Daniel > Recent Status Updates

Okay, Mr. David Tennant ...
entertain me! 😁

Someone ... please help me! I can't stop my eyes from rolling at the ridiculous, cringey dialogue! 🙄 The best thing about this is it will count as "1" towards my Reading Challenge goal! 👍😁👍

Some nights I lay awake listening to my parents’ lovemaking. I know white people keep it quiet, pretend they don’t make love. My white friends say they can’t imagine their parents getting it on. I know exactly what it sounds like when my parents are touching each other. It makes up for knowing exactly what they sound like when they’re fighting. Plus and minus. Add and subtract. It comes out just about even.

"There must have been a hundred times he passed out on top of me. We’d be right in the middle of it, he’d say I love you, his eyes would roll backwards, then out went his lights. Sounds strange, but those were good times.” I was conceived during one of those drunken nights, half of me formed by my father’s whiskey sperm, other half formed by my mother’s vodka egg. I was born a goofy reservation mixed drink.

I was sitting at my desk at People to People when my Hanging Loose editor, Bob Hershon, faxed me an advance copy of the review. I read it once, ran to the bathroom to throw up, then returned to my desk to read one sentence again and again: “Mr. Alexie’s is one of the major lyric voices of our time.”

As Keanu Reeves, the Hawaiian balladeer, would say, “Whoa.”

My mother constantly asked me why my poems didn’t rhyme.

“It’s free verse, and some of them do rhyme. I’ve written sonnets, sestinas, and villanelles. I’ve written in iambic pentameter.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the ba-bump, ba-bump sound of the heartbeat, of the deer running through the pine forest, of the eagle singing its way through the sky.”

“Don’t pull that Indian shaman crap on me,” my mother said.

Many people tell me that they had no picture of contemporary reservation life, or even urban Indian life, until reading The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. To break Indians out of museums and movies and Chief Wahoo—that’s a legacy for any book. The book and Smoke Signals gave many their first picture of contemporary Native American life.

David ('Doctor Who') Tennant's narration is absolute perfection!!! It simply cannot be done better!! I'm lovin' every single word of this! I haven't checked but I REALLY hope he narrates all 12 books of the series!!
👍😁👍

If Daniel had the ability and time to interpret the look for the other students, the closest he’d be able to get to explaining it would’ve been to tell them: this is the look of a man who has spent years of his life convincing himself that he’s unlovable and unworthy, being presented, suddenly, with evidence to the contrary.

I heard Quill’s laughter, so I followed the infectious sound. “That's great, Dr. Mason. I can come and get Lady Whiskers McMeowers today?”

Who the fuck was he talking to and who the hell was McDonalds Whiskey what?

He laughed loudly. “I can’t figure out a better name for her. I liked them all, so I mashed them.”

Her? “Can you tell me the final cost of her medical bill?” Medical bill? Oh, this is his cat.

“Her name was Sunshine. I fell in love with her the day she stole my pink crayon. We were five and I knew in that second, I’d give her all the crayons she ever wanted if she always smiled at me like she did that day. And I did. I gave her everything, everything in my power. But my power wasn’t enough.”

I was going to learn why Black was who he was, why he did what he did. I felt the anguish deep in my bones.

It was a large, modern mansion. Windows surrounded the place, but I couldn’t see through the glass. The garage door opened and when we drove through the doors, I assumed we’d stop, but the driver kept driving down a slope and suddenly, I felt like we were going down to the Batcave or something. Black chuckled and I turned toward him.

“What?”

“You. You’re surprised, aren’t you?”

“It’s just… Are you Batman?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Black asked.

“It has to be.”

He furrowed his brow. “Why?”

Lying was my go-to, even if I was only half good at it, but I couldn’t find my filter. “Because if I let reality in all the time, I won’t much want to live in this world. Would you?”

In that moment, I saw he really did understand. He lived in the same Hell I did. When he spoke, I wasn’t sure if I was glad or terrified.

Without raising his voice, he put my landlord in his place. “There. You can stay at your place. Lee will set up your security.”

I still couldn’t talk. I wanted to climb him like a tree, wrap myself around his body and never let go. “Speak words, Quill.”

It wasn’t until he touched my hand that I regained my ability to talk. “I want to lick your whole body.”

Yep, those were the words I spoke.

Awesome. Go me.