Jamie Greening's Blog, page 56

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT BISCUITS

As you know, biscuits are serious.  I’ve detailed before the foundational recipe for buttermilk biscuits.  However, as a biscuit artist, I am always experimenting.  Recently I made the most delicious biscuits I’ve ever–EVER–eaten.

Start with the basics.

Preheat over to 425°.
Put self-rising flour in a bowl.  The amount will vary based on the number of biscuits you want, but maybe start with three cups.
Add 2 teaspoons of baking powder
Add Crisco shortening with your hands until it starts to bead.

Now, liven it up.

Add a half a stick of butter.
Add a half of a cup of Miracle Whip.  Mayo would work too, but I prefer Miracle Whip.

Secret Ingredient

Mix the dough well, then add the buttermilk in small doses until the dough forms one large ball and is sticky.
Sprinkle a little regular flour down on the counter top (or a roll pad) and then turn the dough over a couple of times until it is no longer sticky.
Cut into biscuits using an empty, clean, tuna can.

Now, let’s change up my usual a little bit more.

Dab buttermilk on top of the biscuits.
If you have time, let the uncooked biscuits sit for an hour.
Grease a cast iron skillet with Crisco
Put the biscuits into the pan–squeezing them together if necessary.
Bake for 20-21 minutes.  Ovens may vary.

I found this batch to be fantastic.  Give it a try.  The key to making great biscuits is to experiment.  I found that the butter made them moister and the Miracle Whip gave them outstanding flavor.

CASTING SUGGESTIONS FOR THE SHACK

Who should play Papa?  That was the first question that hit me.

I saw yesterday that Willie Young’s publishers agreed to film rights through Lionsgate for the controversial bestseller The Shack.  For the record, I liked the book.  True, it has some flaws in terms of plot, conflict, and character development, but hey, don’t we all to some degree?  I mean, the last perfect novel I read was To Kill A Mockingbird.  The theology of The Shack didn’t bother me either.  Some people went crazy over the book’s portrayal of the all-to-human theophanies.  It’s fiction people, theologically informed fiction, but still fiction.  For dogma and doctrine, go to church for-crying-out-loud.

But I am not here to talk about the book.  I’m here to help cast it.  Early reports said Forest Whitaker was directing and staring in it (I presume as Mack) but now it looks like Stuart Hazeldine is the director.

There are really only four characters in the novel.  I apologize if my casting of these seems or feels racially motivated, because I don’t operate like that and it is not my intention.  However, Young is so specific in the novel about the ethnicity of the Godhead, that, well, it kind of has to be that way.

Mack–Need a thirty or forty something year old white man.  Maybe we could go with Ed Norton here.  If he could bring the edginess of his Fight Club character, that would give Mack the angry bite he needs.  If not Ed Norton, then Jeremy Renner.  It needs to be someone who broods.  If it is a no-go for Renner or Norton, then may I humbly suggest we go for insane instead of brooding, which leads us to Bradley Cooper.

Papa--Need a black motherly figure.  The obvious choice is Oprah Winfrey, but hey, that is too obvious.  It is apparent to me, and just about everyone, that Willie Young ripped his Papa character straight from The Oracle in the original The Matrix film, but she is dead.  Della Reese would work.  It would be almost the same role she had opposite Roma Downey in Touched By An Angel.  Her age might be a problem, though.  So how about Queen Latifah.  Yep.  I think we have a winner.

Jesus–Middle Eastern carpenter.  There can only be one answer.  Tony Shalhoub.

Sarayu–Asian female.  Again, pardon the type casting, but I think I got it.  We must cast Rosalind Chao in this role.  Think about it, she could almost do it the same way she played Robin William’s heavenly daughter in What Dreams May Come.  I know, brilliant, right!  Besides, Miles O’Brien would be so proud of her.  If she doesn’t want to do it, then, let’s keep the sci-fi jazz with this and go with Grace Park.

Okay, so those are my casting suggestions.  I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

FIVE THINGS I LOVE ABOUT THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

I’m sitting here in a coffee shop in Edmonds, Washington waiting for my buddy to come pick me up.  Tonight is the last night of “The Little Girl Waits” book tour.  I am ready to get home, but being here again has reminded me of some of the things I love about the Northwest.

1.  Washington State Ferries.  I am sure if I had to ride one every single day a as a part of of a commute they might grow old, however, I love riding on them.

2.  The Bowling Alley in Port Orchard.  It is the best breakfast place anywhere on earth.  The only thing missing on the menu is chorizo and eggs.

3.  Portland’s weirdness.  I had coffee twice, two different days, with two different kinds of people in Portland and, I have to tell ya, it was interesting being the only people in the coffee shop who wasn’t pierced.

My friend Cameron and I at Torque Coffee

4.  Seattle.  Just, Seattle.  I love that city.

5.  Slate.  Gray.  Skies.  There is something oddly refreshing about the methodical, predictable, and unbending weather of the Northwest.

Of course, the people are what really make it, and I am so thankful for the wonderful souls who have helped make this a fun time for me.  I look forward to any opportunity to get back up here.  A part of my heart will always be on Puget Sound.

THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS PLAYER’S NAMES . . . AS FICTION

Where do you get the names for your characters?

Hunter Pence–Action Hero

That is one of the most common questions I get from people who are kind enough to read my books and stories.  The best answer is from anywhere there is a list of names.  Graduation lists are great resources, people in photographs in the newspaper, church bulletins, anywhere really.  The eye is the portal of creativity.  It is often good to take first names and match them with other last names.

But inspiration can come from anywhere.  As I watched game five of the World Series last night, it occurred to me that the entire starting lineup of the San Francisco Giants have excellent novel names.  In my mind I built a plot for each one of them.

CF Gregor Blanco–An assassin who specializes in international jobs.  He has a handlebar moustache.

2B Joe Panik–1960s era private investigator.  That he plays in San Francisco just screams Bogie! 

C Buster Posey–Banker from the 1920s-30s.  He wears suspenders and a bow tie.  A close personal friend of Daddy Warbucks.

3B Pablo Sandoval–A desperate artist who lives in Miami.  He probably has a sordid past,  maybe a couple of children he left behind in New York.

 

RF Hunter Pence–My favorite!  He a loner who makes an incredible discovery about the origins of the cosmos while backpacking through Mongolia.  (Note–If you want to know what my mental image of Wyoming Wallace, Hunter Pence is pretty close)

1B Brandon Belt–A bartender who has lots of luck with the ladies, until he finds the one girl who is the gin to his tonic.  Soul patch, tall, lanky. 

LF Travis Ishikawa–This name just screams scientist.  Ishikawa develops a time machine that . . .

SS Brandon Crawford–Brandon Crawford is a Hollywood superstar, but beneath the perfect smile and hair he hides a dark secret.

SP Madison Bumgarner–President Madison Bumgarner must overcome international terrorists and domestic political division to unify the nation before its too late. 

Yeah, these are some great names.  Sadly, Kansas City just doesn’t have quite the pizzazz that the Giant names do.

image of Hunter Pence from www.kshb.com

MAKE BELIEVE STORIES NEED MAPS THAT ARE REAL

Every evil scientist needs a secret lab, right?

I gave the bad guy in The Deep Cove Lineage, Dr. Sleeth, more than a lab.  I gave him an entire underground complex fully funded out of the covert operations of the United States.  Yeah, I was having  fun with that.  His job was to create a monster that could be useful in warfare, that could be unleashed behind enemy lines and turned lose, so to speak.

Of course he succeeded, because that is how the Deep Cove monster came to be.

The last two weeks I’ve been working on the next installment (I hope to have it out by Thanksgiving) and it is set almost entirely in the underground complex named DECOSOL, which is an acronym for Deep Cove Special Operations Laboratory.  I gave it a long acronym name because when I was in Port Orchard I was surrounded by government employees and sailors in the Navy, and those people use acronyms like you wouldn’t believe.  I mean, everything is an acronym.  Whenever they talked it was like a whole other language.  So, I made this one up as a tip of my hat to them.

Continuity has been an issue with this story, now the fifth one in the series, but the biggest problem has been the actual layout of the compound.  In The Deep Cove Lineage I mostly described individual rooms–the lagoon where the monster was kept–the cafeteria–private quarters–administrative areas–you know, the places things happened.  What I didn’t do was work on a unified map of the complex.  Shame on me, because now the plot requires an almost systematic walk-through of the facility, and I need to describe where the characters are, where they are going, and how they get there.

So, with my large red Sharpie I made a map.

TOP SECRET: A map of DECOSOL

I am not much of an artist, but in my mind I need to know where things are because those things matter when telling a story.  I recently read a novel that had people on a spaceship and, although the book was good, I never could get a mental map of where they were on the spaceship and what was happening where.  I don’t want my readers to have the same problem.

I don’t think sharing the map gives too much away, and you probably can’t read my handwriting anyway.  The bottom of the map where it says “Above/Below” is the entry place.  I really liked that piece in the story.  You’ll have to buy it to find out why.  From there, on one side of the compound is the lagoon, which I sometimes call the lair, and on the extreme other side (top left) are the private quarters for the bad guy Dr. Sleeth.  I had to shrink them down a bit because I ran out of paper.  In between those two areas is essentially an H-shaped facility.  Again, I was thinking about government buildings here.  One hallway is filled labs that heads into the cafeteria.  A hallway joins that large room to another large room, what I call the workroom.  To the right of the workroom is a hallway that runs parallel to the labs, but it has living quarters for the scientists.  Above the workroom, along a zigzag hallway is Dr. Sleeth’s bedroom, living room, and private laboratory.  There is lots of cool stuff inside his private lab.

The blue ink line represents the water line.  Everything to the right of that line is actually built under the lake.  And yeah, that matters.

I share all of this just to say that when writing it is sometimes helpful to draw it out, or diagram it, even if the actual picture or image never makes it into the text itself.  This kind of grunt work is a part of the background story, and that is what I think gives even far-flung fiction like government engineered lake monsters a feeling of reality.  I am reminded of a story I once heard about C. S. Lewis.  Apparently he made the first map of Narnia when he was about seven years old.  When he was an adult, he could write about Narnia as an adult with clarity, even though Lewis still had some major continuity problems, but that is a topic for a different blog.

I resisted the temptation to put a “You Are Here” sticker on the map.  I am proud of myself.

If you’re interested in reading the first four stories, head over to my Amazon author page (click here) and pick them up.  Most of them are only 99 cents.  The first two, Deep Cove and Deep Cove: The Party Crasher are pretty short, but The Deep Cove Lineage and The Deep Cove Investigation are both good sized short stories, about 12,000 words each.  Those last two are also more sci-fish than the first ones, which are more horror/monsterish . If you read Lineage and Investigation, you have the essence of the story.

THE WORLD SERIES, A LITTLE EBOLA, AND, WAIT, WHAT, RENEE?

Pop the popcorn and make the red Kool-Aid

The World Series starts tonight.  That’s right, a sporting event that is actually slow enough to watch without needing nausea medicine afterward.  This year pits the Kansas City Royals from the American League against the San Francisco Giants from the National League.  We dodged having a completely regional World Series when San Fran put the hated St. Louis Cardinals out of their misery.

San Francisco will win in six, maybe seven games, because they have more experience and better all-around pitching.  However, if Kansas City won I would be very happy.  It has been a long time since George Brett . . .

Now for a little ebola.  I was traveling this weekend, and so didn’t really discover until Monday morning that apparently President Obama appointed an “Ebola Tzar” (or is it Ebola Czar, Ebola Tsar–come on Russia, get your act together) to help us figure out how not to become feverish vomiting zombies (FVZ’s).  I almost laughed my head off, though, when I learned that the new ebola comrade was not a doctor, disease specialist, scientists, or even hygienist but was instead a . . . drum roll please . . . lawyer.  His name is Ron Klain and as best I can tell, his only qualifications are that he was a campaign adviser for Joe Biden.  That sound you hear is the sound of politicians scratching another back.

Only a lawyer (Obama) could look at a zombie inflicting extinction event like ebola (I may be exaggerating just a bit here, but FOXNEWS has my parents absolutely petrified of ebola) . . wait, where was I . . oh, only a lawyer could look at the ebola problem and decide that what we needed to save the day was another lawyer.

Have you seen the photos of Renee Zellwegger?  It is quite sad.  Apparently she showed up, for the first time in a long time, at an event over the weekend.  Well, she has, she has metamorphed.  That is the best word for it.  It is yet one more example of plastic surgery, a sick culture, and the objectification of women ruining another beautiful person.  She doesn’t look bad or ugly or broken.  She just doesn’t look like Renee Zellweger.  Sad.  Very sad.  For an opposite view, click here to read an interesting piece that says we shouldn’t comment at all because those poor Hollywood stars are in a lose/lose situation.

Where did you go, Renee?

For me, her appearance is almost a metaphor for why so many people are miserable.  Literally, in attempting to make other people be pleased with her, she has lost her own identity.  Until we become comfortable with who we are, growing older, and our limitations joy will always be something on the horizon–one more surgery, one more purchase, one more prescription, one more . . . away.

images from cbssports.com and yahoo.com

THE WORLD STINKS–DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

File this under, “Further Evidence That The End Is Nigh.”

I needed deodorant this week.  So I bought a new stick.  I noticed the label, and then I shook my head.

Do you see it?  I circled it for you, in case you didn’t.  Maybe it has been there before, but I’ve never noticed it until this week.

Come on people, you need to bathe more than every two days!  Even if you don’t bathe daily, personal grooming and hygiene are in order, right?  I mean, surely you’ve washed up, say, in the last 24 hours or so, right?  Please tell me you have.

I taught the sprouts, and I firmly believe, that a human being in the modern world has a responsibility to his or her fellow humans to smell good, or at least to not stink.  If you are counting on your deodorant to go 48 hours, then I humbly suggest you have failed to conprehend how odious and offensive you are to those around you.

ANNISE PARKER AND HOUSTON PASTORS

This is kind of rapid reaction blog, as this only came down last night.  Here are the facts.

This summer Houston, under the leadership of Mayor Annise Parker passed a new ordinance, labeled HERO, which extended protections to gay and transgendered individuals.
The main sticking point in the ordinance was that any individual could choose which bathroom they can use in a public facility–men can use a women’s restroom if they self identify as female and women can use a men’s restroom if they self identify as male, regardless of their anatomy.
As you might expect, many in the Christian community were opposed to the bathroom provision and were vocal.
In late summer 50,000+ people signed a petition to put the issue on a referendum in the November 4 elections.  The city attorney rejected the petitions, citing ‘irregularities’ in the signatures.
Tuesday evening (October 14) the city council subpoenaed sermons from specific pastors who had been vocal in their opposition.
Apparently, the reason for this subpoena was to determine if the pastors had violated the laws about discrimination.

That is where things stand, now, as I understand.

Now, here is the problem.  As far as I am concerned, most of this is just politics.  Elections do matter, and the mayor and city council won their elections and therefore were pushing their agenda, and those who opposed her were pushing theirs.  That is the way a free society works.

Annise Parker, despot in training

The problems begin when the city council subpoenaed the sermons.  It is a complete violation of the United States Constitution, and is wrong at so many levels.  I can hear you objecting already, saying something like, “but what kind of pastor doesn’t want someone to hear their sermon?”  That is generally true.  The problem is the reason.  Here is what the Washington Times says is being requested:

One of the subpoenas posted on the ADF website requires that the pastors produce “[a]ll speeches, presentations, or sermons related to HERO , the Petition, Mayor Annise Parker, homosexuality, or gender identity prepared by, delivered by, revised by, or approved by you or in your possession.”

The subpoena also asks for, “All communications with members of your congregation regarding HERO or the Petition.”

Government agencies targeting topics and issues for review is chilling.  It is horrific.  This is the path to despotism.  For the record, I would feel the same way if a government agency were requesting the speeches and topics discussed at GLAAD meetings, mosques, or any other place where speech takes place.  This particular issue is more troublesome because it violates not only freedom of speech but also freedom of religion.  Sermons are protected speech, like a newspaper editorial, and it is a protected religious practice free from government intrusion or meddling.

If the government can target any kind of speech, it is not a big leap at all to target any kind of speech.

Now, let’s get to the why of all of it.  Is Parker going after these people because she is gay and they represent the Christian right?  I don’t think so.  She is going after them because they had the audacity to oppose her.  She has a record of doing this.  Texas Monthly had a great article recently (CLICK HERE TO READ IT) about her attack on the Houston Fire Department, particularly its pension plan.  She went after them because the firefighters union backed her opponent in the election, and she is using the thuggery of the jackbooted tolerance police to do her dirty work.

That is the kind of politician, the kind of person, she is.

I hope the city of Houston finds out that a practitioner of Nixonian politics is leading their city.

image from bizjournal.com

JESUITS IN SPACE–A REVIEW OF THE BOOK “THE SPARROW”

Sunday night I finished The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell.  I read it as part of the sci-fi-fantasy group over at Goodreads.  I love Goodreads, but it irks me that they combine sci-fi and fantasy that way.  Anyway, back on subject, The Sparrow was published in 1996.   The paperback edition I read was released in 2008. 

Overall

I give the book an overall grade of A-.  I have never read anything by Russell before, so I didn’t know what to expect.  I had heard about the book and knew that it was highly regarded as one of the best sci-fi books of the past generation and she is favorably compared with the masters of the genre.  I can see why.  The book is interesting throughout.  It is not a perfect book, as I will get to below, but a well-thought-out plot with fascinating characters is more than most sci-fi books achieve.  It gets a “minus” because the whole Jesuit in space thing has been done a time or two and the adverb issues which I address below.

Plot

Without spoilers, the story is about the discovery of life on another planet in the not so distant future.  Before governments can form a response, a group of Jesuits lead an interstellar expedition of people from various technical and religious backgrounds to investigate.  As you might imagine, all does not go well.

Strengths

This book has three strengths.

1. The characters are written well.  This is brought out with crisp dialogue and believable action.  Russell’s intelligence and research on Jesuits, science, linguistics, and history makes every character human.  The only flaw in her characterizations are that every major character is just a little too competent and perfect, but I can live with that.

2. There is an almost perfect balance in the book between science and fiction.  It is in this way that the book reminds me of Ray Bradbury.

3. The book asks sincere theological questions without giving pat answers, either for or against.  Russell seems to delight in the intentional ambiguity.

Weaknesses

1. The pacing of the book is sometimes less than ideal.  About one third into the book it felt like she kept repeating the same basic things.  She could have told the same great story with 50,000 fewer words.

2. Russell is guilty of adverb abuse.  She loves, loves, loves, loves to have people doing “ly” things.  For example:

D.W. lied cheerfully

Two lines later:

Emilio said seriously

I just pulled that out randomly by opening the book (page 51).  They are all over the place.

3. At times I lost the POV.  Sometimes she would switch right int he middle of a paragraph with no warning.

Audience

There are some mature themes to be sure, and the language is rough.  Who knew Jesuits talked like that?  If you are easily offended at different religious worldviews, you shouldn’t read this book.  However, if you like to see how others might wrestle with difficult issues, then this book is for you.

There is a sequel to this book called Children of God.  I do not know when I will read it, as my TBR pile has grown out of control, but I will indeed read it.  In fact, I’ll probably buy it today at Amazon.

ONE FINAL LAUGH BEFORE I GO

When I die, I want the whole congregation at my funeral to sing the old hymn “Wonderful Words of Life” because they will all have to sing the first stanza, which includes this nugget:

Words of life and beauty, Teach me faith and duty:

When everyone sings the word “duty,” my wife and daughters will laugh, because the word duty is funny, and it will be one parting laugh I share with them.  So when you see my family laughing at my funeral, you’ll know why.

Putting the “FUN” in FUNERAL?