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Ladies and Gentlemen, Community Service

Art by Angie Waters

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Never forget what you are.

Broken Mirrors, Book 3

The King is dead, long live the King. And, uh, could you float him a couple bucks?

Life as the only human sorcerer isn’t all it’s cracked up to be for James Black, the Lightning Rod. Between gremlins in the closet, paladins crashing through skylights and working spells in a storage locker, hunting a body-hopping spirit is a welcome distraction. If only he didn’t have to partner with a Coyote.

After being punted to the curb by his roommate (with benefits), things are looking dire for trickster Spencer Crain, until an old friend offers him a shot at a big score scamming the best of marks: a vampire. Thing is, he’ll have to work with his worst enemy to pull it off.

With lives in the balance, James is learning the hard way what being a sorcerer really means—and that he picked a hell of a time to quit smoking. Spencer is faced with the choice between his future and his friends. Yeah, like he’s never seen that movie before…

Warning: This is a work of urban fantasy containing arguments for and against Dungeons & Dragons, a closeted My Little Pony fan, awkward flirting, switching POVs, heist-movie logic, and a Dwarf who can’t hold his liquor.

Storytellers: Community Service

So, with Community Service coming out on Tuesday, I figured I’d give you guys a few tidbits of info on the writing of it to whet your appetite. By the way, it’s still on sale at Samhain Publishing at a cheaper price than Amazon, plus I get more money when you buy direct from the publisher! (Since I’ve been asked that a few times.)

So, without further ado…

1. 90% of the Book Was Written At Work

I know that sounds terrible, and lazy, but let me set the scene. When I’m not writing novels, I try to get work substituting for the local school district, and more often than not I’m relegated to the lirbary. In the spring of 2012, I was about five thousand words into Community Service and was generally stuck on what direction to take it. I’d been working off and on another project that had been shelved and generally I felt burnt out, so I decided to read through the Dresden Files again in order to get a little inspiration.

I got a part time gig at the high school where I’d be overseeing a survey, and as a result would be spending time in one of the computer labs for 3 hours a day for three weeks. The kicker was that the surveys were voluntary, and involved a student giving up a lunch bell. Imagine yourself back in high school, would you have done it? Me neither.

So after spending the first day getting paid to read Jim Butcher, I figured I’d bring my laptop along. Considering that I wasn’t to leave the computer lab at all during my three hours there, I cleared it with my supervisor, who was cool with my laptop so long as I didn’t access the school network and didn’t do anything improper with it. (I’m sure people will realize that this will explain the lack of sexual content this time around. ) As a result, I spent three hours in a quiet well-lit room with nothing to do but drink tea and write. By the end of the three weeks I went from five thousand words to fifty-five thousand. The rest was written during a two week stint in another computer lab that saw almost no student traffic as well. As a result, Community Service, which is over ninety thousand words, was written in about three months, the fastest I’ve ever churned out a novel.

2. Ozzie Was Inspired By a WoW Character… That I Put In a Golf Game

Of all of the fantasy races, Dwarves are likely my favorite, and I used to be an avid WoW player, though I didn’t play a lot of Dwarves, I’ll admit. I don’t know if you’ve ever played WoW, but outside of a few dedicated pockets, us gays aren’t really treated well there (though at least the trash talking isn’t as bad as Call of Duty). One of the downsides to being a writer is that we tend to give backstories even when they aren’t needed, or even make sense. A character I didn’t get to play much on one RP server ended up sticking around in my head as a character concept, and for some reason, I put him in a golf game.

Y’see, I grew into more of a console gamer, and one of the sports games I got hooked on was the Tiger Woods PGA Tour series. So, on a lark, I decided to play with the character creator and discovered that yes, you can indeed make one of Ironforge’s finest if you tweak the sliders right… so I joined the Penny Arcade Country Club and rolled a Dwarf, and for a while Oswald Firebeard was one of the best golfers they had.

Eventually, I percolated a backstory to explain why the Hell a Dwarf was out on the links, and Ozzie was formed, and written into the story. Incidentally, this is also the reason that Hades is quite the golfer himself.

3. It Originally Had a Reference To Another Series

While I’d never dream to take another author’s work and insert my own stories into it, I’ve been tweeting back and forth with Sierra Dean, author of the acclaimed Secret McQueen series for a while now, and occasionally we joke or make suggestions about what to put in each other’s books. So, one day I practically demanded that her titular character rock a black fedora in one of her upcoming stories. In exchange, I would make Secret McQueen a TV show in the Broken Mirrors universe, with Spencer being one of its biggest fans (even referring to fans of the series as “Queenies”, which Sierra apparently dug). While I was going to work in a reference in Community Service, it ended up being pushed to the next book in the series, where I posted a screenshot of the scene to prove that I did in fact make it canon. I’m still waiting for Sierra to post a screenshot of the passage where Secret rocks that fedora.

4. It Made Realize My Actual Influences

Given that I’m an urban fantasy writer, I’d like to tell myself that my primary influence is someone like Jim Butcher, or Terry Pratchett, or Neil Gaiman, but while I was editing and reviewing the relationship dynamics regarding both romance and friendship, and how to course the metaplot to the end of the series and how it’ll effect other books I’ll write in the setting…

I realized that most of my plot ideas come from watching Ugly Betty.

You read that right.

To be sure, there’s plenty of Butcher and Whedon, but all of my questions regarding my characters always drift toward the interpersonal, between friends and lovers and family, which is likely from getting my start on the romance side of the fence, but Ugly Betty, for me at least, was a decent example of how extreme situations can influence people in the long term. James may be a magical badass, but he’s still human, and has to deal with personal situations that can easily seem out of a telenovela. It can be difficult to answer those questions in a believable fashion, because most of us would either curl into a ball or just act like nothing’s happening. When you watch the series, you see all too quickly that Betty’s the sort of character who sees more drama in four years than a room full of people normally see in their entire lives.

It’s one of the reason that people in my setting who suddenly discover their supernatural heritage aren’t as traumatized as a normal person should be, even though they know they should be. In a sense, it’s the same defense mechanism of blase that you see in most supernatural TV shows. (I’ve always been curious about the immediate aftermath of the vampires “coming out of the coffin” on True Blood, it can’t really have been as simple as saying they got by on synthetic blood, right?) For everyone else, they scramble for a frame of reference, a box that all these new and strange things fit into (which I’m sure makes James’s obsession with Dungeons and Dragons make a lot more sense ).

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Published on May 05, 2013 18:49

Vaughn’s Guide to Dating a Scorpio

-“Ahh, home. Let me come home. Home is wherever I’m with you.” – Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

Blogs can be a little silly, I have to admit. I have a lot of friends who have them, and they tend to settle into either blogging about their personal lives, reviewing various creative works they’ve come across, or commenting in some fashion on the state of the world. I never feel comfortable with the final category because I don’t feel I’m enough of an authority to talk about drones or the national debt or gun control or whatever other hot button issue is guaranteed to drive up my view count. Besides, who the hell cares about what a gay urban fantasy writer thinks about all that? I’m grateful that I live in a country where I have the right to speak out about all of that, but honestly, I don’t see how my opinion would carry the same weight as someone more qualified.

“But Vaughn”, I imagine you say, “what the fuck does that have to do with the title of this blog entry?” I’m glad I imagined you asked.

I had my natal chart done once and freaked the lady who did it out, seeing as I had seven things or something in Scorpio when I was born, so she jokingly told me that I’m a “quintessential Scorpio”. For those of you who are readying some skeptic comments already, I write about sorcerers who work the overdue desk at the public library, dragons who work as fry cooks, and unicorns that sell cigarettes and lotto tickets, is writing about astrology really that much of a stretch?

On my old blog I used to have a semi-regular feature called a “tip of the day for living with a Scorpio”, and now that I’m in a relationship again, I’m realizing a few things that I figure I could share. I write gay relationships and I’ve been in a few of them myself, and being a “quintessential Scorpio” (like it says in my bio) I figure this is at least one thing I can speak with a little bit of authority on, or at least fake it. So here we go…

To every guy I dated in my twenties: I’m sorry. I was kind of a dick. With the benefit of time and psychic distance I now see how I definitely played a hand in things getting screwed up. I’m not taking all the blame, but definitely my fair share of it.

The above statement is something that I believe every Scorpio will likely come to when he (we’ll use the masculine pronoun for this, since I’m a guy and all) reaches his thirties and his self-awareness fully kicks in. One magic summer will go by, we turn into thirtysomethings, take a look back and realize “My god, I was an asshole back then.”

Sure, we have inklings in our twenties. Self-awareness is the calling card of Scorpios, after all. If you make the decision to date one, there are a few things you should probably know about.

1. We Already Know How We Want To Be Treated

Ever wish your boyfriend came with a manual? A simple guide so you’d know from the get-go what they like and don’t like, whether they’ll forget your anniversary, pet peeves, sleeping style, argument habits, etc.? A Scorpio likely already has one in his head, and he’s happy to share it if you ask him. Depending on how many relationships he’s been through, he’s likely run through everything that worked and didn’t work for him before with the proper emotional distance. Chances are he might not even know he’s doing it, and he might even be reluctant to share information at all. It might be because we’re secretive, dark, or mysterious, which we love for everyone to believe (because it gets us laid), but the real reason is…

2. We All Have Trust Issues

Doesn’t matter how it happened, who did it, or why, but somewhere along the line we decided that our trust had to be earned, and it will likely piss you off when you see how hard we make you earn it while we freely give it to some guy we met twenty minutes ago. There are levels of trust, what you’ll trust people with and for how long, and we subconsciously do a lot of that. Unfortunately, it makes us come off as dicks, mostly because it can be a dick move to suspect the person you share your bed with while trusting a complete stranger with what’s usually guarded information.

In our teens and twenties, like most people, we can be pretty free with “I love you”, but “I trust you” can be harder for us to say. As a Scorpio gets older, we put a premium on both of the Three Words until they’re essentially synonymous. And when we get burned, it can take us longer to get back on our feet, and you’ll notice how easy it is for us to freeze people out. This is one of the reasons, you’ll notice, that we don’t have a large group of friends, or even friends per se. Generally, we have a family that we add and subtract members from, and we hold grudges as well as any family. (Yes, the stereotype is true, we will hold a grudge over a petty slight for years if we need to, even when we ourselves know it’s ridiculous to do so.) This is why…

3. We Seem To Prefer Long Distance Relationships

Behold! The Long Distance Relationship!

You’d be amazed how well a Scorp can do a distance relationship. We happily can jump into one in our twenties, and even our thirties (though with the latter, we usually require an expiration date to the distance), and the primary reason is this: A distance relationship is like a fridge.

I can already tell I’m losing some people here, allow me to explain. To a Scorpio, a long distance relationship is something they only have to put a certain amount of time into, whenever they want. Sure, they actually do care about the person on the other end of the line, but in an LDR, it’s all too easy to text or IM that you’re feeling sick and just aren’t up to talking that night, and then you go watch porn or play CoD or whatever else you wanted to do instead of relationship stuff, and there’s almost never a problem. The Scorpio gets to control when he opens the door, takes out what comfort food he wants, and then close it, and everything stays preserved in the meantime. The Scorpio can approach the fridge however he desires, however he’s dressed, and the fridge doesn’t judge, because it’s a fridge. Sure, it might go bad if he leaves everything alone too long, and there’s always the possibility of the rotting moldy green pepper of resentment hiding in the vegetable crisper, but generally, it’ll sustain him. However, you can’t get a hug from a fridge, or do various enjoyable relationship things with a fridge (though I’m sure if you look hard enough someone’s doing a Tumblr of attempting to do just that), and a fridge is just food and a little light that comes on whenever you open the door. There’s a reason LDRs generally don’t work out, and we often remain blind to that. And generally, despite the fridge-iness of the relationship, and that you’d think we’d keep it going forever, we usually screw it up because…

4. We Can Be Clingy

In my opinion, and some of it’s from personal experience, every Scorpio is a Crazy Ex waiting to happen. I have a few ex-boyfriends, some of whom I’m still close to and some of which likely think I’m out of my mind and some of whom I couldn’t care less about. I might’ve mentioned that we have trust issues, some of you might already be aware of that because your Scorpio just won’t leave you the hell alone for a while or not try to read into every little thing you say. This is one of the reasons that LDRs often crash and burn for Scorpios, because we tend to read between the lines in all of those IMs and e-mails and Skype conversations and then we REALLY read between the lines. And that’s when we start to get a little scary. Sure lots of the other signs do this, but we unfortunately seem to have a particular talent at it.

An example: When I was in my early twenties, I was in an LDR with a guy from California, and he “cheated” on me a lot even though we saw each other RL once every year or so. As a result I left him for a guy from Canada who moved in with me for maybe two weeks, and then he left without a word and I didn’t hear from him for maybe six months. This, by the way, is my Crazy Ex story. I spent those six months pining for this guy in increasingly pathetic ways, dissecting every e-mail trying to find clues as to whether or not he was coming back, I even held his things hostage for a while to get him to talk to me (I was still convinced at this point at the relationship was salvageable. Sweet god, what I would give to go back and shake myself out of this…). But the grand finale? I borrowed money from relatives, telling them my electricity was going to be turned off, and instead tracked him down to where he worked and drove to Canada to confront him. This was a nine-hour drive, I might add, and I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. I showed up at his workplace (seriously, I’m cringing right now) and honestly believed this was going to be the turning point. It was. I was turned down hard and rather justifiably told to get the hell out of Canada and never talk to him again.

In his twenties, a Scorpio will try to justify that behavior. In his thirties, he thanks every god and benevolent power in existence that he wasn’t arrested for stalking. This is kind of an extreme example, but it shows how far off the deep end we can go, especially if you break up with us via e-mail the morning we’re expecting to pick you up from the train station, which leads me into my next point that…

5. Communication Is Important, Even Though We Kind Of Suck At It

There’s a difference between communication and talking, anyone will tell you that, as well as anyone telling you that communication is vital to any relationship. That being said, Scorps are great at talking, especially about nothing. We can talk about nothing for hours on end, and being able to talk about nothing is often one of the requirements we have, and is also one of the reasons that we excel at LDRs, because really, what else is there to talk about?

The problem is that while we’re great at talking and at emotional honesty (which the situation demands it), it’s tough for us to initiate, which kind of goes back to the trust issues. In fact, initiating things in a relationship that aren’t 100% self-centered, well, it’s an issue. A downside to our self-awareness is that while we know ourselves and that we’re great at reading the subtle nuances of your behavior, we often don’t see the glaring issues until they’re hitting us in the face. There are plenty of Scorpios out there who, up until the minute they’re dumped, thought everything was going fine (which does wonders for our trust issues). Later we can see how we fucked it all up (often when we hit our late twenties or early thirties and emerge from our “self-absorbed asshole” phase), but more often than not, the first week or so brings out the desperate clinging.

But damn, do we know just what to say and just what to do. It’s said that a Scorpio is essentially an eagle forever at war with a serpent, our noble natures constantly being coiled by the urge to snap and bite and pump someone full of the vitriol we’ve been brewing just for them. We’re either awesome or shitty boyfriends, and there’s rarely room left in the middle. When you’re down, we can lift you back up in a way that no other sign can, and you’d be amazed at the shit we’ll do simply out of spite, which leads me into my final point that…

6. We Are a Mess of Contradictions

We’re control-freaks that hate being in charge, we’re manipulators that despise being played, we’re physically affectionate when we’re awake and don’t want anyone touching us when we’re asleep, we’re sexually dominant and voracious… until we have a three week stint where we aren’t interested, we either don’t care or we care a hundred and crazy percent. Scorps are creatures of extremes, and we rarely do things halfway (unless it’s a creative project, then we do a LOT of things halfway), but you’d never know to look at us. When we meet someone, we know in the first 10 minutes whether they’ll be a friend, or if they’ll simply not be a part of our lives. We’re intensely loyal… up to the moment where we’re convinced, for whatever reason that we’ve been screwed over and then that’s over. It makes us complicated and screwed up and experienced and funny and weird and generally able to slide into every social group while at the same time never really make us part of it. For us, a relationship is always filling some hole in our lives until the moment that it isn’t, the person we choose to be with and trust gets to see person under all the contradictions, all the social poses, no matter how scarred or scared we are. For us, love is a home, and trust is letting someone in.

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Published on April 27, 2013 08:59

Excerpt: Community Service

So I’m still trying to come up with my next JMED essay, but in the meantime, I figure I can whet your appetite for the next book in the Broken Mirrors series with this small section from Community Service. The only introduction it needs is that Community Service will be switching POVs between James and Spencer, and this section is from Spencer’s POV.

Note: Excerpt may differ slightly from the final product.

Community Service will be released on May 7th, and is available for pre-order.

“What’s going on, Spencer?” There are bags under his green eyes, his red hair mussed just on the right side of attractive, save the white streak that’s plastered to his forehead. He also sounds annoyed, but sorcerers always sound like that at four thirty in the morning, for some reason. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“Time for breakfast? And some coffee? God, I need coffee. Could you let me in, I’ll even get it started.” I don’t give him a chance to refuse. It’s not like Coyotes need an invitation, so I slide past him and head out into the diner proper, getting the coffee pots ready while James follows me. “Don’t suppose you can conjure a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster?”

He gives me a blank look.

“Jesus, James. Hitchhiker’s. I cannot believe you’ve never read it.”

“I’m just not into satire, okay? Now what’s going on?” He sits at the counter, oblivious to Bank and Thornton who are outside.

I glance back at him. “Regular for you, right?” I pour in the water, set the machine to percolating.

“Spence, just spill it so I can get around to talking to you about something?”

I peer at him. “Wait, you’re giving me the ‘we need to talk’? Don’t we need to have sex at least once before you break up with me?”

He grumbles. “We’re not—” The sorcerer takes a deep breath. “I’m happy alone, okay? I don’t have the best track record and I don’t want to inflict it on someone else.”

I turn, leaning against the counter. “What are the odds you’ll go out with another guy who gets…” I don’t finish the sentence. No one wants to be reminded that both serious relationships in their life ended with a scissor blade through their lover’s heart. “You need time, I get it. In the meantime, could you get the grill going?” I motion to the front doors. “My buddies are hungry.”

James looks back through the window at Bank and Thornton, who wave and smile genially. He rolls his eyes. “What, recharging before you get back to the threesome?”

What is it with people thinking I’d want to sleep with my brother? I blame the Internet. “Dude. Sick.”

“The guy with the extra arms is okay, I guess, but Dave has a strict No Coyotes policy, remember?”

Right. I guess a Coyote swindled the dragon out of his hoard, and he’s a tad bitter about it. Dragons love their money, which is why they’re such tempting (and easy) targets for us. Even if we don’t make a dime, it’s worth boo coo goodie points with Fate. “Fine, I’ll use the rest of my free meals to cover him.”

He exhales hard, but nods. “Go let them in, I’ll tell Dave to stay upstairs.”

James heads into the back while I go to the door and unlock it. I point them toward a booth, which my brother lugs his duffel bag toward. “I can get us coffee, food’s going to be a while. And, Thornton?”

The Coyote looks at me. “Yeah?”

“Is this diner familiar at all to you?”

He takes in the surroundings. “No idea, I’ve eaten at a lot of diners. I think Dad took you here, right?” Yeah, and Dad skipped out on the check. Thornton suddenly grins. “Wait, is this the place the dragon owns? Wow, I took so much money off that moron.”

Why am I not surprised that it was him?

“Yeah, I don’t want the owner recognizing you just in case, okay? Just…cloak up or something.”

He shrugs and closes his eyes, concentrating, his appearance shimmering before me, the Coyote features vanishing, taking on a human appearance. Gentle green eyes with a hint of mischief, medium-length brown hair in a mussed-up curtain style, light beard and goatee, casual attire, all attractive, of course. It’s a handy trick we Coyotes can pull off. To most humans and mythics we can look however we want so long as we’ve seen the clothing or hairstyle or whatever. It’s because of this I can wear tailored Armani suits whenever I want. Really, there’s only one kind of person who can see through it.

“So, what do you three want? It’s going to be a long while because the grill’s heating up.” James glances at Thornton. “By the way, that’s the most obvious cloak I’ve ever seen. No one’s going to believe that a Hollywood actor’s eating at a diner in Beckettsville.”

Sorcerers. It’s because of James that I don’t just put on a cloak over my boxers and shoes and head out for the day. I sit next to Bank, since the other side has Thornton and his duffel bag.

Bank orders—coffee, black, keep it coming, a generally simple meal of scrambled eggs and toast—and thanks James sincerely for opening early after giving him a five-dollar tip. If there’s one thing Bank knows how to do, it’s treat people in the service industry like people. No one wants to make anything complicated coming on five in the morning.

Thornton chews his lower lip. “Uh, I need a minute, but coffee would be great to start me out.” James nods, writing it down. Thornton tics his head toward him while looking at me. “So, you hitting that?”

“What, James? God no.”

He tilts his head. “Wait, what? But, he’s a sorcerer, so he’s the hero, you’re obviously the sidekick. I mean, the unresolved sexual tension alone…”

Finally someone says it. “I know, right? After six months I should’ve been living a ‘True Confessions’ letter to SlashFan International.”

He shrugs with a grin. “Well, maybe you’re just not what he goes for. He could be looking for someone charismatic, more mature, a bit dangerous, can affect a decent London accent.” Thornton reaches over the table and pats my cheek. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you how he was.”

I stare daggers at him. “Not if I do him first, you won’t.”

An aggravated sigh comes from our right. “I’m standing right here, you know.” James then glances at Thornton, his voice slipping into a natural British accent, Oxford, as he puts it. “And I don’t go for Londoners.” He looks to me. “Or tricksters. I want to be left alone.” He storms off, and we both watch him leave, Bank suddenly finding the street outside very interesting.

Thornton mutters. “Damn it.”

Bank chuckles. “Got you pegged, sounds like.”

Thornton shakes his head. “No, it’s not that.”

I nod in assent to my brother, half-chiding myself for slipping back into the rhythm we had before. “He had to go and say it, didn’t he?”

Bank looks between the two of us. “What are you two talking about?”

Thornton, like me, is a Bard, which is the reason he’s as smooth as he is and understands television tropes almost as well as I do. Turn on any TV show or watch any movie, and if someone says that they only want to be left alone, it can only mean one thing…

The Coyote grits his teeth. “Twenty bucks says he falls for our mark, and Spencer here has to make a decision between money and friendship.”

“My twenty says he meets the love of his life in the next forty-eight hours and following a whirlwind romance and a hair-raising adventure, they move in together after say…a week.” I snort derisively. “So much for crashing on his couch.”

Bank blinks, looking between the two of us. “Or…he just wants to be alone.” He watches James pour the coffee. “And is spitting in your joe as we speak.”

I get up. “He wanted to talk to me about something, anyway. A sidekick’s work is never done.”

James is behind the counter, turned away from me. I clear my throat.

“So, I’m sorry to put you out like this. I wasn’t expecting either of them to show up, especially the Coyote. Figured that part of my life was over. This is probably a bad time to ask if I can crash on your futon…” James still isn’t looking at me. “You’re mad. I can see that. So just get it off your chest and we’ll all feel better.”

“He didn’t want to see me.”

Okay, a little cognitive dissonance there. “Huh?”

He turns to face me. “Cale.” His eyes are a bit red. “Cale didn’t want to see me.”

Cale is the last guy James dated, also the last Ra’keth who had a reign lasting longer than six hours. According to James, he died in his arms, but since sorcerers are sorcerers and glibly flip off the laws of reality, he gets a “conjugal visit” in Hades four times a year.

Because yeah, that’s healthy.

But he’s my friend.

I move around the counter and hug him, keep it outside of embrace territory, he doesn’t fight it. “Jesus, I’m sorry, man. But, it has been over a year since… Standard mourning period’s a year and a day, right? We’re, like, way past that.”

He pulls away, lower lip trembling. I raise my hands in surrender.

“I don’t want to upset you. How about we change the subject, huh? Like…what you wanted to talk to me about in the first place, unless it was to tell me about Cale.”

He shakes his head. “No, I might need your help. I still need to do my research, figure out everything. Finally got my first assignment from Hades, so I can work off some of my sentence.”

This would be an excellent means of getting out of dealing with Thornton, but I don’t want to consider the consequences of leaving Bank alone with him. Then again, it’s the job of the sidekick to overextend. “Sure, James, anything you need, just give me a call.” I lean in, interested, hushing my voice. “So, what’s the score? Who’re you after?”

He manages a chuckle. “You’re not going to believe this, but some guy who’s been hopping bodies to get out of dying? He hopped into a vampire.”

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Published on February 06, 2013 09:31

Justifying My English Degree: Here’re Your Flying Cars: The Livable Future of “The Fifth Element”

I put up on my Facebook that I was trying to decide between doing this one or WarGames, and since both got some interest, I’ll likely give a young Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy the JMED treatment next.

THE TRAILER: (Note: It’s a fan trailer, but IMO it’s far better than the original)

THE FILM: The Fifth Element, Columbia-TriStar, 1997

PRINCIPAL ACTORS: Bruce Willis, Milla Jovavich, Gary Oldman

SYNOPSIS: In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay.

THE CRITIQUE:

Writing about the future is one of the big reasons writers get into sci-fi, but there’s always a question of what kind of future is being shown. Which type is evident can always be discerned by asking a simple question: “Is the future existing as setting, or as commentary?” Shows such as Futurama do plenty with the latter, taking an aspect of our current culture and taking it to its slippery-slope-logical end in the year 3000 in order to let us know how ridiculous it is in retrospect. In fact, most futuristic sci-fi uses the setting to make commentary or serve as dire prophecy such as with 1984 or Brave New World, but that’s not what I plan to explore, as these points have been explored countless times by scholars and grad students and the turtles all the way down.

Instead, I wish to delve into the setting for the sake of setting, the future as backdrop instead of statement. When we see a future that’s there to advance the plot instead of hold up a picket sign, it seems that there are certain rules in place in order to keep from scaring off the audience or jarring them out of the movie. An excellent example of this is in Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan, where people called “Revivals” (those who chose to cryogenically preserve themselves for decades or centuries) are faced with a drastically different future. A scene that underlines this shows the series character Mary, a once-photojournalist who’s recently revived and is mentally preparing herself for the future that awaits her outside the front door. One of the attendants in the scene is quick to tell her that the van is double-parked, and that term”double-parked” is clung to like a talisman as it’s one of the few things that’s innate and familiar: After god knows how long, in a future god knows how strange, vans at least can still be double parked. Granted, once she first beholds the vista of casual cannibalism, sex and drugs painted on everything that will stand still (and some things that don’t), and generally seeing a world running proudly on rampaging id, she understandably collapses into catatonia.

As much as many Transmet fans would assert repeatedly that they wouldn’t react in the same fashion, the point being made is that the future would often be far too jarring for a modern person to assimilate to easily. The future of The Fifth Element however follows a different mold. Instead of sex and violence, sexual drugs that can make you violent, and “re-de-re-de-re-deconstructionist” violent sex rock through the eyes of an eloquent shock jock (who seems to be into sex and violence for some reason), it’s instead like The Jetsons as it would actually happen. We keep the flying cars, they’re dirty and a little banged up sure, but we get flying cars damn it. We get the sky-high living arrangements, but they’re usually sky-high tenements where someone’s going to get stuck living in the fog layer. Your college dorm room was probably bigger than your apartment will be, but hey, instant mail and you can have Thai food delivered right to your window. Sure, there’re piles of garbage at the airport, but hey, interstellar travel to planet Hawaii and you’ll get to sleep through the whole trip there. Sure, it’s different, but it’s not too different and most importantly, it’s familiar.

It’s the familiarity that seems to be the most important, as watching a futuristic movie is often akin to visiting a foreign country. Often when visiting another country, we seek out and cling to the familiar. Americans are often chided for traveling thousands of miles to visit a rich and complex culture only to get lunch at the nearest McDonald’s. This is shown in the fan favorite taxi chase scene of The Fifth Element where even though the film takes place in New York City, it’s still the NYC of the 23rd century.

The first twenty seconds serve to set up a nice punchline later in the scene, but the choice is notable here simply for the sake of the audience. Yes, buildings are thousands of feet tall and cars fly in hundreds of choreographed lanes and everyone is generally dressed different, but look, you can still go to a McDonald’s for a Big Mac value meal (or Golden Menu as they call it here). While it may seem like cheap corporate product placement (which let’s face it, it is), it serves a definite purpose in letting the audience know that yes, it’s different, but here’s a familiar place you can build assimilation from. Even in the 23rd century you can still get a Big Mac, fortune cookies with your Asian cuisine, smoke your cigarettes, and believe that the “one mile rule” still applies. It’s seen in other movies as well, such as Back to the Future II assuring us we can still wear Nikes and get a Pepsi and that eventually the Cubs will win the World Series, or how Minority Report might terrify us with the idea of Pre-Crime, but lets us know we can still shop at the Gap, drive a Lexus, and shop with our AmEx card (though our right to privacy is essentially obliterated by corporations at that point). Hell, even the new Star Trek tells us that Nokia and the Beastie Boys will survive the trip, if only in Iowa.

While it might be disappointing to some, it’s also important to one’s study of the craft to know one’s audience and what they’re willing to accept. The future itself in film making often picks a side regarding utopia or dystopia, but the more mundane futures are often the most likely, and the most easily discarded. After all, most would live in a paradise, or have a society it’s easy to wag a finger at with a definitive “I told you so”, rather than see that two to three hundred years down the line we’re technologically more advanced, but that human nature hasn’t followed as strongly as hoped, that we’re still creative, ignorant, forthright, greedy, motivated and lazy. The future, after all, is supposed a nice place to visit, we shouldn’t want to live there.

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Published on January 28, 2013 08:17

Justifying My English Degree: “The Devil Wears Prada” vs. the Protestant Work Ethic

THE FILM: The Devil Wears Prada, 20th Century Fox, 2006

PRINCIPAL ACTORS: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway

SYNOPSIS: A naive young woman comes to New York and scores a job as the assistant to one of the city’s biggest magazine editors, the ruthless and cynical Miranda Priestly.

THE CRITIQUE:

-Let me know when your whole life goes up in smoke. Means it’s time for a promotion.

Work hard, don’t overextend yourself financially, and the world can be yours. That’s the philosophy that drives the majority of America, which has its roots in the Protestant Work Ethic, the idea that hard work and the willingness to do it are all that stands between us and the promised land. There are countless stories and films that bolster this belief, showing an American fresh off the bus who pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and become a true success in whatever field they pursue. They’re the sort of fairy tales we were told in the 70s and 80s and 90s to keep up our confidence as we went off to college.

However, another kind of movie started to creep in in the 80s, where working too hard became a sin. You would see a character, often a father or a single parent, working beyond the 40 hours expected in a week, either because they needed the money or simply loved the challenge of the job. Everything would seem fine… on the surface. In actuality, only the working person was happy, while everyone else in their lives was miserable because of their work habits. More often than not this was accomplished by showing wives and children neglected by hard-working fathers, the caretaking parent often portrayed as overwhelmed because the working parent wasn’t pitching in enough. Nathan Rabin puts it best in his critique of North, an example of his trend, when he says, “These films coldly exploit both the innate narcissism of children and the guilt of dual-income couples worried that their professional success is coming at the expense of their children’s happiness. Most parents try their best under challenging circumstances. They don’t deserve to have cynical kiddie fare propagating the message that if you miss little Timmy’s softball game even once he’ll end up a serial killer all because of your terrible parenting.”

But these movies, whether they be terrible movies like North or less guilt-inducing fare like Charles Shyer’s Baby Boom, usually use the family as an excuse for the guilt, or at the very least a marriage falling apart. In The Devil Wears Prada, the trend is tweaked, and in a fashion that tends to outright denounce the desire to get ahead rather than provide a familial exception.

At the beginning of the film, Anne Hathaway’s character Andrea “Andy” Sachs seems to be gearing up for a Secret of My Success kind of ascension, gathering up her earnest newspaper clippings and preparing for her interview at a prestigious magazine. The motivation, of course, is that by working the job for a year, she can write her own ticket at any magazine in New York, which is something most would kill for, no matter how hellish the job. What follows is a normal progression of learning the ropes and a montage of being overwhelmed by the job, but slowly getting the hang of it and eventually enjoying the challenge, even if she doesn’t fully go for the subject matter. The complications that arise are from her family, friends, and relationships, but it’s never put across all that convincingly.

When Andy gets a visit from her father, it’s constantly interrupted by work, and she’s admonished for always working so late, but it’s established that her family lives out of state, and only one parent bothers to make the trip to visit. It’s a scene that doesn’t sell the concern it’s pushing, the idea that maybe Andy is working too hard after all, and that busting her ass and paying her dues to get her dream job (an idea that’s supported by the Protestant work ethic) frankly isn’t worth it if she has to miss seeing Chicago with her dad. Her relationship with her friends is strained as well, particularly in a scene where she greets her pals at a club with about $3000 in free swag for them to make amends for working so much, and they proceed to mock her anyway and try to prank her boss (but still keep the stuff).

It’s about at this point in the film that the message becomes muddled, unsure of whether it wants to denounce working hard or simply ambition, and no further does it show this than with the relationship between Andy and her boyfriend Nate. Whether he’s guilting her for working late or harping on her for her ethical decisions (none of which seem vile), it’s Nate that’s supposed to symbolize the reason to forsake all of her hard work. While he might proclaim, “I wouldn’t care if you were out there pole-dancing all night, as long as you did it with a little integrity!”, there’s little more to it than simple yelling. While Andy might wail that she had no choice in making her decisions, not a single one of her career-advancing decisions have any ethical violations. The major faux pas she loses her relationship over, going to Paris instead of her fellow assistant, is rendered null ethically as the assistant Emily is laid up in the hospital, Andy given a pass by Fate. Even then, Andy wasn’t given the choice to go to Paris, she was awarded with it for proving herself the more skilled and capable worker, the prize of a meritocracy that’s championed by the Protestant Work Ethic.

Everything that Andy receives career-wise in the movie is earned through hard work, gumption, and a little luck, but she’s constantly berated by those on the outside for daring to smile at the spoils. Instead of being lauded for getting the job “a million girls would kill for”, she’s hounded by guilt for paying the price that it asks. Of course, she still gets a pass in the end because this is a movie, and gets a shot at her dream job, perhaps as one favor despite walking out without a word (though instead of working at a magazine based at a skyscraper, it’s at an under-budgeted though earnest also-ran). It’s well presented in the movie that if Andy hadn’t left, she would become a likely protege to her boss, and there’s nothing to suggest she wouldn’t enjoy it. Instead, it pushes the moral that it’s okay to work hard, but not too hard, to always make time for your friends and boyfriends because they’ll never understand that publishing, no matter WHICH magazine or newspaper you work for is a high-hour high-stress job, and most importantly that if you enjoy your high-hour high-stress job, there’s clearly something wrong with you.

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Published on January 21, 2013 11:43

Justifying My English Degree: Hollywood God: The Micromanaging Creator of “Last Holiday”

Some preface: This is one of my go-to movies when I’m sick or feeling down, and I’ve likely watched it more than most people. Its opening scene is one of the reasons I’ve taken an interest in cooking (though I’m still not very good at it), and I enjoy Queen Latifah as an actress.

THE TRAILER:

THE FILM: Last Holiday, Paramount, 2006.

PRINCIPAL ACTORS: Queen Latifah, LL Cool J, Timothy Hutton

SYNOPSIS: After she’s diagnosed with a terminal illness, a shy woman decides to take a European vacation.

THE CRITIQUE: God can be a tricky thing to handle in movies, depending on what kind of movie you’re making. When it comes down to it, everyone has a different vision of God, but tends to ascribe the same qualities of omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, and as comedians often state, a sense of humor. The God of Last Holiday, for example, has an almost trickster sensibility, playing a prank on one of his (as God is considered male in this film) congregation to push her out of stasis and take a different path in life. (And I’m sure that those who’ve read Coyote’s Creed are now saying “Ohhhhhhh….”)

But the God of Last Holiday is also a micromanager, which is a rather common trait in movies, film, and TV. It’s considered an easy cheat in screenwriting for when you need something to happen, but have no explanation why it should happen at all. You might’ve heard of it: deus ex machina. It can either be attributed to sheer dumb luck, karma, or the actions of a rather attentive deity. When I first started studying Buddhism, my mentor asked me to start watching the show My Name Is Earl to understand the idea of “Hollywood Karma”. After I asked “but isn’t Karma a Hindu belief?” he responded, “Yes, but firstly, the lesson of Hollywood Karma applies to all religions, more accurately, America’s general perception of religions, and secondly, not many are familiar with Buddhism or Hinduism so they’ll likely assume you know about it. This is a nice way to save yourself from having to correct them constantly.” Hollywood Karma is the concept that karma pays off almost immediately. If you do something nice now, you’ll get something nice later. If you’re bad now, you’ll get the consequences. It’s a variant of the Just World Hypothesis, the belief that bad things only happen to bad people.

Hollywood God is a slightly different creature, in that it serves as a means of critiquing a person’s relationship with God, rather than a society’s. As far as Hollywood God is concerned, you’re the only person on earth that matters, which, let’s face it, is the way a lot of people view their Creator, no matter which religion they follow. And Hollywood God is only likely to get involved when something bad happens, because that’s the only time God ever truly enters the picture for the protagonists. Much as we have a social contract with everyone around us (which boils down to “don’t screw me, I won’t screw you” at its basest essence), many of us believe we have such a contract with God as well, as is shown in the following scene: (PREFACE: Georgia (Queen Latifah) has been told she has a terminal illness, and has 3 weeks to live, and finally breaks down during a sermon at her church)

It’s best summed up with “I followed the rules, I don’t deserve this!” It can also be seen as the Anger stage of the 5 stages of Grief. As the Just World Fallacy goes, bad things, in this case, a terminal case of brain cancer, are not supposed to happen to people who follow the Ten Commandments and don’t rock the boat at work or sleep around. The scene begins as a plea for a reason, but ends up as a demand, like ordering a waiter to take a steak back to the kitchen until the chef gives them what they ordered. God is only called in times to tragedy, to justify the pain and suffering that the protagonist must suddenly endure, but in the end will put them on a much better path. At the end of the scene, Georgia leaves the church with a “to hell with this…” sort of gesture, figuring that she’ll never get the answers she’s asking for.

At that point, the film could take a much different tack, as could a critic decide that it’s because Georgia abandons her faith that her life suddenly improves, and that her illness isn’t terminal, or even real. Then again, that critic would have to explain the many many instances of blind luck and how serendipity follows Georgia, as it does with many comedic protagonists, like a lovesick puppy. Instead, it’s Hollywood God, micromanaging and putting the exact people in the exact right place, as well as causing a roulette wheel to hit 17 three times in a row to replace all of the money that Georgia has spent on her titular last holiday. However, in every scene of perfect serendipity, Georgia ascribes it to a meddling God having a bit of fun with her. When she writes her “If you’re reading this, my disease has run its course” letter, she writes it over her Bible, and leaves it inside next to a passage from the Book of Micah. It’s only when she finally reaches the Acceptance stage of the 5 stages of grief that God isn’t mentioned, which, ironically, is when Georgia receives the answer to her earlier demand of “Why me?” Why does Georgia believe she’s going to die? Because God wanted her to reach that end point, to say “I will laugh more, I will love more, I’ll see the world. I won’t be so afraid” and actually mean it. Granted, it takes a lot of micromanaging on God’s part, hooking Georgia up with Congressmen and celebrity chefs and bringing down the CEO of the company she used to work for, as well as winning over $100k at roulette, surviving a black diamond run with no prior snowboarding experience, and BASE jumping off a dam where quite a few people have died.

In the end, it’s not a criticism of God, Last Holiday serves as another example of how we as a people would prefer to see our collective higher powers, or more accurately, how we want them to see us. We want to believe that we are special and deserve individual attention from our Creator over everyone else, that he should justify the terrible things in our lives, but supply us with good fortune without any comment from us other than snerking “Oh, you!” For the viewer, who gets to see everything, including everyone getting their just rewards in the epilogue, this vision of a Just World is kept intact. In Last Holiday‘s case, though, the instant gratification is requested, nay demanded in the “Why me?” scene, but it’s never expected after that. Georgia may often wonder aloud why it’s all happening, but the anger has vanished, she’s simply finding her way to a better state of mind, and a better relationship with herself and her Creator. The world may not be just, but that’s what faith, not only in God, but also as Georgia learns, in one’s self, is there for.

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Published on January 06, 2013 08:04

Justifying My English Degree: Music and Lyrics, “Pop Is For Morons”

To begin, my apologies for neglecting the blog, but I honestly can’t think of anything to post that isn’t shameless plugging for Community Service or political blogging which is, let’s face it, nothing I’m really qualified to comment on other than the fact that I read the newspaper. (Yes, kids, they still have those. )

Instead, I want to critique scenes from media that don’t have a lot of literary criticism leveled at them: popular cinema, television that isn’t Breaking Bad, video games that aren’t Spec Ops: The Line. While I was attending Goddard, we were required to read, on average, about 15-40 books per semester and write a 2-4 page paper on every book. We got to pick our reading lists, but they needed approval from our advisors. While I would later study under Rachel Pollack at Goddard, I started at first under John McManus, who added a lot of literary fiction to my list telling me that he wanted to “get me out of my comfort zone”. Unfortunately for me, I wasn’t assertive enough at the time to explain to him that I hadn’t had the chance to actually be in my comfort zone throughout my education. I’m aware that Ulysses is a towering work of English literature and that One Hundred Years of Solitude is likely one of the finest works ever written (and yes, I have read it). But Joyce and Marquez have legions of defenders, as do every other major literary writer, and the minor ones have plenty of grad students looking to exalt them for course credit.

When I was in undergrad at Oswego State, Literary Criticism was a required course, and I was lucky enough to get a professor willing to let me critique Roseanne for my final paper, so long as I demonstrated that I knew what the Hell I was doing. I studied Transmetropolitan for my Queer Theory class. My creative thesis at Goddard was entitled “Archetypes of the Modern Wizard Protagonist”, and I critiqued Harry Potter, Harry Dresden, and Anakin Skywalker. And I actually enjoyed literary criticism.

Unfortunately for me, it has its side effects. So now, whenever I’m enjoying popular entertainment, I tend to deconstruct a scene I enjoy to understand what exactly I like about it from a literary, sociological, or psychological standpoint.

So, given that, I’ve decided to start critiquing selected scenes on the blog, and I’ll be starting with one of my favorite movies.

THE FILM: Music and Lyrics, starring Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, Warner Bros., 2007.

SYNOPSIS: A washed up singer is given a couple days to compose a chart-topping hit for an aspiring teen sensation. Though he’s never written a decent lyric in his life, he sparks with an offbeat younger woman with a flair for words.

THE SCENE: Rattled by seeing an award winning novel based on her, Sophie, a reluctant lyricist, is talked down by Alex, a washed up pop star trying to get her back on track.

THE SCRIPT (Since I can’t find the clip online, also snipping a tiny bit for space):

SOPHIE: Since then, every time I pick up a pen I’m haunted by those words that he wrote, you know? “She was a brilliant mimic.” You know. “She could ape Dorothy Parker or Emily Dickinson but stripped of someone else’s literary clothes she was a vacant, empty imitation of a writer.”

ALEX: First of all, you can’t listen to some jerk.

SOPHIE: He’s not a jerk. He’s a National Book Award winner.

ALEX: Well, then, get the best revenge, write a hit song.

SOPHIE: (dismissively) Honestly, I don’t think a pop song is gonna impress Sloan Cates.

ALEX: Oh, no, of course not. (rolls eyes) Pop is just for morons. Forgot that.

SOPHIE: I didn’t mean anything by it.

ALEX: Brain-dead, or taken too many drugs. You know what I’d say to you and Sloan Cates? You can take all the novels in the world and not one of them will make you feel as good as fast as: (sings) I’ve got sunshine/ On a cloudy day/ When it’s cold outside/ I’ve got the month of May.

That is real poetry. Those are real poets. Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan, the Beatles.

SOPHIE: Okay, Dylan walks up to you and he says, “You are a horrible songwriter.” How do you react?

ALEX: I would be horribly depressed. Yes. I would. I would. But then, after, you know, months of brooding, I would find a lyricist and write a song about how horribly depressed I was. And it would be a big hit, everyone would love me, and I’d make lots of money. Suddenly I’d be less depressed than if I just sat around being a little bit self-indulgent, letting my misery eat away at me until I’d become an emotional wreck and creatively completely moribund. Yes, moribund.

THE CRITIQUE:

I began with this scene simply because it explains why I’m doing this to begin with. There’s quite a bit of long-repressed exasperation by Alex in this scene, especially in his statement, “Oh, no, of course not. Pop is just for morons. Forgot that.” It underlines the frustrations of pop lyricists, blockbuster screenwriters, and genre fiction writers: We’ll never be taken seriously. It’s even shown here when Alex remarks that Sloan Cates is a jerk for turning Sophie into a fictional harridan, but it’s immediately countered with “He’s not a jerk. He’s a National Book Award winner.” Sloan Cates’s personal behavior and methods are placed above reproach because he’s a respected literary novelist, while Alex, once one of the biggest acts in the world, now has to settle for offers of doing high school reunions and celebrity boxing with Debbie Gibson for a chance to sing.

There’s a story that goes around writer’s circles about how Stephen King and John Updike were once interviewed separately, and King remarked he was happy with the sales he had, but wished he received the respect that Updike was lavished with. Updike remarked he was honored by the respect he received, but he wishes he had King’s sales.

That he chooses “My Girl” is telling. It’s a great, upbeat number that marries uplifting lyrics with C Major (which is regarded as the “simplest key”) that gives the listener easy access to a lot of positive emotions in under 3 minutes. It’s not a challenging number, given its reliance on using a pentatonic scale as the hook, but much like John Popper explained with “Hook” (though in his case, he uses the most commonly used chord structure in music), it doesn’t mean that the songwriters didn’t know exactly what they were doing. “My Girl”, like a lot of pop music, relies on musical “cheat codes” to make them stick, but instead of insulting the listener with that knowledge (Like, for example, Popper does with “Hook”), it’s an offered pick-me-up to the listener. It might tweak the formula, but it remains loyal to it because that’s what the people like.

It boils down to the inaccurate duality of artiste and poseur that’s been bandied about the creative community since we started telling stories around the fire and painting on walls. One side makes “true art”, and the other apes it to make money. It can be disheartening, to be thought less of by liking what’s popular simply because it’s likeable, especially if you’re educated and have some knowledge of why popular culture is, well, popular. It’s easy enough to put yourself into an “us vs. them” mentality, to be snide and sarcastic, to say, “Pop is just for morons. Forgot that.”

The irony is that Alex, like a lot of pop artists, fears the artistes may be right. “They write dinner. I write… dessert” as he says later in the film. Even in the “pop is for morons” speech, despite the fact that Alex has a point, it’s obvious from his tonality and word choice that Sophie isn’t the only one he’s trying to convince. He sings The Temptations, but doesn’t name them as “real poets”. Instead he puts forth pop’s elder statesmen: Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder and Bob Dylan, and concludes with unassailable saints in The Beatles. His recovery is his fantasy that he’ll write a song “and it would be a big hit, everyone would love me, and I’d make lots of money” and vindication will follow in the form of a royalty check. Plus, he gets in a nice little vocabulary dig, as if to say “even though you think pop is for morons, that doesn’t mean that I’m a moron.”

The point that Alex dances around in his defense of “My Girl” and pop music is that the best pop music that stays with the listener does so not just because of the “cheat codes” and major chords, but because of the emotional honesty of the lyrics that’s paired with them. The entire film is built around the writing of a song for a Britney-styled pop diva that contains that kind of emotional honesty as well as a lovely melody in B-flat Major. Pop may be for morons, but damn, do those morons have some great music to listen to.

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Published on January 02, 2013 08:27

The Most [CENSORED] Time of the Year

I try not to be a humbug, but this year, I think I’ll start at the Grinch and work my way up.

P.S. If you like this cover, Electric Six gave it as a gift to the fans last year.

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Published on December 01, 2012 05:16

Cook and Serve

Words to live by, kids!

I’ll start with the standard Happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers, and a Happy Thursday to everyone outside the U.S.

The following piece is a bit of a Thanksgiving tradition for me. I’ve posted the following essay every year in some way, shape or form every year since I wrote it, but before I get to it, a little backstory. In 2007 I was taking Creative Non-Fiction, and our professor tasked us to write an essay describing an event in our lives in which we had been evil, an asshole, or generally refused to follow Wheaton’s Law. Most of us had little trouble pulling it off (we were all college students, after all), though most of the essays were “justifiable” evil. My own, I’ll let you be the judge, but to this day, I still don’t feel sorry about it, and I likely never were.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

This is a story about pudding.

I should probably begin by mentioning that I don’t like pie. Never have, even the types that are essentially vats of chilled fudge that can establish a family history of diabetes. It’s one of the things that distinguish me from the rest of my family, the other major differences being a lack of allergies, liberalism, homosexuality, and wide feet. Normally these differences mean very little.

It was Thanksgiving day. A wonderful day to be quiet.

I had made plans to bring a book and simply say that it was for a class assignment that absolutely had to be done by Monday when the break from college was over. I wasn’t exactly lying, I did have to read a book and I did have an assignment due the following Monday, but facts tend to evaporate when three football games are scheduled and your parents have a big screen TV. Besides, there was always Sunday night or the hour before the class.

“Vaughn?” It was my mother’s voice from the kitchen, an area you didn’t want to go into on Thanksgiving. Constant motion, no counter space, a TV showing old reruns of Gunsmoke, the pitching hiss of a pressure cooker, dogs wiggling and worming between legs eagerly expecting scraps that were hours off. I knew the tone in her voice, the raised pitch, the hard accent on the “V”, it was going to be a request that I had damned well better do without any questions or whining. If I resisted in any way I knew I’d end up seated in front of the green bowl of stuffing that would chew like cheap croûtons while the other end of the family table would feast from the red bowl, chock full of rich succulent dressing that would taste like a filled plate of everything at the table. It’d be subconscious, but she’d do it.

“Yeah?” Kept the tone even. I was seated on the couch and dreading having to move it in the coming days to make room for the Christmas tree. I hoped it was something simple like putting the dogs out or switching the loads of laundry.

“Could you run down to the store and pick up four boxes of pudding? All we’ve got here is sugar free. There should be some money on the desk in the computer room. And when you get back move those clodhopping things away from the radiator! I almost tripped and killed myself!” I gritted my teeth and bit off a “Fuck” before it made it over my tongue, and went to retrieve the cash, my shoes and my coat. I made sure to move my boots, the aforementioned “clod hopping things”. To this day I still have no clue what the Hell clod hopping is or why it requires specific footwear.

I was going to miss kickoff.

I should mention that while I’ve worked as a cashier in a grocery store on Thanksgiving, I’ve never actually shopped for groceries on Thanksgiving day.

Price Chopper was going to be much like something out of Dante. I decided to try to find the humour in the situation and count the number of people buying frozen turkeys on Thanksgiving day while I was in the store. I also took solace in the fact that I would not have to hear the latest verbally delivered manifesto from my right-wing uncle when he arrived. While I walked down the road to the store I ran through the various conversations that would probably occur at dinner once the general tastes of the various dishes had been commented on within an inch of their lives. I planned as many segues into football-related topics as possible to prevent any drifts into discussions on politics, thus cutting my uncle off and keeping him fenced in an area he was happy with.

When I arrived at Price Chopper I made for the baking goods aisle, taking my time and turning up my MP3 player to drown out the chattering masses

I swear I see this box every Thanksgiving…

Chocolate pudding. Cook and serve. Not instant. Not sugar-free. Four boxes. Not instant! Cook and serve! Four.

There was a crowd around a small space in the shelves when I arrived in the aisle, my pace slowed more, my finger dialing down the volume on Tool’s “Maynard’s Dick”, as I realized exactly what everyone was gathered about. The pudding.

Assorted housewives, grandmothers, children, disaffected teenagers, all of us standing in a ragged semi-circle about the empty display, the multitude of boxes of Jell-o pudding with bright colors and inviting flavors bordering the gap where the chocolate pudding, non-sugar free, Cook and serve used to dwell. The cacophony of the store seemed muffled in this area, a solemn silence, almost mourning the loss, or everyone locked in concentration, as if the combined desire of the group could somehow bend reality and cause a fresh shelf of pudding to magically appear.

I swear, it’s like the floors were paved with these boxes…

I stepped tentatively toward the shelves, running my fingers along the smooth glossy cardboard boxes of pudding, seeing chocolate, then the words “instant” or “sugar free”. I chuckled for a few moments, realizing that I was living a sitcom moment when I knelt down and looked at the back wall of the shelves.

Shelves for pudding tend to be sloped, so that when a customer takes one, more slide down, always giving the impression that the shelf is full or so that the customer doesn’t have to reach in back to find a box. However, in the days before a major grocery holiday, such as July Fourth, Christmas, Memorial Day, or Thanksgiving, key items are overstocked, often at the expense of neighboring items. In some cases, items are packed so tightly that even the slope doesn’t cause them to slide down, leaving the back of the shelf encased in a wall of pudding, which is what I saw. And amongst them…

Jell-o Chocolate Pudding. Cook and Serve. One box.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating the rolling pin.

I used my fingernails to pry it out, and slowly brought it down from behind the shelves. The box slowly came into view, and was roughly snatched from my hand. I looked up and saw a woman in her late fifties, blond hair with an inch and a half of gray roots showing, a cheap jacket with a faded floral print, her fingers stained by cigarettes. “Excuse me?”

Etiquette drills you into not being able to say anything more, such as, “What the Hell, bitch?”

She didn’t respond, still holding the box. The crowd was dead quiet. “Excuse me, that was mine.”

She tilted her head back, nose raising, “Well it ain’t now.”

I wanted to assert the cold bitch stance that I’d learned at the Rainbow Alliance, which consisted of narrowed eyes and either folded arms or hands on the hips, probably folded arms seeing as I’m not that tall. I wanted to look her in the eyes with a flat affect face and let out “Lady, did your father bother teaching you manners or was he just too busy fucking you?”

It took a sharp stinging sensation on the left side of my face to realize that I’d actually said it out loud.

In the confusion a twelve year old boy grabbed the box from her hand and tore off down the aisle crying out “Mom! I found one! I found one!”

In the recoil, my head snapped to the right, my vision filled with stacked boxes of My-T-Fine Chocolate Pudding. When I looked left the woman was pushing her way through the crowd amidst muffled comments and choked off laughs. I grabbed four boxes of the pudding and headed for the cashier.

By the time I was walking out of the store I was already editing the story in my head for retelling later. My friends at school would get the uncensored version. My parents would be told about the situation without the profanity or the slap in the face. That would be added in as part of the Thanksgiving shopping hysteria in a sea of hands snatching and grasping for the last can of pumpkin Cook.

When I entered the kitchen with the bag of pudding boxes I made the decision to just hand her the bag and go watch football. “I hope these are all right. They were out of the Jello.”

She opened the bag and nodded, “It’s fine. This is the good stuff.”

That night I took seconds and thirds from the red bowl.

After all, it wasn’t like I was saving room for pie.