John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 4

Ghost-Cat

The cat is driving us insane.

Yeah, yeah. I know: That’s what I get for owning a cat.

And he is an evil mastermind, who delights in bullying the dog and destroying my wife’s (only my wife’s, never my) things.

But this is something new.

He’s taken to clawing furiously at the glass. He’s never done this before, so it’s come as a complete surprise to us.

And he only does it at night. When the glass reflects in instead of out.

Which means he sees “another cat,” views it as an invasion of his territory, and is trying to drive it off.

This other cat never leaves, though. It simply stands up on the other side of the glass and mimics him. It mocks him.

There is no explaining to my feline fiend that this ghost-cat does not exist, that it is an illusion, that it is not an incursion on his territory. Unlike the birds and the squirrels he sees through the glass during the day, Ghost-Cat is a shade, a phantom.

My intelligent, clever, criminal mastermind isn’t smart enough to understand he casts a reflection on front-lit glass.

So he yowls and complains and attempts mortal combat with the intruder. But Ghost-Cat gives no ground.

The scritch-scritch-scritch on the windows is making us crazy.

We’ve tried to stop him. We’ve turned the squirt bottle on him, which drives him away temporarily. But as soon as he catches sight of Ghost-Cat, he’s back again.

My wife has even scooped him up and carried him outside to show him there is no one there.

But this has only intensified the mystery for him. How, he wonders, could Ghost-Cat have vanished like that? He races from window to window, from door to door, searching for the strange invader, desperately wishing for those same magical cat powers that allow the adversary to vanish in the night. How much more villainy could he commit if he could just disappear like Ghost-Cat?

Something has to be done. Curtains maybe. Or bricking over all the windows in the house. Or just going to bed when it gets dark, so there are no lights on to cast a reflection.

But whatever it is, it needs to be done soon. Please, Ghost-Cat, leave us. Find some other feline to torture. Our very sanity depends upon it.

That is not Ghost-Cat’s way, though. He exists to torment.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Cats

Here’s Johnny

Nicknames are one of those odious features of American life that we’re saddled with against our will. Someone decides “To hell with the name your parents gave you, the name you might even be proud of; I’m calling you something else.”

Many nicknames originate from your last name being too difficult for the individual in question to pronounce or remember, so he or she (most often, he) shortens it or makes it into something else that seems clever or funny. In high school, for instance, I was known as “Pyth” (not even “Phyth,” which would have be closer to accurate). The girls cutened that name by extending it to “Pythyr.” (I insisted that, if they were they were going to hang an inaccurately pronounced nickname on me, they were at least going to keep the “Y’s.”)

Then, of course, there are the nicknames people hang one you for something stupid you did or because you have a certain reputation or physical feature — “Joe the Nose,” “Dog-Face,” or “Two-Can” (as my college roommate was known to his fraternity brothers due to his inability to hold his liquor). Fortunately, I never got one of those.

Despite the fact that such labels are thrown on you without your consent or even desire, they are terms of endearment. They mean you’re in the club, you’re one of the gang, or that someone loves you.

My wife calls me “Johnny.” Sometimes the kids do too.

Never mind that my name is John. It’s not Johnathan, nor is it Johnny.

But when she calls me Johnny (or more often, “Her Johnny” or “My Johnny”), she is very deliberately expressing her affection for me. I’m part of the club, or in this case the family, which, given that this is a second marriage for both of us, is kind of a big deal.

So it’s good. I like being Her Johnny.

But there’s another place I get called Johnny, and that’s work. “Hey, Johnnyyyy!” someone will call out when I first arrive.

I didn’t ask for this nickname. My name badge very clearly reads: “John.” But never mind that. When I get there, someone gives me the “Hey, Johnnyyyy!” greeting.

Now, this didn’t happen right away. When I first started, I was just “John.” And because there a lot of Johns at my work, I was sometimes referred to as “John P.”

But after several months, I became Johnny. I was in the club, you see. Part of the gang.

Now, I’ve held a lot of jobs in my adult life, and this phenomenon of adding “ny” to the end of my name to indicate I was now considered officially part of the team has not happened everywhere I worked.

It only happens at my blue-collar jobs. When I work retail or restaurants, I eventually end up becoming Johnny. Whenever I’ve held a white-collar, professional position, it’s just “John.”

I’m not really sure what this says about the American workforce. I don’t know that it necessarily says anything negative about either classification of employee or the presumptions different work places make.

But I’ll say this. Working retail or restaurants is hard. You’re on your feet, the wages are low, the hours are often long, and you have to be pleasant all the time, whether you’re feeling it or not, whether or not you’re receiving pleasant behavior in kind. Every retail and restaurant job I’ve ever worked fostered, however unintentionally, an Us-Versus-Them mindset. It was We the Staff Versus Them the Customers.

And when someone ends up being reliable, is in the fight right there with you, you want to make him or her feel like they’re on their team. And how do we express that in America?

With nicknames.

So when I get a blue-collar job and I prove myself as a valuable part of the team, I become Johnny. Whether I wanted a nickname or not, I get one as a measure of respect.

And that’s the interesting thing about nicknames. Most often, they are meant to convey acceptance and respect. We use them build community. Those two extra letters added to the end of my name are the American way of saying all those things that would be difficult or embarrassing or inconvenient to express. But by transforming “John” to “Johnny” it can all be said eloquently and easily in one extra syllable.

I can accept that. I embrace it.

Even if my name really is just John.

Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged:

The Mightiest Magic There Is

Your father was the most accomplished wizard anyone has ever known, but his sorcery is based in greed and power. There is a stronger kind of magic, Calibot — love. Love is the mightiest magic there is.

—John R. Phythyon, Jr., The Sword and the Sorcerer

I don’t quote myself very often. It’s pretentious and immodest.

But as we come up on Valentine’s Day, our thoughts turn to love, and what that means, and whether candy and flowers are really what it’s all about.

The Sword and the Sorcerer may be an epic fantasy and the kickoff to a larger series, but it’s really a book about love. Calibot and Devon (whose dialogue I quote above) are in love. Calibot is estranged from his father and is resentful he doesn’t have the love he wants. And I wrote the book for and dedicated it to my wife.

Plus, since the main character is gay and is in a long-term, romantic relationship with another man, I donated a portion of the book’s sales to Freedom to Marry until the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage last summer.

The central thesis of The Sword and the Sorcerer is that love is, indeed, the mightiest magic there is. Love makes forgiveness possible. Love brings happiness. Love gives strength. Love builds up others and ourselves.

I can recall the exact moment when marriage equality became an issue I wanted to fight for. Several years ago, when I was living in Kansas, Iowa became only the second state to legalize gay marriage. It’s a short drive to the Hawkeye State from Lawrence, where I lived. You can do it in a couple hours, four if you want to go all the way to Des Moines.

Some friends of mine decided to drive up to Iowa to get married. They’d been together for 10, maybe 20 years. They lived as a couple, owned property together, did everything a married couple does except file a joint tax return and have certain estate rights.

But as soon as Iowa made it okay for them to be married there, they set a date and drove up to do it.

At the time, Kansas was one of a multitude of states that had adopted a repugnant constitutional amendment establishing a monogamous heterosexual union as the only definition of marriage it would recognize. Even if the federal government recognized another type of relationship as marital, Kansas would not.

So my friends could go get married in Iowa. But when they came back to Kansas, it would be like it had never happened. As far as Kansas was concerned, they were no more married upon their return than they were when they left.

And yet, they went anyway.

What that taught me was that there was something more important in all this than in some citizens being denied certain financial and property rights. I had been in favor of gay marriage before, because not allowing homosexual couples to wed was discriminatory.

But my friends weren’t as concerned about that piece of it. What they wanted was to be able to marry. They were in love. They wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. Indeed, they’d already committed to that.

They’d been conquered by that mightiest magic of all.

Freedom to Marry adopted that same approach. They made it less about property rights and more about love. Why shouldn’t you be allowed to marry the person you love? If that person is old enough to get married and sound enough to give consent, why can’t you marry him or her?

Ultimately, this is the argument that won the day. As Freedom to Marry and other marriage equality organizations pressed their point, they won the hearts of average people. They made the average heterosexual person comfortable with the idea of homosexual love and marriage.

That is the transformative power of love. Love brings us together. It allows us to see each other as people, as human beings. Love does not divide. Love does not demonize.

Yes, there were and are some people who have not been transformed in their thinking by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision. Many of them harbor anger and hatred in their hearts towards those who won the day. Some of them truly believe that they are justified in their belief that homosexuality is wrong and should be abolished by the state.

But they are in the minority. Gay marriage proponents won because love won. The mightiest magic of all transformed so many people that discriminatory laws were struck down.

I think we need more of that in the world.

We’re in an election year in the U.S., and if the polls and the first two primary contests have taught us anything, it is that Americans are angry. Leftists and conservatives alike are furious at how they perceive the system working against them. They’ve infused that fury into demagogues like Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Ted Cruz.

But I think if we all listened a little more closely to the messages love is whispering in our ears, we might be a little less angry, a little less willing to demonize the people on the other side of the race and their supporters. We’d be a little less likely to see someone else as our enemy — whether it’s the person at work we don’t like or the supporter of a rival presidential candidate.

I have taken my own words to heart. I have learned to stop hating the people who betrayed me, who hurt me. I have forgiven most of them. I have learned to accept that most of the things people have done to me come not from a place of malice but of ignorance or carelessness. And if that makes them no less painful, it at least affords some ability to understand and accept.

I’m not perfect at it. I still have a lot of work to do.

But I believe in the power of love. I believe it can heal. I believe it can strengthen. I believe it can bridge gaps and transform both hearts and minds. I believe, because I’ve seen it do all these things.

Truly, love is the mightiest magic there is.

Filed under: Current Events, The Sword and the Sorcerer Tagged: Election 2016, Gay marriage, love, Valentine's Day

Inspirations: Rock ‘n’ Roll

Tonight, I begin a journey as music director for a community theater production of Return to the Forbidden Plant. Because this is a jukebox musical of Oldies from the 1950’s and ’60’s, I thought this might be an appropriate time to return to my occasional series, “Inspirations,” wherein I discuss the influences that helped me develop as an artist. In this installment, Rock ‘n’ Roll.

In the Beginning

Before I aspired to becoming a novelist, there was another dream. I had the usual little-kid plans of growing up to be a fireman, a police officer, and (because we used to watch Emergency! on TV every week) a paramedic.

But the first real career dream I had — the first passion I wanted to pursue in a real way — was to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll star.

I know that sounds foolish, as airy and unrealistic as wanting to be Johnny Gage at Station 51. But music, particularly the popular music of the 1970’s got inside my blood early on.

My father was a music lover, and he introduced my brother and I to many of the artists of the early ’70’s — Jim Croce in particular. Croce looked about as badass as they came. Dark, curly hair, macho-man mustache, and dressed all in denim. He sang about “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and warned “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim.”

But this rough-looking customer, who told tales of stock car drivers and scofflaw truckers, was also incredibly sensitive. His biggest hit was the tender love ballad, “Time in a Bottle,” and he remembered “Walkin’ in the Alabama Rain” with his lover and pined over others as he sorted through “Photographs and Memories.”

I was blown away. Here was a guy who could be badass and sweet at the same time. He sang and wrote these awesome songs, and people bought his records and mourned his loss when he died tragically in a plane crash.

Dad also introduced us to early classics from Chuck Berry, Chubby Checkers, Danny and the Juniors, Buddy Holly, Bill Haley and His Comets, and of course, The Beatles. Watching Happy Days, with its 1950’s and later ’60’s soundtrack helped broaden my education.

But perhaps the biggest vehicle for getting music from the dawn of Rock ‘n’ Roll to my developing cultural awareness was Sha Na Na. Dave and I watched their syndicated show every Saturday, and Dave got a Sha Na Na record for his birthday one year. We learned these songs and sang along.

I didn’t understand what was happening at the time, but I was discovering important musical concepts and falling in love with them. The backbeat became the rhythm of my heart. The I-IV-V-IV-I chord progression was the rule of how I heard. I learned to think in 4/4 time.

As I grew up in the 1970’s, music was becoming my lifeblood. I wanted to sing, I wanted to play, and I wanted to be a star.

Guitar John

There are Rock ‘n’ Rollers who play a variety of instruments — piano, drums, bass, saxophone. But for me, the essential component of Rock has always been the guitar. Chuck Berry made it famous, Jimi Hendrix made it essential.

As I moved into the 1980’s, rough and artful guitar work became the kind of music that moved me more fundamentally than anything else. It all came together for me in a largely forgotten song from 1983, “On the Dark Side” by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band from the Eddie and the Cruisers soundtrack.

It opens with an arpeggiated piano line. The guitar hits the main chords as Cafferty sings the verse slowly. Then the drums kick up the tempo, and the guitar gets its feature — that perfect I-IV-V-IV-I progression — before the whole band comes back in and we rock out.

It’s perfect. It makes my heart sing. It’s pure, unadulterated Rock ‘n’ Roll.

It found me when I was a freshman in high school, when I was just getting started in the music program. It grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go.

I’d been writing songs for a few years at that point. They were mostly ballads, and they were largely influenced by the country crossover music that was popular at the turn of the decade as a result of Urban Cowboy and The Dukes of Hazzard.

But “On the Dark Side” and Bob Seeger’s “Old Time Rock ‘n’ Roll” (also popular in 1983, when it scored the touchstone scene in Risky Business) made me want to write up-tempo, backbeat Rock.

I didn’t know then how to do the growling Rock voice. I wouldn’t learn that until college. But I did start writing a steady stream of Classic Rock- and Oldies-influenced songs that I dreamed of getting recorded behind a five-piece rock combo with me as the front-man.

Morphing Message

Unfortunately, I lived in De Pere, Wisconsin. There weren’t any music agents, no major recording studios, and no real way I knew of for a high school kid to get out and get exposure.

I sang very briefly in a short-lived band. We never found a guitarist. My music went largely unheard.

I went to college and majored in music to try to bring my dream to fruition. But the music program at my alma mater was classical. They had no interest in teaching me how to growl, how to record music, and how to make it in the Rock ‘n’ Roll scene. I performed one year in the pop music show choir, but as the New Guy I had to pay my dues and didn’t get many features.

Something else important happened in my musical education, though. I learned the power of message. Suddenly, it wasn’t just the music that spoke to me. The lyrics, which I had largely written for the purpose of telling love stories, took on new meaning. Popular music could be used to fight for justice.

As the social issues of the day (homelessness, the first Gulf War, Wall Street corruption) took hold of my imagination, I began writing songs that expressed my feelings on these topics. I went from writing diddy-bop dance tunes and plaintive love ballads to raw political missives pleading for a culture change.

And I met some guitarists. Renting a four-track recording machine from a local music store, I recorded three albums of my angry, socially conscious Rock.

But now I didn’t have a drummer, and I didn’t really know how to use a drum machine. So, sincere as they are, those early ’90’s recordings are missing a certain something that makes Rock ‘n’ Roll, you know, rock.

The Day the Music Died

I graduated from college with a degree in English and left Wisconsin to pursue a Master’s at Kansas. I was still writing music at that point, but my focus was turning more and more to literature. I wrote some good songs (in my opinion) while I was in graduate school, but by 1993, my Rock ‘n’ Roll dreams were effectively dead. I didn’t know any other musicians, and I didn’t really know how to find them.

By 1996, I founded a company to publish roleplaying games, and from that point forward, I was dedicated to pursuing art through literary instead of musical media.

But the power of Rock ‘n’ Roll lives on in me. When I hear a really good guitar progression or a bitchin’ solo, I am carried away.

Moreover, music requires putting multiple parts together harmoniously, and that’s important in literature too. Plot, character development, conflict, and theme have to weave together smoothly if you want to craft a fine piece of literary entertainment. Just as the guitar can’t be out of time with the drums, the characters can’t be out of synch with the themes. It all has to tie up neatly, even if the ending is left open.

Rock ‘n’ Roll was important to me from an early age, and I still find it easiest to express an emotion and idea in the right song. I once told a young woman I was trying to date that there was a perfect song for every situation. It wasn’t just a come-on line. I believed it passionately, and I still do.

And with that in mind, there’s one perfect way to end this reflection on my development as an artist:

I love Rock ‘n’ Roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby.

Filed under: Inspirations Tagged: music, rock and roll

Subtle Racism

Like a lot artists, I have a day job. I haven’t hit that magic point where the arts income has become self-sustaining yet.

Like a lot of businesses, my employer has training videos for me to watch. These are intended to teach me best practices, the company way of doing things, and technical information I need to do my job.

The ones I’ve been watching lately are that last variety. In an attempt to make them interesting, these videos, which are long and packed with a lot of hard-to-remember technical information, are taught by animated characters.

Every one of these characters fulfills a stereotype of some sort. There’s the Weird Old Lady, the Kooky Professor, the Big, Beefy Guy Who Sounds a Little Like Arnold Schwarzenegger, etc.

But there was another characteristic I noticed about my animated educators.

All the black people are fat.

Not that there are very many black characters proportional to the white ones, but all the African-Americans are noticeably overweight.

None of the white ones are.

The men are all fit. The women have really narrow waists and big chests. They look like Barbie.

And the thing is, if these were actors, you might be able to let it go. You might think, “Well, this is the most talented person who auditioned for this part.”

But they’re animated characters. That means someone made a deliberate choice on what my teachers were going to look like. So in addition to teaching me important technical information, I’m getting another, subtler lesson:

White people are thin and desirable. Black people are fat.

Now, I suppose someone made a decision that we need to be representative of plus-sized individuals. But why are they all African-American? And why are all the black characters overweight?

I see these things, and I find it easier and easier to buy into the concept of institutionalized racism. In a world where the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild are capable of recognizing great movie-making achievements by black artists, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences isn’t; in a world where white police officers are always acquitted for killing black suspects under controversial circumstances; in a world where a plaintive and sincere movement to remind people that Black Lives Matter is rebuked with the phrase all lives matter; can it be surprising that black animated characters in a training video are drawn to be fat?

The message here is not overt. It’s very subtle. But it’s there: White people are attractive; black people are not.

There is no question that we have come a long way in the battle over race relations in the U.S. It’s not the ’50’s and ’60’s anymore.

But we still have a long way to go towards treating people equally regardless of their skin color. White America is still not comfortable with Black America. Institutional racism is a real thing, and it’s sinister, because it’s subtle. It’s harder to spot.

And it transmits its destructive messages to maintain the current inequitable status quo.

I know some will think I’m overblowing things. Some will rebuke or refute me, claiming that I’m reading too much into some poorly animated cartoon characters.

Messaging is powerful, though. Reinforcing stereotypes tricks people into believing they’re real. And the more we judge someone based on their race or their appearance or even their body type, the less we think of them as a person, as an individual, as a human.

And when you strip someone of their personhood, of their humanity, it becomes possible, even justifiable, to treat them poorly.

This is the legacy of race relations in the United States. It’s a battle we’re still fighting and a war we’ve just got to win.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Black Lives Matter, institutional racism

Undecided

I occasionally turn my attention to socio-political issues here on “Pleading the Phyth,” so since it’s a week before the Iowa caucuses, I thought I’d offer a “voice of an undecided voter” piece.

I’m focusing mainly on the Democratic race here. It’s not that I have no interest in the GOP race, nor am I unwilling to vote for a Republican in November. However, the only candidate on the GOP side I find attractive at the moment is Ohio Governor John Kasich, and his odds of securing the nomination are currently long.

Indeed, the Republican party is grappling with its identity as it steam rolls towards Tuesday’s caucuses. Are they the party of the business establishment (currently represented by Florida Senator Marco Rubio), the Tea Party and evangelical Christians (Texas Senator Ted Cruz), or the populist outsiders (Donald Trump)? It’s fascinating to watch, but since none of those candidates appeals to me, I’ll almost certainly be voting in the Democratic primary here in Ohio.

So that brings me to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

Here’s where my evolving political views have me in a quandary. Socio-culturally, I’m a progressive. I believe in the classic liberal ideas that government can solve problems, that we need to level the playing field as much as possible to create equality of opportunity, and that we should be as accommodating as reasonable to differing views. I don’t mind paying taxes to “promote the general welfare,” to quote the Constitution, although I do expect tax law to be fair (which, of course, is a debatable term).

But politically, I’m a centrist. Like any ideology, liberalism is not perfect, checks and balances are required, and being rich does not make one evil. Moreover, if the last seven years have proven anything, it is that you cannot govern from a position of ideological purity. Government should serve the needs of the people, not the ideals of any particular philosophy or the ambitions of those who hold it.

(At present, conservative politicians cling to ideological dicta, fighting the president on any and all initiatives, no matter how sound or bipartisan. But some of my fellow liberals would have it the same way, substituting their own rigid idealism for the conservative brand in power now. That’s no better.)

Sanders and Clinton personify my dilemma. Bernie Sanders inflames all my liberal ideals. I don’t agree with him on every issue. I’m not sure, for example, that the TPP is an horrific evil for American jobs. (Indeed, I’m generally pro-business, since, whether we like it or not, we live in a capitalist society with a consumer-driven economy.)

But Bernie is a progressive’s progressive. He believes in the same general principles I do, and his grassroots fundraising approach is really, if you’ll excuse the phrase, democratic, not to mention inspirational.

But . . .

If Sanders is elected, he has zero chance of getting even five percent of his agenda made law. The political winds do not suggest Republicans will lose control of the House of Representatives. They will be able to continue their fully obstructionist policy towards any Democratic president, and if a coalition-building centrist like Barack Obama can’t get Republicans to come to the bargaining table, what chance has a far-left liberal like Sanders got?

And even if there were a tidal wave of Democrats elected with Sanders to change control of Congress, Sanders is still too far left to get most of what he promises done. Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in the first two years of both Bill Clinton’s and Barack Obama’s presidencies, and those two middle-of-the-road politicians struggled to get their agendas accomplished.

Which brings me to Clinton. She too is a centrist. She is a negotiator. She’s tough and knows how to get things done. She has experience both in the U.S. Senate and as Secretary of State (not to mention the policy she spearheaded when her husband was president). She’s smart, she learns from her mistakes, and she’s cagey. From a practical point of view, Clinton is the much better choice.

But.

She is an archetypal politician. She pivots positions based on the shifting winds of conventional wisdom. Her beliefs seem malleable. I listened to her interview on NPR last week, and the woman never answered a question. She gave carefully scripted responses that evaded the substance of the question and allowed her to say what she wanted on the issues at hand.

While I’m reasonably certain Hillary Clinton is a leftist at heart, that she favors policy I think is good, I don’t really know what she believes.

She strikes me as someone who is running for president less because she feels she has something to offer the country and more because she just wants the job.

So I have not yet chosen a candidate to support. Who’s better? A guy I can believe in, who reflects my personal beliefs (for the most part)? Or someone who seems a little shady but will likely be able to get more accomplished? Can I trust Senator Sanders to be effective? Can I trust Secretary Clinton to do the right thing?

The Democratic party is currently at a crossroads. Sanders and Clinton are battling for the very soul of the party in the same way the Republicans are struggling to decide whom they are. Will the Democrats be anti-Wall Street populists? Or do they want someone who can hold the line against attacks on President Obama’s accomplishments and push it further out?

Bringing the question home to me personally, do I vote for my ideals, or do I choose pragmatism? When I’m standing in the polling booth, which choice do I make to try to “form a more perfect union?”

I’m sure my conservative friends would suggest that voting for either of them is a mistake. They’ll get the chance to make the case for that come November. In the interim, I’m trying to help decide the fate of the Democratic party.

It’s not unusual for me to be undecided at this point in the electoral cycle, but I’m not even leaning towards someone yet, and that is a first. I am, for all intents and purposes, an undecided voter — a middle-of-the-road guy, whose vote is currently up for grabs.

I’m watching. I’m listening. I’m trying to determine how best to spend my vote.

Filed under: Current Events, Uncategorized Tagged: Bernie Sanders, Election 2016, Hillary Clinton

Bringing Order: Approaching my Memoirs from Three Sequences

One of the interesting things about being a writer is seeing a story evolve. You begin with an idea of it in your head, and as you type it into the computer, it grows, changes, morphs into the finished book. And then you edit it, and it changes more.

But what if the story actually happened? What if you’re recounting life events, not making up fiction?

In October of 2014, I began writing a series of mini-memoirs. Over the course of a year, I would pen eight of them. Each was a humorous essay about some aspect of my childhood in the 1970’s. Rather than tell a chronological history of how I grew up, I grouped the books by subject matter. There’s the one about my obsession with superheroes. The one about trying to catch Santa Claus every year. The one about all the dogs we had growing up, etc.

Each is a self-contained piece that doesn’t require you to have read any of the others. Because I was writing humorous essays, there are lots of digressions and little anecdotes that don’t advance the main story.

In other words, reading them all offers a semi-complete but disjointed history of my early life.

So what order do you read them in?

The short answer is, “Any,” but somewhat by accident (and a little bit by design), I’ve offered three distinct paths.

Original Publication

This is the most random path, but there was some method to the madness. I published the books in a particular order that had little to do with the progression of a story arc and more to with marketing reasons.

I led with “Secret Identity: My True-Life Adventure as a Superhero” because I felt it was the strongest. There was a traditional narrative, and the idea of an eight-year-old kid sneaking out of the house after bedtime to fight crime in a cape and mask (while living in the suburbs) was a pretty strong hook.

After that, the calendar dictated my release order. I published the Christmas one in December, the baseball one in time for MLB Opening Day, the Star Wars one in time for Star Wars Day, and so forth.

Thus, if you read them in the order I published the books, you get a fairly random but amusing journey through my childhood. There is little reason behind jumping from one adventure to the next, but you can see the evolution of my style. With each mini-memoir, I grew more confident in how to write them, and you can see me adopting and refining a particular style as I went on.

The books were published in the following order:

“Secret Identity”

“Naughty & Nice”

“Domestic Disturbance”

“Swing and a Miss”

“Rocketed to Earth”

“Are We There Yet?”

“Animal House”

“Gridiron Glory”

Legend in my own Mind

I had always intended to collect the minis into a single, more coherent volume, and I did so in December, publishing the collection under the title, Legend in my own Mind. I reordered them to have a partially chronological progression and wrote connecting material to tie it all together. The result is a narrative that puts my overactive imagination front and center.

It also makes my brother (and the accompanying sibling rivalry) and my father (with his Ohio sports loyalties and Depression-era values) critical supporting characters in the story of my youth. Read separately, Dave and Dad are occasional background characters in my adventures. But within Legend in my own Mind, they are primal forces that help drive the action.

“Legend” orders the chapters thus:

“Domestic Disturbance”

“Secret Identity”

“Swing and a Miss”

“Naughty & Nice”

“Animal House”

“Gridiron Glory”

“Rocketed to Earth”

“Are We There Yet?”

Marketing Circle

Following the publishing of Legend in my own Mind, I updated the backmatter of each of the mini-memoirs with an excerpt from and an ad for one of the others. Like the ordering of the chapters in “Legend” I chose a very deliberate sequence.

I grouped the minis by subject matter and style. “Secret Identity” leads to “Rocketed to Earth” because they both deal with me imagining myself as a hero and acting on it. “Rocketed to Earth” leads to “Swing and a Miss,” because my Little League baseball team figures in RtE. That leads to “Gridiron Glory,” since SaaM is about baseball and GG is about football. Because sibling rivalry is prominent theme in “Gridiron Glory,” the next book is “Domestic Disturbance.”

And so on. Each books leads to another. And I envision them all as a circle. You can jump in anywhere you like on the daisy chain and read your way around the whole story. The last book leads to the first book, no matter where in the loop you jump in.  So the order looks like this:

“Secret Identity”

“Rocketed to Earth”

“Swing and a Miss”

“Gridiron Glory”

“Domestic Disturbance”

“Naughty & Nice”

“Animal House”

“Are We There Yet?”

“Secret Identity”

So there you have it. Three ways to read the same story, and they all evolved over the course of publishing my childhood memoirs. Pick a path and dive in. Adventure in the decade of Nixon, Ford, and Carter awaits!

 

 

Filed under: Memoir, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, memoirs, writing

The Error of my (Old) Ways

I’m trying to tell myself this is a good thing.

After all, it means I’ve grown as an artist, as a wordsmith. That’s a very, very good thing.

But, oh boy, is it a giant pain.

Back in 2007, I wrote the first Wolf Dasher novel. It was called The Armageddon Clock. I wrote five drafts of it and had it ready to submit to agents when I realized it was very much a Cold War thriller and might not resonate with modern audiences, especially Millennials, who weren’t alive for much of the Cold War.

So I abandoned it, and wrote five more Wolf Dasher novels that have a much more modern-problems feel to them.

Three or four years ago, I conceived of a long-term plan for the series. I’d published two books in it (State of Grace and Red Dragon Five), and I had worked out a six-book arc that would conclude with The Armageddon Clock. I’d make a few updates to the original book and use its apocalyptic story to close out the line. After all, I had the whole book written. It just needed to be tweaked to fit into the series as Book 6 instead of Book 1.

That hasn’t been nearly as easy as it sounds. I’ve spent the last week reading and editing that eight-year-old manuscript (the fifth and final draft was completed in 2008), and I’ve only made it a third of the way through.

There is a lot of work to do.

First of all, updating this novel to fit into the current arc is proving difficult. The Armageddon Clock was written before I conceived of any of the events in the subsequent books, so there are a lot of places where I have to change things because, well, Wolf has changed. He’s not a devil-may-care, womanizing, action hero anymore. After five novels of horrible things happening to him and the people he loves, he’s thoughtful, cautious, and world-weary.

That means whole passages have to be cut or changed, because he just wouldn’t do the things I wrote anymore. He’s not the same guy.

Moreover, Wolf Dasher, as I wrote him in 2007-8, is much more callous. He’s crueler and haughtier. He’s really very impressed with himself. Even in State of Grace, before Wolf is blindsided by the horror of working in Alfar, he’s got more depth than that. The Wolf Dasher of The Armageddon Clock is more of a cardboard cutout than the one we meet in State of Grace.

So there’s a lot of red ink on my manuscript pages, even though I’m only a third of the way through the book. There are a lot of changes I’ll have to make, but that’s not the worst of it.

The writing is awful.

It’s hard to believe I would have thought this thing was ready for someone to publish. It’s no wonder I struggled to find an agent for my work before I became an indie author.

The most frequent comment I write in the margins is “Show; don’t tell.” Boy, do I do a lot of telling. I tell you how characters feel. I tell you what they did or are going to do. I tell you what they see.

But I don’t show it often.

Worse, I spend a lot of time doling out information that could have been shown with action. I’ll come into a scene in media res and tell the reader what’s happened up to this point. Why do that? Why not show it happening instead? After all, that might be more exciting or interesting.

It’s amazing what we don’t know about ourselves. I desperately needed an editor. I needed someone to tell me I was writing badly.

But until I got an editor (because I wise enough to know someone has to edit a book before it can be published), no one did. No one pointed out the obvious errors of craft I was making.

I run into this issue every time I pull out an old manuscript and try to publish it now. I find a really good story buried under bad writing.

The Armageddon Clock will be an excellent end to the current story arc, but the manuscript as it exists is really only good as an outline. I’m not sure how much of the text is actually usable. I’m pretty certain it won’t even be 50 percent. It might not be 30.

But this is a good thing, right? It shows how much I’ve grown as an artist. It means I’ll publish a good book when it is done.

That’s not much consolation now, though. There’s a lot more work to be done on this project than I was expecting.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, Wolf Dasher, writing

An Open Letter to the Cincinnati Bengals

Dear Cincinnati Bengals,

I think we need some time apart. We’ve been together on an on-again-off-again basis since 1978, and we’ve been inseparable since 2001. So it’s not like I’ve come to this decision lightly.

But I just don’t know if I can do this anymore.

Your performance in Saturday night’s Wild Card Game loss to the Pittsburgh Steelers wasn’t just rank; it was offensive. I don’t just mean in executing the game plan. I mean all around — as football players, as professionals, as human beings.

All week, you talked a pretty good game about how you’d learned from the past. You told anyone who would listen this wasn’t going to be the same old stuff we’d seen before. Inasmuch as this was the most disgusting football game I’ve ever watched, I suppose that’s true.

For years, I’ve been complaining that you do not play with poise in big games. You melt down when it’s really on the line, when it’s time to step up. When it is time to be tough, you’re soft.

You can talk all you want about the important regular season games you’ve won to get into the playoffs over the years. I can point to just as many wherein you folded and blew it. Two of those games were against these same Pittsburgh Steelers — the final game of 2006 (when beating a 7-9 Steelers team would have put you in the playoffs) and the final game of 2014 (when beating Pittsburgh would have won you the AFC North and given you a first-round bye).

But leaving all that aside, let’s look at the playoffs. You’ve been six times in the last seven years. You’ve gone seven times total in 13 seasons. You were favored to win nearly every time.

But you’ve lost every single one.

I’ll excuse last year. You went into Indianapolis with half the offense on injured reserve. QB Andy Dalton had virtually no one to throw to. Last year is a gimme (although if you hadn’t choked against Pittsburgh the week before, some of those injured players would have been well enough to play the next week).

But the rest of those games are on you. Every one of them involved a meltdown of some sort, and none was more egregious than Saturday’s.

Your two oldest veterans — the heart and soul of the locker room — couldn’t even hold it together, let alone the young, emotional guys like Vontaze Burfict. LT Andrew Whitworth false-started twice in the early going, short-circuiting critical, momentum-building drives. DT Domata Peko ran onto the field and shoved a Steelers player right in front of the referee.

Those guys are both 10-year veterans. They were playing in their seventh post-season game. If those guys don’t have the poise to execute with everything on the line, how can we expect a young, fiery linebacker like Burfict to keep his cool? How can we expect a second-year running back to secure the ball, when he’s trying to run out the clock? How can we expect a guy with a reputation for a bad temper to keep his cool, when he’s being taunted by an enemy coach who shouldn’t be on the field?

I get it. The Steelers are a dirty football team. They are a classless, cheap-shotting gang of ruffians that gets away with illegal hits and other rules infractions.

And you played right into their hands. Again. You let them goad you into losing your cool. You let them trick you into playing stupid football.

And so, for the fifth year in a row and the sixth in the last seven, you’re saying, “Next year, things will be different. We’re going to learn from this, and change the way we do things.”

I’ve heard that before. I hear it every year from you.

But just like an abusive husband who promises to stop beating his wife, just like an inveterate liar who swears this time you can trust her, just like a drug addict who vows to quit using, you return to your weak-minded ways. You have no poise when it matters.

And I’ve no reason to believe this is going to change. Because you don’t change. No matter how many times this occurs, you stick with head coach Marvin Lewis.

At some point, the head coach has to take responsibility. He prepares the team for a game. He spends the season instilling his values on the organization. And no matter all the other things he’s accomplished, Marvin Lewis has not been able to instill playoffs poise in a single player on any of his 13 teams.

But he’s still here. He signed an extension at the beginning of the season, and this latest, ugliest, most shameful playoffs meltdown has not persuaded owner Mike Brown to reverse course. I am beginning to think Carson Palmer was right when he demanded to be traded because the organization was unwilling to do the things necessary to win.

So, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this anymore. I bleed Stripes. Cincinnati sports in my very soul. But I just can’t support you any longer until you show some real signs of change.

But it’s not just the Bengals. I could choose another team to root for. I could pick the Cleveland Browns, if I wanted to stay in Ohio. Or I could go with my childhood hometown of Green Bay, or I could pick Kansas City, where I spent much of my adult life. There are other teams I could root for.

But I don’t want to. I’m a Cincinnati sports fan. I want to root for my team, not just switch loyalties.

Moreover, Saturday night’s disgusting display of on-field thuggery is partially the league’s fault. The NFL sent the same officiating crew that couldn’t keep control of the last Steelers-Bengals game. Those idiots let things escalate into the fracas that ultimately led to the penalties that cost the Bengals the game.

Vontaze Burfict has already been suspended for his illegal hit on Pittsburgh receiver Antonio Brown. But there has been no fine levied on Steelers linebacker Ryan Shazier for his vicious helmet-to-helmet hit on Bengals running back Giovani Bernard.

Moreover, that hit was illegal, and no flag was thrown. The Bengals would have had the ball inside the Steelers 10. That would likely have led to at least three points in a game the Bengals lost by two. Instead, there was no penalty, and Pittsburgh recovered the fumble that resulted from Shazier knocking Bernard unconscious.

And the viciousness of the hit, the unrepentant illegality of it, and the lack of a flag, combined with the turnover, drove the Bengals insane. The game turned on that moment. Not only did Cincinnati come away with no points on a critical drive, from that point forward, they were looking to hurt the Steelers.

And that’s the NFL’s fault. They knew this game could get ugly. They warned both teams to watch their conduct. Then they sent an officiating crew that had proven it could do nothing to stop it until it was out of hand.

That’s the NFL for you. Last year, Patriots QB Tom Brady was caught cheating in the AFC Championship Game. The league waited to punish him for it until after he had won the Super Bowl.

The NFL is unconcerned with justice or even in enforcing its own rules. Why else would there be a suspension levied for concussing one of its greatest players (Antonio Brown) but not one of its lesser known ones (Giovani Bernard)?

So it’s not just that I think the Bengals and I need to break up. I think it’s football altogether.

That makes me sad. I love this game. I love watching it. I loved playing it when I was younger.

But I’m tired of it abusing me. I’m tired of hypocrisy and meltdowns and always hearing, “Just wait ’til next year!” I’m tired of having my heart broken.

So I think I’m done. I’ve watched every Super Bowl except one since Super Bowl XI, but I’m not sure I’m going to tune in this year. I used to watch the NFL Draft religiously, but I’m thinking I’ll have better things to do with my time in late April. I’ll be cancelling my subscription to NFL Sunday Ticket.

It’s possible I’ll change my mind. Time can heal, and the smell of fall turns my mind to football. Perhaps I’ll give in and come back to you.

I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Until you show some willingness to change, I just don’t think I can take your abuse anymore.

I’m sorry. Good luck.

Sincerely,

John

Filed under: Cincinnati Bengals Tagged: Cincinnati Bengals, Marvin Lewis, NFL, Pittsburgh Steelers, Vontaze Burfict

What Our Parents Make Us

We are what our parents make us.

Everyone used to make fun of my dad. When I was growing up, he was obsessed with saving money. He always wanted to get the best deal on everything, and he’d get mad if he bought something only to find it cheaper somewhere else.

In fact, one particular Christmas, he demonstrated to ShopKo just how serious he was about that.

He’d bought Dave and I Shogun Warriors for Christmas. They were giant, samurai, robot warriors, and the things stood almost two feet tall. All of them launched missiles of some sort and had removable parts and were pretty much incredibly awesome.

But on Christmas Eve 1979, ShopKo decided they weren’t selling well enough, so they marked them down to a dollar each.

Dad was furious. He’d paid about $5 each for the ones he’d gotten us.

So he took those Shogun Warriors back to ShopKo on Christmas Eve, still in the wrapping paper, and told the manager he wanted them at the sale price. My father threatened to unwrap the gifts right there and get his money back if they didn’t comply.

They did.

My mother was aghast, naturally, but Dad was determined not to get cheated, and he left the store feeling like he’d gotten a big win.

And as funny as that incident is, it’s understandable. He is what his father made him. Grandpa survived The Great Depression. Saving money in all things was paramount.

So Dad drove all over town to get the best deals at each grocery store every week. He clipped coupons and used them at the stores that would double or triple their value. His ultimate victory was having a double- or triple-coupon be worth more than what the store was charging, so that he would get some change.

“They paid me to carry it out of the store,” he would crow.

We all used to laugh and shake our heads at him.

Flash forward 30 or so years.

Last Christmas, my wife had been wanting a new Ninja food processor. I noticed that Kroger had them for about $40.

I do most of my shopping at Kroger, because they have a rewards program that lets me save up to a buck a gallon on gas at Kroger Fuel. You get one Fuel Point for every dollar spent, and every 100 Fuel Points is good for 10 cents off a gallon.

As I contemplated getting the Ninja for Jill, a thought occurred to me. Kroger was running a promotion where you could get four times Fuel Points for buying a gift card. I wondered if there was a way to make this a big win for me.

I put the Ninja back on the shelf and went up to the gift card kiosk. I grabbed a $100 Visa gift card and went up to check out. Sure enough, I got 400 Fuel Points — 40 cents off a gallon.

But I wasn’t done. Now it was time to see if this was the big win I hoped it was.

I went back and got the Ninja. I brought it up front and paid with the gift card I’d just bought. The transaction went through, and I got the Fuel Points for the Ninja too! I’d gotten five times the Fuel Points on my purchase!

Naturally, I called my father. I’d told him what I’d done.

He was insanely proud of me. In fact, two days later, he bragged about it to friends!

This wasn’t just a big win. It was a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the ninth!

And now, of course, I do it all the time. Kroger never offers less than two times Fuel Points for gift cards, so I purchase gift cards and use them to buy groceries. I haven’t paid more than a $1.50 a gallon for gas in almost a year.

Everyone at my house smiles and shakes their head at me. They’re amused at my obsession with amassing Fuel Points so we can save on gas.

But I am what my father made me.

I am a direct heir to my grandfather. I did not survive The Great Depression and neither did my father. Both of us were born well after the world economy had recovered.

But my grandfather’s legacy is alive in both of us. We are what our parents make us.

Sometimes, that makes them proud.

More stories of how my father influenced me can be found in my memoir, Legend in my own Mind: The Incredible, True-Life Adventures of a Kid Growing up in the 1970’s. Click here to get it from Amazon.com.

Filed under: Memoir Tagged: John Phythyon, Kroger, memoirs, saving, Shogun Warriors