymore.

more shameless self-promotion

A variation on A Hatred of Clubbing That Transcends Generations, now named A Live Studio Audience has found a home in the virtual pages of the inaugural edition of The Kudzu Review.

Commence celebratory dancing in the streets now.

This is how I both celebrate and mourn.

my mum, the superhero

A short list of reasons why my mum is a superhero. In no particular order.

She wears a Batsuit.

I once nicknamed her housecoat ”The Batsuit” in an attempt to mock her. (It had to do with certain resemblances to the Schumacher/Clooney batnipples.) Like any person full of win, Mum turned this around on her would-be bully and now we ALL call it “The Batsuit.” She even put “New Batsuit” on her Christmas list.

Her costume does vary at times.

She cultivates a well-groomed alter ego.

Mum’s the life of the party, Bruce Wayne-style. She’s also got a ton of hobbies and career choices that seem to be perfect cover stories for someone who secretly lives the life of a crime-fighter. Travel Agent = Easy Excuse for Travelling to Exotic Locales in Search of Scum and Villainy. Wine Taster = Senses Well-Honed to Perfection for Sniffing Out Trouble. Dental Assistant = Imagine What You Can Fashion Those Sadistic Tools Into. Curling = Something About a “Clean Sweep.”

Subtlety is not always the key to blending into society.

She has a Fortress of Solitude.

Only she calls it “The Princess Room.” It’s where she keeps her yoga CDs, aromatherapy stuff, and all the family albums. You don’t mess with her down time. But Superman had to fly around the world to reach his little sanctuary. He would be gone for a long time, letting crime run rampant in Metropolis while he was off sleeping in an ice cave,* but Mum just needs a quick twenty minutes after a long day at work and then she’s back in the thick of the fray: re-energized and ready to kick ass.

We all have different ways to relax.

She rules a fear-based regime.

Just like Batman crafts the persona of the Dark Knight as so to inflict fear into the hearts of the criminals of Gotham City, Mum ruled my childhood home with the stern veneer of a ruthless vigilante. After school, but before she got home from work, Disney Afternoon would pop on the television in a fit of rebellious glee. The seediness of our after-school existence was apparent: dishes in the sink, shoes scattered about the hall, backpacks dropped in the middle of the floor. All of it: evidence of the brutality of the underworld. But lo! Suddenly, there would come a noise! The car in the drive: the tires, the engine, the slamming of the door. It struck a terror into our hearts just as deep as any Batsignal or glib one-liner from a web-slinger. Without her even lifting a finger, harmony was restored once more.

We have ways of making you talk.

She’s a marvel of medical science.

She scoffs at doctors and other so-called medical professionals. “Gall bladder? Bah. Don’t need it! Come on, world, what else’ve you got?!” She’s never met a tranq dart capable of taking her down nor a canister of tear gas that could quell her rage. She can write her own damn prescriptions, thankyouverymuch. I’m fairly certain she has the ability to stop time, Zack Morris-style. That’s the only thing I can think of that would explain her uncanny ability to multi-task (as well as all the tiny details she somehow knows about my private life).

SHE may have survived the procedure, but that doesn't mean the medical team did.

She has a sidekick.

He’s called my dad. He’s kind of Robin/Alfred/Lois Lane/Nick Fury all rolled into one. If Mum told him to, I bet he’d even wear the tights and carry the Bat Shark Repellant.

Even superheros have Hawaiian shirt day.

Global TV owes her a printer.

This is actually why I decided to make this list. I got a call from her today while I was at work. Apparently, her expert pub quiz skills were put to good use this morning and she won a printer from Global TV. “Great!” Mum said to the lady who called her, “I don’t have a printer!” “Okay,” the lady replied, “I’ll email you the details and you just need to print it off and mail it in.” “But wait,” Mum challenged, “I just said I don’t have a printer.” And then Global TV vanished in a puff of logic.

Her attempts to save the world from ME may have failed, but at least she gets an annual Mother's Day gift out of it.

She raised me.

That takes balls.

_____________

*Or whatever the crap he did in there. I don’t really know. I never read Superman when I was a kid.

for christmas one year I got a jem doll and middle-class guilt

This is the story of How I Learned to Start Worrying and Hate Class Differences. I’m pretty sure most of why I grew up to love Marx is encapsulated in this tiny little nugget of childhood.

This is the second time I’ve had to write this post (as I’ve already grumbled about). Whenever such a thing happens, I try to be all self-help sentimental about it and tell myself that this simply means it will be better the second time around.

That’s probably not true. I’m pretty sure I struck gold before. This is just cheap brass in comparison.

Anyway.

If you were female and under the age of ten in the late eighties, you may remember a cartoon called Jem and the Holograms. The entire show was basically one half-hour-long toy advert. It told the story of plucky, young music producer, Jerrica Benton, who moonlights as plucky, young, pink-haired rock star, Jem. An entrepreneurial music producer and a rock star. No matter who you were in the eighties, rebel or yuppie, one of these careers greatly appealed to you.

This was also pre-Spice Girls/Hannah Montana, but post-glam rock, so I’m pretty sure Jem was just a female Ziggy Stardust.

Apparently, this is a small child's idea of a feminist utopia.

This show basically treated rock stars as superheroes. They have secret identities. They wear flashing tights. They have magic jewellery. Green Lantern had a ring; Jem has a snazzy pair of earrings which are “able to project holograms around her and [she] uses this ability throughout the series to avoid danger and provide special effects for the performances of her group.”*

Because, let’s face it, you have this amazing “holographic technology” but, rather than use it to fight crime or do something useful, you use it to put on an awesome stage show. I mean, get a fog machine or something.

There are also villains. With their own secret identities. And some of them are after the holographic technology. Some are just rival bands. My favourite were The Misfits, even though they begged a horrible comparison to the real Misfits, which I’m sure left many disappointed upon subsequent trips to Sam the Recordman or wherever else you bought your cassette tapes in 1987.

Not the same band.

One Christmas, my list of demands to the fat man was topped by a Jem doll.

THIS was my Red Rider BB Gun.

Since this was the late eighties, Mum was doing her Christmas shopping at K-Mart and had to drag me along. I shouldn’t have, but I peeked into the shopping cart. Lo and behold, what did I see but Jem. In all her pink-cardboard-boxed glory.

“Mummy,” I asked, “Who is that for? Is that for… me?”

“No,” Mum scoffed, “Remember that box we saw by the door when we came in?”

“Yeah….”

“Well, that box is for people to donate toys to all the little girls and boys whose parents are too poor to get them any presents for Christmas.”

“Oh. Okay.”

My mind was blown.

Keep in mind, I was only about four or five. I was too young to appreciate the subtleties of things like class distinctions and tax brackets. My understanding of rich versus poor had been determined solely by Ebenezer Scrooge and Tiny Tim.

Shown: a four-year-old's idea of poverty

The only people I recognized in my life that I could clearly label “poor” were homeless people, who seemed to me then as exclusively male and middle-aged. I didn’t realise that, in real life, children could be poor. The idea that there were kids who didn’t get Christmas presents caused my world to immediately grow four times in size, just like the Grinch’s heart.

That the Jem doll would go to one of these poor children seemed perfectly reasonable. Still unaware of my parent’s own fiscal limitations, I felt guilty that we weren’t buying all the toys in K-Mart to donate to these kids.

But, come Christmas morning, I indeed found the Jem doll beneath the tree.

Despite my initial elation at receiving my most-desired gift, I looked to Mum, a desperate tear in my eye. “I thought this was for the poor kids.”

“Oh,” she lied again, “It was. This one is from Santa.”

“Oh. Okay!”

But dramatic irony is a solid fist of fury. Of course the day would come when I would learn that *SPOILER ALERT* Santa was not real.

I don’t remember how old I was when I realised this, but I do remember that I suddenly felt a great sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. What was this strange, unpleasant sensation? What happened to my secure sense of self? What was this feeling?

It was the first time I’d ever experienced middle-class guilt. It never really went away.

________

* Thanks, Wikipedia!

an explanation for the increased activity

So I’ve finished another novel.

It’s not about Pirates in Space. In fact, it’s probably the exact opposite.

It’s about two step-siblings who start an affair after the death of their younger brother (who narrates the story).

Very strange turn to take, I know.

Anyway, the first draft of the manuscript is done. I’m now reading and editing and devoting the next few months of my life to catching up on other projects that aren’t novels. Including film. And reading books. And having a social life.

I'm so happy, I could sit in bed all day and cry! Wait, that's what I did BEFORE...

I started work on this one at the beginning of September, so it’s been a short gestation period, but it kind of took over my creative life. Perhaps it was necessary to do something quiet and character-driven following a space opera.

I guess it’s the same for actors.

Anyway.

This is also why I’ve not really followed up on publication with pirates in space. In which direction do I want to aim my career? Genre or literary?

(first world problems)

I don’t know. But this does mean that I should be blogging more.

Unless the muse should grab me by the balls again.

way to out-hipster the hipsters, fox news

Much has already been discussed about Fox News calling The Muppets Communists, and that sound you may have heard was a billion people’s jaws dropping to the floor with a resounding “Whaaa….aaaaat?”

The headline “Are Liberals trying to brainwash your children against capitalism?” might seem like too much, but then when they proclaim that the liberal bias lies with the new villain being an oil tycoon (as if this is something that has never been done before), you groan with a sudden, deeper despair for humanity than you’ve ever, ever had.

Well, they did sneak him back in to the country in an armoured train, right? Right?!

An oil tycoon as a villain? That’s where you draw the line, Fox News? I’m pretty sure that on Hollywood’s List of Most-Unsympathetic-Villains-Ever, “Oil Tycoons” are second only to “Nazis.”

Now, the utter absurdity of Fox News is something one could rant about endlessly, but I would rather like to think of the detrimental effect this will have on comedy, especially Satire.

I suppose Jim Henson DID have a personality cult.

Satire is easily my most favourite brand of comedy. You can satirize almost anything on any level. It is what makes comedy transcend. It makes comedy an art.

So with this whole Muppetista scandal, the guy I feel really bad for is Stephen Colbert and other satirists like him whose entire bits are focused on the aforementioned utter absurdity of outlets and institutions like Fox News.

I mean, what can they do now? They’re screwed.

But so does this douche.

It reminds me of a discussion my roommates and I had about all the hipsters moving into our neighbourhood in the last year or so. We were no longer the resident over-educated/under-employed twenty-somethings.

We thought about how one might “out-hipster” the hipsters.

I suggested that the only way was to be ironic, ironically.

But how far does it go? How far can one fall down the rabbit hole? What if Being Ironic, Ironically catches on with the skinny jeans crowd? Can you even Be Ironic, Ironically, Ironically?

Definitely looks like Soviet Realism to me.

It’s like holding up a mirror to a mirror and watching it spin-off into infinity, the diminishing returns disappearing off into the distance. Before long, you’ve looped back around and the only way to truly be ironic is to be just absolutely sincere.

So, this is my theory:

As stupid as this whole “Miss Piggy Must Be Stalin” makes Fox News look, I fear this may actually have been their intent. They’ve “out-hipstered” the hipsters. They’ve been just SO utterly absurd that they’ve rendered themselves Beyond Satirization.

Which one is Bill O'Reilly?

So now the Fourth Estate is useless.

Yes, Fox News, The Communists HAVE won.