writing humdrumconundrum

How to write about fictional inventors? Let's say you want to write about a character who revolutionizes an industry (the - ahem - music industry, for example, which I'm writing about, and which is imploding)... how do you invent the revolutionizing thing when you, yourself, are not actually genius enough to predict or come up with Thing That Needs Revolutionizing?

Luckily, as a humour writer, I will probably fight my way out of this paper bag by doing something silly. But in the research/thinking phase it's hurting my brain like hell, which means I'm procrastinating a lot.

I usually enjoy researching, but on a personal level I'm not sure I care all that much how this music thing is going to turn out. I consume music, but I don't make it. I'm happy to sit back and see what happens. But now I can't! I can't just SBASWH because I'm writing this damn book. Or rather, I'd like to be writing this damn book, but I can't until I get a breakthrough.

Frikkety frak.

It's 6 AM I'd better go to bed. Frakkety frakky frak frak frak.

I feel like Don Music from Sesame Street.

Sherry Bones

This is my oldy cat. Named after Friday's Child: Lord Sherringham. Or Sherry. Or Bones. Or Indiana Bones when he's feeling adventurous.

Now that he's so oldy he just likes to sleep...

Have cuddles.

Play.

And eat (here he guards the softies.)

Admittedly... these are the things he's always loved to do. He just does them in a different proportion.

Things Sherry likes:
- softies over crunchies
- toys that jump and fly about
- a good run after he uses the facilities
- freshly cleaned pillow cases (Apparently. Today I tossed two clean pillow cases on the bed, and he went straight to them and slept there all day.)
- scratches and fur-pulls from the armpits upwards
- carbs (but he can't tolerate them--so he's a cat with long bumhair, who gets diarrhea once a week)

Things Sherry hates:
- Haley bugging him
- pets anywhere below the armpits
- bathing himself
- the weekly bath to clean his bum
- when other cats come home from the vet smelling Wrong

mixtape

Well, I changed my song again. I finally decided on Nina Simone's "Ain't Got No/I Got Life" for the playlist of favourite songs of the employees in my department. This song fits the bill even better than my previous choices--it's sung by a woman, it's a song I'll love forevah, but it's also a song that represents me philosophically.

And here is the playlist (I didn't realize you could embed a whole playlist!) it's pretty interesting. I've got a couple new faves now.



[PS - Please no negative comments, should you choose to view The List. I doubt a single one of my employees reads this blog, but in case someone does... sharing favourite songs is actually a sort of vulnerable thing to do.]

People have the power... well some do, anyway

More charity songs. War Child actually has a whole album--this is the first video I've seen. It's a remake of Patti Smith's "People Have the Power." Now... if I was going to produce a remake of this song, I'd go in the direction of making it musically even rock-ier, rather than poppier. This is tinny sounding. But the video is cute... the kids are just too darn tootin' cute-in'. And at least at the end they say what they're doing with the money.

Lyrically the song is simple, but I think it's nice to be optimistic once in awhile. Very much in the "Imagine" vein, and appropriate to the subject matter.

I believe everything we dream
can come to pass through our union
we can turn the world around
we can turn the earth's revolution



Here's the original song.

A FriendPaul Favourite Song - beeoootiful

Bill Cosby: The Chicken Heart

My grandfather had this album, and this was one of our favourite skits. "And I'd start smearing that Jell-o..."





And this one:



And this one:

Oscar

Many years ago, when Rolling Stone was a real magazine and not crap-o-la, I read an article about the lack of recognition of African-Americans at the Oscars. I hadn't watched the Oscars that year so I didn't know that Spike Lee's Malcolm X had lost out for best actor and best film to Al Pacino and The Scent of a Woman. I was shocked--shocked!--as I sat in my chair at the Dorval library. The Oscars always give prizes to *epics* and Malcolm X fell firmly in the epic tradition.

I can't say I was a big Oscar fan before reading that article, but I became even less of one after. Cinematic Hollywood must be the most out of date, out of the loop, backwards entertainment industry in the US. Ridiculously so. Ridiculously behind its own public.

And I guess, according to this article, very little has changed since I read the article 14 years ago: [this is in re. Mo'Nique's acceptance speech]

In the 70 years between McDaniel's and Mo'Nique's wins, only three other black actresses -- Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry and Jennifer Hudson -- have taken home Oscars. Just one of those was for a leading role, and if you guessed that went to the only thin, light-skinned, button-nosed, biracial one of the bunch, you get a gold star. Four black men have won best actor -- three of those in the last 10 years -- and four have won best supporting. So that's 13 acting awards out of 328. In 82 years. This year also saw the second African-American to be nominated for best director and the first ever African-American screenwriter to win. In 82 years. Welcome to post-racial America.

...

Consider the shocked reaction of umpteen reporters upon learning that the movie's star, Gabourey Sidibe, is nothing like Precious -- that she was, in fact, acting. Consider the clip they chose to show last night that featured Sidibe stealing a bucket of fried chicken, for crying out loud. Consider that four of the best picture nominees were widely criticized for their treatment of race -- "Precious" for all of the above; "District 9" for its arguably sketchy handling of an apartheid allegory and undeniably degrading depiction of human black Africans; "The Blind Side" and "Avatar" for being yet more iterations of a tired and condescending "white savior" narrative. That's not to say those films were wholly without merit or even necessarily undeserving of the praise, but when four of the year's most beloved movies contain problematic racial tropes, it's a bit premature to congratulate the Academy or ourselves for having come so far in the last 82 years. [from Salon]