Lumberton, North Carolina

Should be named Billboardton, North Carolina.

St. Augustine -- I See the Lousy Parts So You Don't Have To

If you've been to Europe, it's hard to be too blown away by St. Augustine, but if you're with people who like to walk around alot, why not? I found the grounds of most of the museums to be nicer than the actual buildings and exhibits. But the Castillo de San Marco was pretty cool. Great views of Anastasia Islands and the port. I think the main thing is to stay in St. Augustine, at an inn or something. We're staying at a Hampton Inn right off I-95, so it's not quite the same. On the tourist trolley going through the city, I noticed a bunch of places I wish we had time to visit and regretted spending so much time at the "Fountain of Youth" (which is only cool b/c they have albino peacocks and lovely grounds) and the Old St. Augustine Village, which isn't that old (and is only nice b/c of the gardens, and honestly, considering how expensive tickets are, probably not worth the price). Cheaper would be walking and windowshopping through downtown St. Augustine, down George and Spanish Streets, and checking out the Flagler College grounds, which used to be gorgeous hotels. So if you go, stay at an inn on Avenida Menandiz and skip the Old Jail, no matter what anyone tells you.

We're driving up to Lumberton, NC, tomorrow. I just ate a huge chunk of mint Oreo bark I didn't even like very much. And it's raining. Now you know what kind of day (and what time of the month) it's been. I just took an Arthritis Tylenol since no others were available. Hopefully, that will not prove to have been a huge mistake on my part.

"my" "life"

Sometimes when I'm running to catch a bus hijacked by Neo-Nazi fascists on which my only living relative, my 5 year-old precocious niece Gina, is a passenger, or I'm revealing the secret of the slightly smelly gray depression in my backyard to a gang of teenage detectives who are convinced I killed their principal when really they should be chatting up the Western civ teacher who hasn't been quite right in the head since he fell down that elevator shaft two years ago, sometimes in these normal day-to-day activities, I feel it -- a big black presence looming over me, and I can see the darkness out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder if my optometrist is in league with the IRS agent-cum-amateur wizard who cursed me with poor vision as a child because my mom didn't pay her taxes. And then I realize it's just my personal sound boom, getting in my frame of vision again. It never ceases to amaze me the kind of shoddy workmanship you get from people who answer your ad on Craig's List and are willing to be paid solely in future signed first editions of the book that has yet to be published...

Six Word Stories

The Guardian always has such lovely ideas (even if they are Hemingway in origin). Unfortunately, they forgot to email me for my six word story (I count hyphenated words as two words, though apparently that was up to the writer in the Guardian piece), so I'll just post a few "genre" stories I wrote here. Enjoy!

She swallowed. She puked. It squirmed.

Long-lost twins. (Explosion!) Which survived?

Squabbled. Global warming. Revelation. Too late.

Circus comes. Tornado appears. Town saved.

Lost compass. Mutant kangaroo. Returned bald.

Self-sacrifice? Didn't save senator's son.

Peasant today, king tomorrow, beheaded Friday.

You got any? http://books.guardian.co.uk/originalfiction/story/0,,2041548,00.html

probably won't interest you at all but...

Much to my great joy, I realized my novel will reach 50,000 words in less than 17 pages, which will be about page 172, far fewer than the 200-225 page goal I have envisioned (my novel takes place over three days, and while there are flashbacks galore, I don't want the three days to seem eternal, and so the book must be breve). 50,000 seems to be the recognizable minimum for a novel, which in general I think is ridiculous. A story shouldn't be more or less long than necessary to tell the story you've set out to tell. So many books are bloated by the publishing industry standards, and this, I believe, is the reason we don't have any masterpieces. If your story requires 900 pages, then take 900 pages. If it requires 150, that should work, too. So many great novels are either novellae or huge monsters, and I am much more willing to decide if I like a writer by what they can do in a short space than I am to take on a tome without knowing whether it will be worth it. Anyhow, mine will most certianly be in the low-mid 200s.



The Discovery Channel coopted the BBC's Planet Earth documentary, which is absolutely breathtaking. This is the sort of stuff I live for, and while I'm sure it must be absolutely mental to have live in a tent for several days praying a motion sensor will alert you to the activity of some rare animal or other, that would be such a great job, though I think the sweeping panoramas of the mountains, deserts, and such would be more my cup of tea. God bless the British for going out and spending five years on this amazing series. I was a bit put off that there wasn't a woman in sight in the filming of this documentary, and I wonder why that's the case. I looked at IMDB, and I saw two female names on the production and editing end, but I'm still curious as to who made up the actual crew of cameramen... Anyhow, check your local listings and see how awesome our planet is and why we should do everything necessary to preserve it.

all is forgiven

As a wee lass of only 13, I had the misfortune of taking a film class at a camp that thought it proper to show me Tarantino's From Dusk til Dawn. I was utterly scarred, and I have never quite gotten over it, despite my great love of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. But now all is forgiven, what with this delicious quote from EW's feature of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's favorite movie posters (the bold is mine).

Tarantino picks: Thriller (a.k.a. They Call Her One Eye) 1974)
In 2003, Tarantino told EW this Swedish revenge flick provided the primary inspiration for his Kill Bill, and was directly referenced in Daryl Hannah's one-eyed assassin. ''They actually have XXX scenes in the movie,'' said the director, who gave it to Hannah to watch. ''And Daryl said, 'Quentin! You gave me porno to watch as homework!' I was like, 'They're only certain scenes. And they weren't sex scenes. They were just degrading.'''

Brilliant.
You can check out the poster here.
http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20015648_6,00.html

bad behavior

Went out and bought John Dos Passos' The 42nd Parallel (first book in the U.S.A. trilogy) and read a bit of it, already entranced. Also Craig Ferguson's Between the Bridge and the River. I'm surprised more comedians aren't novelists because good comedy and good literature (and good music for that matter) is all about beat, timing, pacing, knowing when to spring something on the audience and when to hold back. Actually, I think comedians should be allowed in the Writer's Guild, even if they don't publish their work. Theirs may be a largely spoken word medium, but they write everything beforehand -- they operate on a script of their own devising, so let'em in, I say! Comedians need health insurance, too!

I also saw Reign Over Me yesterday, largely because the last scene was filmed across from the apartment building on the Upper West Side where I babysat last year. I knew it was an Adam Sandler film, but had I known it was a serious Adam Sandler film co-starring Don Cheadle, I would have chucked my kids over and gone to stalk Don Cheadle because he's a really fine actor. Anyhow, the film was better than I expected from the subdued reviews it received. Yeah, it's two hours long, yeah, the subplot with crazy Saffron Burrows is bizarre and forced, but at the end of the movie, I asked myself, "Am I happy I spent six dollars to come see the matinee of this movie?" and the answer was, "Yes." Cheadle and Sandler have a good thing going together, and for all its faults, its worth the intense little trip.

Page 155. I must reach 160 by Thursday morning. This is my goal. I ain't leaving Sarasota without 160 pages, whether they suck or not. I'm trying to put in a bit of fun stuff, a bit of the ridiculous, because let's face it, life is ridiculous, and personally, I'm exasperated to the point of banging my head against cymbals at least every other day, despite my solitary sort of life, and I imagine if your family were falling apart, and you were criminals, or the child of criminals, or the hostage of criminals, you might be a bit exasperated too. And nothing really reflects that quite so well as the media, so there you are.

I bought two postcards from the Ringling Museum last Monday of paintings I found particularly striking. Since I am sure there are copyright problems with inserting pictures of them, I will simply direct you to Google or otherwise check out Moonlight Landscape, by Joseph Wright of Derby, and Roman Courtship, by Sir William E. Reynolds-Stephens, for a bit of art appreciation.