In honor of the New Year, I present this short story, "Love in the Year of the Comet," which originally appeared in City Limits, the official literary anthology of the Panama City Centennial (Vol. 1, 2007).
Today's Word: Change.
Today's Pick: Ex Machina, a comicbook series by Brian Vaughan (Y: The Last Man, Lost TV series) and Tony Harris (Starman). I've been buying the collections, which are now up to volume seven. The art is incredible and was the hook for me (some of the collections show the photo reference-to-finished art, which you have to see to believe). But the story is the substance and reason for coming back volume after volume: Mitchell Hundred is the only superhero in a world exactly like our own, and on Sept. 11, 2001, he managed to stop the second jet from striking the World Trade Center. That's all backstory that gets revealed a little along. He's now mayor of New York City, and the politics and intrigue of that is the central storyline. You owe it to yourself to read this. It's smart, hip, controversial and thoughtful.
Peace.
Friday, January 02, 2009
Thursday, January 01, 2009
A New Year, A New Mission
Welcome to 2009.
The past year has been difficult for many of us, but a new year (while admittedly an imaginary demarkation) promises a fresh start. I'm taking that as my theme today and each day for the foreseeable future, by breathing fresh life into this old blog.
If you check previous entries, you'll see that this blog has been many things, mostly random. This year, it will be updated daily with all kinds of fresh content.
You see, I make my living on the Web, as the online content editor for The News Herald in Panama City, FL, where I also write a weekly column for the Lifestyle section and blog regularly. I also have an ongoing daily fiction project called 366 Days, at the PCityLive site, which I've been doing for just over five months.
This blog will carry those updates, as well as a couple of fresh features, such as journal entries, updates on how I spend my time (books, music, movies, TV, art and other distractions), a word of the day (see below), ruminations on the life of a professional writer, updates on my current publication projects (see this link to see what has gone before) and much more.
I hope you'll join in by sharing your thoughts, reactions, and favorite distractions as well.
Today's Word: Peace.
Today's Pick: One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was Tori Amos Comicbook Tattoo, a collection of leading and independent writers and artists who created short tales inspired by Amos' songs. My friend, Chris Arrant, wrote a tale inspired by "Glory of the 80s," which was illustrated by the talented Star St. Germain. The introduction is by Neil Gaiman.
Peace.
The past year has been difficult for many of us, but a new year (while admittedly an imaginary demarkation) promises a fresh start. I'm taking that as my theme today and each day for the foreseeable future, by breathing fresh life into this old blog.
If you check previous entries, you'll see that this blog has been many things, mostly random. This year, it will be updated daily with all kinds of fresh content.
You see, I make my living on the Web, as the online content editor for The News Herald in Panama City, FL, where I also write a weekly column for the Lifestyle section and blog regularly. I also have an ongoing daily fiction project called 366 Days, at the PCityLive site, which I've been doing for just over five months.
This blog will carry those updates, as well as a couple of fresh features, such as journal entries, updates on how I spend my time (books, music, movies, TV, art and other distractions), a word of the day (see below), ruminations on the life of a professional writer, updates on my current publication projects (see this link to see what has gone before) and much more.
I hope you'll join in by sharing your thoughts, reactions, and favorite distractions as well.
Today's Word: Peace.
Today's Pick: One of my favorite gifts this Christmas was Tori Amos Comicbook Tattoo, a collection of leading and independent writers and artists who created short tales inspired by Amos' songs. My friend, Chris Arrant, wrote a tale inspired by "Glory of the 80s," which was illustrated by the talented Star St. Germain. The introduction is by Neil Gaiman.
Peace.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Which mask is yours, and what is under it?
There are stories behind the masks. Not just the ones you’ll see hanging in restaurants and shops over the next couple of weeks in downtown Panama City, or those at the Mask Parade gala, but also those we don each day when we stand in front of the mirror to decide what face we’ll put forth in the world.
These are the stories we hide with our masks, stories not in the mask itself but in the decision behind it. Look in the eyes behind the holes in the mask and you can see the story. Sometimes, then, when only the mask remains behind, we must use it to interpret the story by reading the negative spaces — sure, the mask has things to say, but what about things it doesn’t say? Things it was designed to hide?
These are the stories we tell with our masks, the bright things hidden, dark things revealed.
These are the sorts of ideas I mull when I consider the blank slate of a plaster mask for Covenant Hospice’s annual Mask Parade. I’ve been privileged each of the past four years to paint or otherwise construct a piece of (questionable) artwork around one of their blanks, and maybe I’ve thought too much about such things.
Maybe, considering the outcomes, I’ve thought too little.
You can be the judge this weekend, as the community is invited to the opening reception of Covenant’s Mask Parade Tour and Exhibit on Friday from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the Visual Arts Center, 19 E. Fourth St. After a recep tion, guests can participate in a guided walking tour of masks on display at The Pink Alligator, Olde Towne Antique Mall and Chef Imondi’s, with a final stop at Modeo’s for hors d’oeuvres and beverages.
According to a news release, the Mask Parade features more than 80 one-of-a-kind masks created by local artists and national celebrities, including Paul Brent, Roland Hockett, Courteney Cox, Ray Romano and Bill Cosby. The Junior Museum also has an exhibit created by children as part of the Junior Mask Project.
Admission to the tour is free. For more information, call 785-3040. The masks will be on display at these locations until Feb. 9, or to see them online, go to www.convenanthospice.org/mask
The fourth annual Mask Parade Gala is Feb. 11 at the Edgewater Beach Resort in Panama City Beach. Tickets are $75 per person. Attire is semi-formal. For tickets and information, call 785-3040 or e-mail maskparade@covenanthospice.org
The gala includes dinner, bidding on the masks, and vignette performances based on the sights and sounds of destinations around the world. Backgrounds for performances in the “golden age of travel” are the creations of art students from each of Bay County’s high schools. Proceeds benefit Hospice efforts in the Panama City area, providing services to patients and loved ones coping with end-of-life issues and illnesses, when masks are stripped away and only our stories — our memories — sustain us.
Peace.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
Fan mail can save your life
This came in the mail today at work, in a small green envelope, written in a steady hand in clear print on lined three-ring notebook paper:
Sunday, September 18, 2005
I’ve always loved writing. My words told what my art work couldn’t. I’m 16 now, a junior in high school, still trying to decide what to do with my life. Writing would be my first choice, but I never thought I’d make it, so I kind of gave up on excelling in it. (Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t stop me from writing.) You can’t stop your stream of consciousness.
One day I found your column. “Listening about our generations,” was the name of the article. The best if I have ever seen it! Now, that article among others are tacked up on my bulletin board. The subjects you write about and the way you write about them is what got me reading. Your articles used to be just a part of my Sunday morning routine. Now they’re an inspiration.
Thank you for showing me that I can be whatever I put my heart into.
As you say …
Peace.
(Name withheld to protect the minor)
****
And here’s the column she to which she refers:
“Undercurrents”
Sunday, January 16, 2005
“Listening about our generations”
There came a time when he couldn’t find his CDs until he looked for them in his children’s rooms — often Tori Amos and The Cranberries in the girl’s room, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the boy’s room. His parents never had this problem, the man thought.
But then something shifted with the seasons, and he recognized a special, strange moment of time, a turning of the slow metronome.
Listen to this, the boy said, and put on a CD by a band called The Killers. My friend Laura loaned it to me, the boy said. Listen to this, he said, and put on a CD by a band called The Postal Service.
Can I borrow your Garden State soundtrack, the old man asked? Can I borrow your Keane? Your Cure? Any friends loan you anything else?
Sure, the boy now buys his own Nirvana — a sign of the old man’s influence? — and he listens to Sinatra, though the man wondered if that’s because of his own sometime Sunday mornings playing old big band platters and jazz or if it’s because of school exposures to stage plays and Guys and Dolls.
And he wondered, where does the parent end and the child begin?
On a recent Saturday morning, the boy came back from a garage sale lugging a cassette carrier filled with a hundred 20-year-old tapes. Among them: Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, Talking Heads, Thomas Dolby, Fun Boy Three, Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, more Bowie and Pop, The Motels, Til Tuesday, Cyndi Lauper, Lene Lovich, The Police.
(So much alike, the boy and the man. The man thought he had better warn the boy about that, but knowing himself he figured the boy would not understand.)
This was music of the old man’s day. He had much of it on vinyl. He could tell stories about these albums and times surrounding them.
So he told stories and thought about how music really is the universal language, though everyone speaks it differently. Some recognize it from a distance, and some know it only subliminally. Others may not play, but they speak it straight from the soul. (“I got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” so the song goes.)
That is — music plays some people like an instrument, evokes emotions and memories, informs their lives. It can be so much a part of them that, even if they can’t carry a tune or pluck a string, it’s inseparable from their personalities.
They need music. They relate it to times in their lives. They feel it deep inside where empty places need to be filled. They use it to get through their days and nights. When they can’t talk, at least they can listen. And sometimes they can listen together and begin to understand.
Or at least borrow each other’s CDs.
Peace.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
I’ve always loved writing. My words told what my art work couldn’t. I’m 16 now, a junior in high school, still trying to decide what to do with my life. Writing would be my first choice, but I never thought I’d make it, so I kind of gave up on excelling in it. (Don’t get me wrong, that didn’t stop me from writing.) You can’t stop your stream of consciousness.
One day I found your column. “Listening about our generations,” was the name of the article. The best if I have ever seen it! Now, that article among others are tacked up on my bulletin board. The subjects you write about and the way you write about them is what got me reading. Your articles used to be just a part of my Sunday morning routine. Now they’re an inspiration.
Thank you for showing me that I can be whatever I put my heart into.
As you say …
Peace.
(Name withheld to protect the minor)
****
And here’s the column she to which she refers:
“Undercurrents”
Sunday, January 16, 2005
“Listening about our generations”
There came a time when he couldn’t find his CDs until he looked for them in his children’s rooms — often Tori Amos and The Cranberries in the girl’s room, Iggy Pop and David Bowie in the boy’s room. His parents never had this problem, the man thought.
But then something shifted with the seasons, and he recognized a special, strange moment of time, a turning of the slow metronome.
Listen to this, the boy said, and put on a CD by a band called The Killers. My friend Laura loaned it to me, the boy said. Listen to this, he said, and put on a CD by a band called The Postal Service.
Can I borrow your Garden State soundtrack, the old man asked? Can I borrow your Keane? Your Cure? Any friends loan you anything else?
Sure, the boy now buys his own Nirvana — a sign of the old man’s influence? — and he listens to Sinatra, though the man wondered if that’s because of his own sometime Sunday mornings playing old big band platters and jazz or if it’s because of school exposures to stage plays and Guys and Dolls.
And he wondered, where does the parent end and the child begin?
On a recent Saturday morning, the boy came back from a garage sale lugging a cassette carrier filled with a hundred 20-year-old tapes. Among them: Eurythmics, Thompson Twins, Talking Heads, Thomas Dolby, Fun Boy Three, Adam Ant, Elvis Costello, more Bowie and Pop, The Motels, Til Tuesday, Cyndi Lauper, Lene Lovich, The Police.
(So much alike, the boy and the man. The man thought he had better warn the boy about that, but knowing himself he figured the boy would not understand.)
This was music of the old man’s day. He had much of it on vinyl. He could tell stories about these albums and times surrounding them.
So he told stories and thought about how music really is the universal language, though everyone speaks it differently. Some recognize it from a distance, and some know it only subliminally. Others may not play, but they speak it straight from the soul. (“I got soul, but I’m not a soldier,” so the song goes.)
That is — music plays some people like an instrument, evokes emotions and memories, informs their lives. It can be so much a part of them that, even if they can’t carry a tune or pluck a string, it’s inseparable from their personalities.
They need music. They relate it to times in their lives. They feel it deep inside where empty places need to be filled. They use it to get through their days and nights. When they can’t talk, at least they can listen. And sometimes they can listen together and begin to understand.
Or at least borrow each other’s CDs.
Peace.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Wanted to be needed ...
... wanted to be necessary, but became merely ubiquitous.
... wanted to be desired, to be a beloved entertainment, but made of myself a summer rerun, a tired peep show.
**
It’s one of the laws of television that, if there’s a regular series that you seldom watch or a program you enjoy but have missed for several weeks, then the episode that you tune into on a bored and lonely night will be one that you’ve already seen.
That was me. I was that episode.
Every day.
Familiar, tired, seemingly full of energy but actually a rerun, an electronic ghost repeating its final actions again and again throughout eternity.
Hell as TV Land.
When Dick Van Dyke dies, he’ll go to Nick At Night and spend his hereafter tripping over foot stools. And me ... I'll do what it is I do. Forever.
... wanted to be desired, to be a beloved entertainment, but made of myself a summer rerun, a tired peep show.
**
It’s one of the laws of television that, if there’s a regular series that you seldom watch or a program you enjoy but have missed for several weeks, then the episode that you tune into on a bored and lonely night will be one that you’ve already seen.
That was me. I was that episode.
Every day.
Familiar, tired, seemingly full of energy but actually a rerun, an electronic ghost repeating its final actions again and again throughout eternity.
Hell as TV Land.
When Dick Van Dyke dies, he’ll go to Nick At Night and spend his hereafter tripping over foot stools. And me ... I'll do what it is I do. Forever.
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Sunday, June 19, 2005
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