Media Pursuits

This really caught my fancy, so I’ve gotta share it:

I haven’t had a chance to see the movie yet, but this review grabbed me and made me think deep thoughts about parenting and selfishness and control over one’s reality. Both my boys enjoy reading Sendak’s wonderful book. But really, the person in the house who loves it the most has probably always been me.

The IMAGE Blog ◊ Why the Wild Things Are.

I’ve actually enjoyed several of the entries on this site since discovering it last month. A very potent mix of ideas about faith, art, creativity, and how they all co-mingle.

A big thanks to Paul Tevis for getting this great article on my radar:

John Scalzi – Three Cheers for Chewbacca, SciFi’s Ultimate Sidekick

I heartily agree with the whole thing – Chewie is one of my favorite characters, and exploring the nature of sidekick-ism through him is something I have done just for the hell of it on occasion. I even created an rpg character based on Chewbacca (Kashyyyk, from the PTA Star Wars game we play annually at GenCon) who is right in the thick of struggling with these issues. And reading this article brought a lot of the issues back to the front of my noggin.

Here’s a pertinent quote from Scalzi’s article …

Never once in the movies do you get the sense that Chewbacca is looking enviously at Han Solo’s captain’s chair and thinking to himself, man, how long do I have to hang around with this wahoo until I get to sit there? Why? Because Chewie is comfortable with himself as a person and a sidekick. He’s so comfortable, in fact, that he actually lets other people talk for him. I strongly believe Chewbacca could speak human if he so chose — but he prefers to let the other characters shine. That’s the sort of selfless assist to others that makes him perfect in the sidekick role.

- via John Scalzi – Three Cheers for Chewbacca, SciFi’s Ultimate Sidekick.

Now, imagine my SW-PTA character, Kashyyyk, is essentially that character – a competent, protective fuzzball who is by nature plenty content to spend his life as the sidekick, best friend, and pseudo-father-figure to the roguish hero Han Calrissian. Kash (who by the way can and does speak human) is committed to watching his pal’s back and keeping him safe in the midst of also helping him become the galaxy-saving rebel hero Kash believes Han can be.

But then pour all over that an interesting little twist – imagine that Kashyyyk is also the fated messiah of the wookiee race, destined to lead his people to a new era of freedom from the oppression of the Imperial Skywalker Dynasty and – at least in my mind – freeing them from their persistent role of playing second fiddle to humans.

Imagine that however the fiction plays out, Kashyyyk is going to find it nigh-impossible to remain true to BOTH aspects. You can pretend to walk the line between sidekick and alpha-dog all you want, but eventually it catches up to you. Eventually you’ve got to choose.

Now, I have NO IDEA how it will all play out. But I’m betting it’s going to be one helluva lot of fun, angst, and blood, sweat and tears.

Wherin I sneak a little surprise into the end of the show to show off how well WildLion knows his Star Wars – and that he is the best 4-year old storyjammer I’ve ever met.

Canon Puncture 78: Extreme Dunder Mifflin at GenCon 09 : Canon Puncture.

Oh, and also there’s David and Mario talking about cool stuff they got at GenCon and ribbing me about not being on The Game Master Show.

The timing of Joe McDonald’s post about music and the questions it asks could not be more perfect for me. (And of course everything is all about me – hah!) Seriously, though – right when I’m in the midst of grappling with how various types of music invoke my creative expression, along comes this:

This Particular Darkness « Buried Without Ceremony.

You might think I tend to draw from the same few wells far too often when I share cool stuff that I’ve encountered, but if it moves me or makes me think or reaches down and grabs me by the scruff of the soul, then that’s what I wanna share and it kinda makes sense that a writer capable of doing that once will probably be able to repeat the feat every so often. These days, Joe McDonald is doing just that for me. He’s a reliable feat-repeater.

Not only does his post add some flavor into my recent thought about music in Vegas After Midnight, but it goes beyond that to make me think more about my music preferences in general.

I’m going to admit something that might slightly soil my self-advertised misfit cred. When I was a tween and teen back in Michigan in the 80s, my musical tastes were dominated by pop-radio rock (Prince, Duran Duran, Hall & Oates, Journey, etc.) and certain types of “classic” rock (The Beatles, Elvis, Queen, etc).  I used to shy away from punk and hard/metal rock. Too subversive, too much the music of the kids in my school who were stoners and rebels. True, I secretly wanted to BE a rebel, but in my school all the rebels were pot-smoking pill-popping drunkards who were nowhere near as cool and compelling as Judd Nelson’s character in The Breakfast Club or Robin Johnson’s character in Times Square.

So as it turned out, my teenage rebel phase didn’t actually emerge until I was in my late 20s and I started hearing the music of the misfit teens and art-class rebels who were regulars in the theatre groups I was part of and the teen residential-treatment home I worked at. They listened to lots of grunge, punk, neo-punk, proto-emo, etc. and when I heard it it clicked with me in ways that it never did when I was younger.

So now, I tend to listen to some pretty edgy stuff, some emo, angry, hard stuff, both modern and classic. And I’m much more appreciative of the subversive elements of the stuff I used to listen to but didn’t recognize as subversive.

So, when Joe poses his thoughts on the questions asked by punk genre, and he brings up the notion of raging against machines and fighting against oppressive institutions, and placing blame… I wonder.  Because I agree with him, but I’m not particularly involved in actually fighting or raging or rebelling any more than I used to be when I used to listen to processed pop music.

So my inner-rebel has always been sort of a wannabe. And I begin to realize that what I’m doing with VAM is to try to finally openly express – or at least grapple with – all the conflicting stuff I feel about the pros and cons of “fighting the status quo”. Because really, VAM is a game about waking up and doing something proactive in terms of raging against the dying of the light. It’s about not sleeping through the chaos in order to hide from it, but actually facing it down, shouting at it, and DOING something about it. I’ve always thought of VAM as my magnum opus, my statement. And it is. But I hafta admit, I’m not altogether sure, even at my age and “maturity”, whether the statement I’m claiming to espouse is entirely sincere, or if I just WISH I felt that way.

This bears more pondering. I’ll go listen to some Pink Floyd or Smashing Pumpkins and get back to you later.

Over the years, one of the most reliable ways I’ve gleaned inspiration for Vegas After Midnight has been through listening to music. I’ve made it fairly clear in the past that a lot of VAM’s inspiration comes from themes and concepts I’ve drawn from my favorite TV, movies, and fiction, but music has always been in the mix, too – especially in the past year or so. As a result I’ve collected a pretty broad playlist with songs that have come to represent broad-stroke thematic inspirations for the setting – or in a few cases become ideas ripped right from the songs and pasted into VAM’s patchwork.

In fact, lately the only times I seem to have the opportunity to devote much mindspace to VAM is when I’m listening to my VAM playlist, which in the past year or so has almost always occurred during certain times in my weekly routine – either driving around running errands, cleaning up the house, or mowing the yard. These are basically the only times I have these days to explore inside my head without having to simultaneously pay attention to kids or clients or other grownup responsibilities. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, folks, two discoveries in one day – both highlighting online serialized genre fiction, both from people whose creations I highly regard.

In this case, it’s the talented Mr. Josh Roby, who has been presenting a cool multimedia fiction experiment called Rooksbridge, and today he’s offering the third chapbook for free to anyone who heads over to the Rooksbridge forums and posts there.

Check In at Rooksbridge.com, Check Out a Free Chapbook  – via Rooksbridge.

I’m going to do it right now. You should, too. Many good things have I heard about this project. Excited I am.