Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 192

Skyfall keeps looking better

Hell, yeah it does.  Check it out.



I can't wait to see it!  I'll be there opening day.

Top 5 reasons to come to the Cameron Village Public Library tonight at 7:00 p.m

By "tonight," I mean, of course, Thursday, October 18, 2012.  As I wrote in
If that's not enough to entice you into coming, here are the top five reasons you should be there by 7:00 to see the show. 

5. Libraries are awesome, this one is particularly cool, and they need our support.  Come on, admit it:  you know they are.  Without our support, though, it's possible that in a generation or two, kids will grow up knowing less about libraries than they do now about 78 rpm records.

4. You never know what might come out of my mouth.  Hell, I don't, so why should you?  With the right questions, I might tell you more about the world of Diego Chan than I've ever revealed, or let you know just what my mom said before the ninth grade dance, or, well, say any damn thing. 

3. The party will continue into dinner afterward. I mentioned this one in the earlier post, but it bears repeating, because a hot biscuit on a cool autumn evening is a wonderful thing indeed, particularly if you're sharing it with friends, new and old. 

2. Clay Griffith will finally reveal his secret powers of flight.  On his own, I mean.  Of course.  Anyone can fly in a plane.  Okay, maybe Clay won't do that, but when we were on a panel together a few months ago, he seemed like a nice guy, so we should support him. 

And the number one reason you should not miss this event is...

1. Dan Brooks and I will fight to the death in the library's MMA cage if every chair isn't full. You can't want that to happen.  I would miss Dan, and the library would have to pay a special crew to clean up its octagon.

Seriously, come on down.  It'll be fun.

An open letter to The Hold Steady: Hire a keyboard player!

It was great to see you guys the other night at the Cat's Cradle.  I really enjoyed the show, as did the others in my group.  The audience was into it, you guys seemed to be into it, and Craig Finn, man, you were working the house.

I can't help, though, but miss Franz Nicolay's keyboards on a lot of the music.  I understand Nicolay had his own good reasons for leaving, and I respect that.

The music, though, cries out for keyboards.

Let's start with what has to be perhaps your most perfect song, the magnificent "Stuck Between Stations."



I missed the piano so much when you played this one.

I felt the same way when you gave us this absolutely fabulous tune, "Sequestered In Memphis."



Yes, you performed them both well, but wow, how much better they would have been with someone laying down those piano tracks.

Think about it.  That's all I'm asking.  Think about it.

The State Fair is here

We're heading there Wednesday night, and I'm already building my freak food hit list.  Thanks to Sarah's advance scouting, I know I need to at least taste one bite of each of the following:
Flavor burst ice cream, which we in the beach crew call "the squeeze."  It's a long story.Deep-fried oreosDeep-fried cupcakes (though these are, as of now, still unconfirmed rumors)NC State's superb cherry vanilla ice cream, a perennial favoriteDeep-fried pizzaAnd, of course, the most wily and possibly life-threatening target of them all
Deep fried, bacon-bit-coated cinnamon bunCheck back here later this week to see how I fared. 

2005

As I've done with a few previous blog posts, in this two thousand fifth entry, I'm going to check in on where my writing was in the corresponding year, 2005.

I had, as was typical of that time, been agonizing over writing but occasionally producing a short story.  "Boar Lake," a story whose first draft I'd written almost two decades earlier, had appeared the previous year in Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic, a nifty original anthology that Brett Cox and Andy Duncan edited.

I'd also pushed to the very last possible date the completion of a short story, "Bring Out the Ugly," for Toni's original anthology, Cosmic Tales: Adventures in Far Futures.  That story was the first time Jon and Lobo appeared together in print.  I was so late with it that the book appeared in the same year in which I turned in the story, a tolerance for which I have always owed Toni. 

As I was in the throes of finishing that story, I hit a pivotal moment for my writing.  As I wrote in

Now, flash forward to early 2005. I had been farting around with fiction writing all those years, selling some stories, getting one in The Year's Best, and so on, but I was never really able to commit to writing. I had turned 50 in March and was using the occasion to reconsider many things. My fiction writing was one of them. After much thought, in the middle of May, I decided I would give up fiction and thus gain more peace in my life.

I couldn't sleep that night. I couldn't give up fiction.

If you've read this blog regularly, you know that my advice to writers is that if you can possibly not write, don't. I couldn't stop.

At the same time, I barely wrote fiction, maybe a story every few years.

So, on the day after my sleepless night, I resolved that on June 1 I would start writing every day. (I chose that start date to give myself time to live with the decision and see if it was correct.) My goal was simple: each day I had to devote at least 30 minutes to staring at a blank screen (or notebook or sheet of paper) and doing nothing else. No word minimums; just at least 30 minutes of time that belonged to fiction. I would not allow myself to go to bed until I'd done it. Every day. No exceptions, no matter what. 

That June 1, I started working every day on writing.

On the last day of 2005, I finished One Jump Ahead, my first novel.

2005 thus became one of the most important years for my writing, if not the very most important one, because I finally, truly, viscerally figured out that to be a writer, I had to write--and then I put that lesson into practice.

I sure wish I'd started that practice at 18 instead of 50.

Go see Seven Psychopaths

A few days ago,
It is wonderful, brilliant, funny, and just the best movie I've seen in some time. 

The more I say about it, the more I risk hurting your experience, so I'm not going to discuss any details.

I will say that its plot makes moves you won't expect--and lots of them.  Its cast is uniformly wonderful, and both Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell deserve Best Supporting Actor nominations for their performances.  I laughed more frequently and harder than I've laughed at any movie in ages, and yet I was frequently touched by it. 

If you don't have a sick sense of humor, or if violence or bad language offend you, I can imagine that you might have a very different reaction, maybe even hate Seven Psychopaths. 

The rest of you, though, should run to the nearest cinema, buy tickets, and have a great two hours.

It's not easy being my daughter

Kyle, Sarah, and I are heading to Vegas in December for a very short visit to watch the live finale of the The Ultimate Fighter TV show.  This trip led to an email thread in which we were discussing plans.  Here's how that thread went.

Me:  I am fine with one room; we just need to get one with three beds, and you need earplugs to survive my snoring.

Kyle: And air freshener for all the farting.

Me:  That's both yours and mine.  No fair blaming me alone.  Oh, and the belching.  And the stench from the sweaty midget strippers. They may be small, but their aroma is powerful. 

Sarah:  This is horrible.

Kyle:  What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.  Except for the sticky residue.  That comes home with you.

Sarah:  Kyle's actual text to me:  "It is possible that your presence would remind your dad that he has familial responsibilities, and shouldn't indulge in the quantities of hookers and blow that are his usual wont...It's all I can do to help him limp back to the hotel room, pay some midget strippers to towel him off, and put him to bed."  :*(

Me:  Those little rascals are whizzes with the towels.  

I apologize now to little people anywhere.  Though I meant no offense, my use of the term "midget" was wrong.  It just read right in the moment of that early message, and then it stuck.

I think this thread proves conclusively that Kyle is a very sick man, I am a very bad father, and, most of all, that it is not easy being my daughter.

YR15 rocked

Yep Roc records is a small label that features quite a few artists I like. When I learned they'd be hosting YR15, a multi-day 15th anniversary celebration at the Cat's Cradle, I was immediately interested. When I saw, though, that the Thursday night roster included both Dave Alvin and Nick Lowe, I knew I had to go.

So I did.

 I would have gone for Dave Alvin alone; Nick Lowe was a bonus, as were the many other artists on the roster for the night. I've been a fan of Lowe's for a long time, but I've remained a stone Dave Alvin fan since I first heard one of his songs, and I've never seen him live.

Until tonight.

This choice was expensive, because in a week in which work has kept me up until about six a.m. each night, taking time off to go to a show would be sure to cost me.

I didn't care. I had to do it.

I'm so very glad I did.

The full show ran 4:51--yes, four hours and fifty-one minutes of music and, between acts, emcee John Wesley Harding talking and singing.  One of his songs was the hilarious "Making Love to Bob Dylan."



The opening act of the night was a band I'd never heard of, Jukebox the Ghost.  I loved them!  They were fun and talented and great at producing catchy tunes.  Here's a silly one, "Schizophrenia."



Near the end of their set, they brought out a local chorus group and did a song with those kids.  The kids then came back after Jukebox the Ghost to sign Nick Lowe's "What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?"



I teared up listening to them.  I remember being a hippie kid and thinking my generation would end war and change the world for the better.  We didn't, of course, but I like to think we can all keep working toward those goals.

Dave Alvin did a half dozen or so wonderful songs, including this one.



Damn, what a show.  I wish everyone I know could have gone.

The next upcoming movie I most want to see

Yeah, that's right. (Warning: This is a redband trailer.)



So it's not intellectual. So sue me.

Gobsmacked by art: James Lee Burke's The Tin Roof Blowdown

Every now and then, a work of art, or part of one, hits me so hard and so perfectly that I feel it almost like a punch to the solar plexus.  I have to sit down, close my eyes, and wait for my mental breath to return.  I generally don't share those moments with others, both because they sound like so much hyperbole and because what works for me may not touch the next person.  I've decided, though, to start honoring those works when they hit me, because, hey, it's the least I can do by way of payback.
James Lee Burke is, as long-time readers know, one of my favorite writers.  For my money, he's one of the best writers working in English.  Period.  
The Tin Roof Blowdown is not his most recent book; far from it.  It appeared in 2007, so I've waited a long time to read it.  The reason is that this is his post-Katrina book, and I expected to be powerful--and powerfully unsettling, particularly because I adore New Orleans.  It was.  I loved the book, but it was also at least as disturbing as I expected it to be.  I was reading it in Cleveland while at Bouchercon, nibbling slowly at it as if it were the last meal I might ever get.  John Connolly mentioned it as proof that a writer can deliver works of genius at any age.  
I obviously recommend it highly.  
What made me put it down, stretch out on the bed, close my eyes, and need more air was a passage near the end, a section in the voice of Burke's most enduring character and one of the greatest characters in the history of detective fiction, maybe all fiction, Dave Robicheaux.  At the risk of stretching the limits of fair use, I'm going to reproduce a fair chunk of that passage here.  

New Orleans was a song that went under the waves. Sometimes in my dreams I see a city beneath the sea.  In it, green-painted iron streetcars made in the year 1910 still lumber down the neutral ground through the Garden District, past block upon block of Victorian and antebellum homes, past the windmill palms and the gigantic live oaks, past guesthouses and the outdoor cafes and art deco restaurants whose scrolled purple and pink and green neon burn in the mist like smoke from marker grenades.

Every hotel on Canal still features an orchestra on the roof, where people dance under the stars and convince one another that the mildness of the season is eternal and was created especially for them. In the distance, Lake Pontchartrain is wine-dark, flanged with palm trees, and pelicans skim above the chop, the rides at the waterside amusement park glowing whitely against the sky. Irving Fazola is playing at the Famous Door and Pete Fountain at his own joint off Bourbon. Jackson Square is a medieval plaza where jugglers, mimes, string bands, and unicyclists with umbrellas strapped on top of their heads perform in front of St. Louis Cathedral.  No one is concerned with clocks.  The city is as sybaritic as it is religious. Even death becomes an excuse for celebration.

Perhaps the city has found its permanence inside its own demise, like Atlantis, trapped forever under the waves, the sun never harsh, filtered through the green tint of the ocean so that neither rust nor moth nor decay ever touches its face.  

That's the dream that I have.  But the reality is otherwise. Category 5 hurricanes don't take prisoners and the sow that eats its farrow doesn't surrender self-interest in the cause of mercy. 

New Orleans was systematically destroyed and that destruction began in the early 1980s with the deliberate reduction by half of federal funding to the city and the simultaneous introduction of crack cocaine into the welfare projects. The failure to repair the levees before Katrina and the abandonment of tens of thousands of people to their fate in the aftermath have causes that I'll let others sort out. But in my view the irrevocable fact remains that we saw an American city turned into Baghdad on the southern rim of the United States. If we have a precedent in our history for what happened in New Orleans, it's lost on me.

I don't know how that hit you, but, damn, it gobsmacked me.