Monday, January 14, 2013
I'm chronicling 1,000 days of writing from today until October 10, 2014. This is what a writing life looks like from my quiet little Erie St. apt. in Oakland, CA. I’m starting things off with a bang this month...three projects about elementary school: The Arrival (and departure) of Martin Martinez, Future President, Introducing Girls, and No Sweat, an Elementary Memoir. When they're done, I'll start my online poker novel Austin15. There's nothing like an ambitious slate of projects to keep me from sleeping and watching television all day long.
Martin Martinez has already been written. I'm revising it in February after I get the other two books off the ground. The second project, Introducing Girls, is a revision of a novel I wrote back in the '90s. I'm keeping the good parts, removing the bad parts and reconfiguring things so that I'm left with Mad Men for 5th graders. It's set in Bellingham, Washington the year Nixon resigned. Oh, how I love the '70s and such guilty pleasures as the Six Million Dollar Man and Battle of the Network Stars.
Here's a true story that took place the evening of March 4, 1975. The ABC Movie-of-the-Week was the infamous Karen Black three-story horror vehicle Trilogy of Terror. The previews of the demonic Zuni Fetish doll looked so creepy and irresistibly eerie that I couldn't imagine missing such an important television event. The very thought of seeing Karen Black stick the demon doll into the oven was enough to satisfy even the most twisted eleven-year-old mind. Well, it became the single most memorable television movie of the week that I never got to see. My bedtime back then was 8:30 or 9, which was ridiculous on this night because I was allowed to watch the first two stories but not Terror of the Doll. My parents should have received two penalties on that bedtime call, one for unsportsmanlike conduct and one for emotional cruelty. I was up until 11 anyway because mom and dad watched the final tale in the family room with the volume just loud enough to torture me from missing a must-see TV moment before must-see TV moments were invented.
It took 38 years, but finally a horrible wrong was finally righted. Today on youtube, I finally watched the third and final story, complete with the smoldering voodoo doll in the oven and the nice little twist at the end. Very satisfying! God Bless Karen Black!
I'm chronicling 1,000 days of writing from today until October 10, 2014. This is what a writing life looks like from my quiet little Erie St. apt. in Oakland, CA. I’m starting things off with a bang this month...three projects about elementary school: The Arrival (and departure) of Martin Martinez, Future President, Introducing Girls, and No Sweat, an Elementary Memoir. When they're done, I'll start my online poker novel Austin15. There's nothing like an ambitious slate of projects to keep me from sleeping and watching television all day long.
Martin Martinez has already been written. I'm revising it in February after I get the other two books off the ground. The second project, Introducing Girls, is a revision of a novel I wrote back in the '90s. I'm keeping the good parts, removing the bad parts and reconfiguring things so that I'm left with Mad Men for 5th graders. It's set in Bellingham, Washington the year Nixon resigned. Oh, how I love the '70s and such guilty pleasures as the Six Million Dollar Man and Battle of the Network Stars.
Here's a true story that took place the evening of March 4, 1975. The ABC Movie-of-the-Week was the infamous Karen Black three-story horror vehicle Trilogy of Terror. The previews of the demonic Zuni Fetish doll looked so creepy and irresistibly eerie that I couldn't imagine missing such an important television event. The very thought of seeing Karen Black stick the demon doll into the oven was enough to satisfy even the most twisted eleven-year-old mind. Well, it became the single most memorable television movie of the week that I never got to see. My bedtime back then was 8:30 or 9, which was ridiculous on this night because I was allowed to watch the first two stories but not Terror of the Doll. My parents should have received two penalties on that bedtime call, one for unsportsmanlike conduct and one for emotional cruelty. I was up until 11 anyway because mom and dad watched the final tale in the family room with the volume just loud enough to torture me from missing a must-see TV moment before must-see TV moments were invented.
It took 38 years, but finally a horrible wrong was finally righted. Today on youtube, I finally watched the third and final story, complete with the smoldering voodoo doll in the oven and the nice little twist at the end. Very satisfying! God Bless Karen Black!
Here's where the title No Sweat comes from. One scorching summer evening when I was 6 and living in the red
house on F Street, my dad and his friend Bill Phillips were sitting in the backyard on lawn chairs, complaining about the heat. They
were both sweating worse than their beer bottles. I also wanted to sweat, but couldn’t. “How can I sweat, too?” I asked dad.
“Run around the house ten times,” he said. “Then you’ll sweat.”
So I did. I ran as
fast as I could ten times around the house and when I was finished I
felt my forehead. “I’m still not sweating,” I shouted.
“Run around ten times,” dad replied, but by
then I was too tired to run anymore, so I went inside the house, angry and disappointed that I was able to sweat, too. That really happened. Why that brief moment is so clear to me I'll never know.
I used to have a subscription to this:
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