10 Observations From My Trip

1)All New York dog-walkers wear the exact same expression, a look that says, “Why the fuck do I own a dog in New York City?”


2)If you spend four 10-hour days listening to Robert McKee spike his lecture with the word “fuck” with the same panache that Emeril spikes his recipes with garlic, you will find yourself using it, too. And just when you’d broken the habit.



3)New York street vendors display a business agility that is the envy of every Fortune 1000 corporation in the world. The same seller who hawks “I heart NY” t-shirts on a sunny Sunday afternoon magically becomes an umbrella vendor on a rainy Monday morning.

4)If you get there infrequently enough, and you want to badly enough, you can continue to walk around Manhattan on a sprained ankle. It may not be the smartest thing you’ve ever done, but it does allow you to finally see the Alice In Wonderland statue in Central Park like you’ve dreamed of doing for 30 years.


5)Being an NYC cabdriver requires split-second reflexes. Being a passenger requires Valium.


6)An evening in the Blue Bar at the Algonquin Hotel, haunt of 1920’s literary luminaries like Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woolcott and Peter Benchley, is an excellent way to spend your last evening in the Big Apple. Especially in the company of the woman who writes this blog.


7)People who rarely fly are not appropriate candidates for the “Expert Traveler” queue through the TSA checkpoint at La Guardia. Please be aware that she didn’t choose this line on a weather-delayed Monday morning, though. She was ordered into it by the TSA hall monitor. So get off her ass.

8)Despite, or perhaps because of, the apparent misery of having a dog in New York, people leaving New York will bring along a dog in their carry-on.

9)Idiotic fellow passengers will cover for the perp, pretending through an hour-and-a-half of the tarmac delays not to hear the little fellow whining and even occasionally yipping while his owner does her imitation of the little old lady in Goodnight, Moon.

10)These passengers will be rewarded for their kindness when the stresses of being a pooch-in-a-bag plays havoc with his digestive track, causing him to let loose a veritable cloud of dog farts within the confined atmosphere of the plane.

Fiction Friday: The McKee Story

Last weekend, I attended Robert McKee's Story conference in New York.

A woman from St. Paul who also attended called it a "life-changing event."

I don't know that I feel that strongly, but I did walk away with a much deeper understanding of how a compelling story is built, as well as some tools for achieving that.

If your interested, and live in the Greater Dayton area, I'll be giving a talk on what I learned at Word's Worth Writing on Tuesday, April 6, from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m.

One of the things I'll discuss is value changes.

According to McKee, every story has an overarching value that changes, from positive to negative or vice versa, over the course of the story. And with every act, sequence, scene and beat within the story.

Each value has a contrary value, which is different, a contradictory value, which is the opposite, and a negation of the negation, which essentially erases the value from the map.

For example, if the value is Love, the contrary value is indifference, the contradictory value is hate, and the negation of the negation is hatred masquerading as love.

Ordinary stories, such as the movies you see on Lifetime Network, change from the value to the contrary value. No great depths of emotion, just workaday stories at a household level.

Good stories change from the value to the contradictory value. Because this change goes deeper, we resonate with, and remember, these stories a lot more. This describes most well-written Hollywood and TV stories.

Great stories move from the value to the negation of the negation. These are the stories that become classics. One example is Ordinary People, where we learn that Mary Tyler Moore, though she pretends to love her second son, actually hates him. Not because of anything he's done, but just because she never wanted a second child, and couldn't rise to that. If you've ever seen this movie, the emotions played out on the screen will haunt you.

As he opened the seminar, McKee said, "It's not just about what you'd give to be a writer. It's about what you'd give up."

He went on to list some of the things you may have to abandon in order to write:
o Hobbies
o Family time
o Watching TV

I'll add a few more to that:
o Home-cooked food
o A clean house
o Regular exercise

But even with those sacrifices, I'm not coming up with enough time to spend on my novel. So, regretfully, I've decided to prune my blogging back to one post a week. I'm hoping, though not promising, to pen thoughtful, creative posts that will benefit from receiving a full week of exposure.

I may continue to post Old Jokes intermittently, just because they're easy. I don't write them; I just share them. We'll see how that goes.

I probably won't do contests anymore, because they also take a lot time. If someone wants to pick up that gauntlet, help yourself!

I'll continue to pop around and visit my fellow bloggers, because symbiosis is the backbone of Blogland--and because I'd miss you guys if I never saw you.

See you on Monday!

Old Joke #36

This one made me cackle. Loudly. Morris and his wife Esther went to the state fair every year, and every year Morris would say, "Esther, I'd like to ride in that helicopter". Esther always replied, "I know Morris, but that helicopter ride is 50 dollars and 50 dollars is 50 dollars". One year Esther and Morris went to the fair, and Morris said, "Esther, I'm 85 years old. If I don't ride that helicopter, I might never get another chance." Esther replied, "Morris that helicopter is 50 dollars and 50 dollars is 50 dollars". The pilot overheard the couple and said, "Folks I'll make you a deal. I'll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say a word I won't charge you! But if you say one word, it's 50 dollars." Morris and Esther agreed and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of fancy maneuvers, but not a word was heard. He did his daredevil tricks over and over again, but still not a word. When they landed, the pilot turned to Morris and said, "By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn't. I'm impressed!" Morris replied, "Well, to tell you the truth, I almost said something when Esther fell out, but you know -- 50 dollars is 50 dollars."

In Defense of a Marriage

My daughter came out to me when she was nineteen.

It would not have been my first choice for her life.

If she had said, “I think I’m gay,” or even “I’m gay, Mom,” I might have been able to convince myself that she was mistaken, lured from her moorings by an older girl.

But, looking directly at me, with eyes so like my own, she said, “I dig on chicks.”

No matter how many different ways I turned that phrase, trying to twist it into something else, it stayed what it was.

Years later, I found myself sitting poolside with an old friend, drinking beer from aluminum cans that started sweating the minute we pulled them from the cooler. I was nursing my first, she was on her third. The air reeked of chlorine and pulsed with the squealing and splashing of our grandchildren.

Squinting at me in the sunlight, she said, “What do you really think about Annie being gay?" She leaned toward me. "You can’t like her being, you know, a lesbian.”

I thought about her daughter, living with a guy who "has a temper" that regularly gets them evicted. The last time I saw her, she'd gained 50 pounds and her right eye had traces of greenish-yellow beneath it. Her children, a girl and a boy who have their father's sandy hair, clung to her, peeking at me from behind Mom's thick calves. She didn't plan the second child, and worries about getting pregnant again.

Then I thought about my daughter, now settled with a partner in a nice neighborhood. They’ve each given birth to a child by an anonymous donor. One boy and one girl, who look startlingly like their mothers. Their never-to-be-known father was a physician, six-foot tall, with dark hair and eyes. I can see no trace of him in my grandchildren, though perhaps I just don’t know what to look for. The girls spent thousands of dollars conceiving these much-desired children and, with no effort whatsoever, they will bear no more.

The scent of hops hung in the air as my friend's eyes challenged me with the values we were raised by.

“Who our children become may not be what we would have chosen for them,” I said, “but that doesn’t change how much we love them.”

She started to nod, but stopped herself. “But she’s gay,” she said insistently.

I shrugged, stared at my beer can. "It wouldn't have been my first choice.”

Nodding, she settled back in her chair.

Nearby, a little boy with his mother's eyes leapt into the water, slim as a fish, crying, "Grandma! Watch me!"

I set down my can, looked directly at my friend.

"But I was wrong."

Web Wednesday: A St. Paddy's Day Joke

An attractive blonde from County Cork in the auld country arrives at the Casino. Reeking of whiskey and a bit unsteady on her feet, she bets twenty-thousand Euros on a single roll of the dice. "I hope ye won't be mindin'," she says, "but I always feel luckier when I'm in the nip." And stripping to the skin, she rolls the dice, yelling, "Come on, babby, Mither needs new clothes!" As the dice come to a stop, she jumps up and down, squealing "YES! YES! I WON! I WON!" She hugs each of the dealers and then picks up her winnings and her clothing and quickly departs. The dealers stare at each other dumbfounded. Finally, one of them asks, "What did she roll?" "I don't know," says the other, "I thought you were watching."

Old Joke #34

At a sharing session in a kindergarten class, a little boy announced, "My daddy has two penises."

The teacher was taken aback.

"Two?" she said before she could stop herself.

The little boy nodded vigorously. "He has one he uses to pee."

By now the teacher had recovered. "That's very nice," she said, "but we really shouldn't talk about...."

The little boy continued, "He uses the other one to brush mommy's teeth."

(Okay, the way I heard this one, it started with the teacher drawing a picture of a penis on the board. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure that only happens in Pervtown.)

Old Joke #33

Upon hearing that her elderly grandfather had just passed away, Katie went straight to visit her 95 year-old grandmother and comfort her. When she asked how her grandfather had died, her grandmother replied, "He had a heart attack while we were making love on Sunday morning." Horrified, Katie tells her grandmother that 2 people who are nearly 100 years old having sex was surely asking for trouble. "Oh no, my dear," replies granny. "Many years ago, realizing our advanced age, we figured out the best time to do it was when the church bells would start to ring. It was just the right rhythm. Nice and slow and even. Nothing too strenuous, simply in on the Ding and out on the Dong." She paused to wipe away a tear. "He'd still be alive if the ice cream truck hadn't come along." (Thanks to Steven G for this one!)

Fiction Friday: Critique Groups

The value of critique groups can vary from life-changing to worse than useless.

Why the wide swing? For a critique group to be useful, several things must be true:

1) Some members of the group must be more advanced, or at least have skills more advanced in some key area, than the writer.

2) The members of the group need to read each others' work carefully, thoughtfully and with an open mind.

3) The members of the group need to commit to helping each other succeed.

Several things must also be true for the writer seeking help:

1) The writer has to be willing to admit that his/her writing isn't perfect just the way it is.

2) Conversely, the writer needs to be (or to learn to be) confident enough in his own work to disregard poor advice, or even good advice that takes his work in a direction that is not his vision.

3) The writer must be willing to put as much time into reading other people's work, and critiquing, as he's asking the group to do for him.

I was really fortunate to be in a highly effective critique group that I drafted my first two novels. When I started my third novel last spring, I found it a hard slog. Recently, I joined a writer's workshop (which is like a critique group you pay to be in, which feels a little like paying someone to be your friend, but you do what you have to do) and I'm once again productive.

Last Weeks Winners:

Dedene of Soyez Bienvennue Chez Moi:

There was a lawmaker named John
Who considered poor people a yawn
They demanded health care
And water. And air.
And expect their lives to go on.

Rachel Cotterill of The Thoughts and Travels of Rachel Cotterill:

There was a lawmaker named John
Who considered poor people a yawn
They demanded health care
And water. And air.
Honestly - don't they know that they're born?!


Steven G:

There was a tanned fellow named Boehner
Who thought making laws a no-brainer
So he rented his votes
To the men with bank notes
And replaced Dick Cheney as Darth Vader

And two from Ellie Belen of Distracting Minutia:

There was a lawmaker named John
Who considered poor people a yawn
They demanded health care
And water. And air.
But not until he figures a con.


There was a tanned fellow named Boehner
Who thought making laws a no-brainer
So he rented his votes
To the men with bank notes
Securing a job as a Goldman-Sachs trader.


Next Week's Challenge:

What do you expect when you ask someone to critique your work?

Proud to Be a Target

Web Wednesday: World Peas

Something about this, perhaps it's very grossness, fascinated me....

Change You Can Believe In - Part 2

Why is it that when you seriously contemplate making a change in your life, you find yourself jumping from your chair--or snapping someone's head off?

That's your "fight or flight" instinct kicking in.

Which, in turn, is a sure sign that your pre-frontal cortex is feeling a little overwhelmed. More specifically, it's due to your orbitofrontal cortex (OFC).



The OFC is a subset of the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for high-order thinking. The OFC compares your world to the maps that it has on file and whenever it perceives a difference between what's expected and what's really going on, it generates errors messages.

These messages are sent to the amygdala, which is like your own private Secret Service. It's the part of the brain that's charged with keeping you safe--and it's just paranoid enough to be good at it.

So how do you keep your brain from freaking out when it's time to deal with something new? And how do you encourage it to build new structures compatible with your new world order?

1) Focus on where you want to be, rather than on the past (which just reinforces existing neural structures) or on the change itself (which causes the OFC to make all those comparisons and start generating alarms).

Example: if you have a problem with punctuality, don't beat yourself up over being late. Instead, focus on being on time.

2) Pay attention. Lots and lots of attention. Over and over.
Neural structures are built through repetition. The first time you do something, the brain handles it as a single-use chemical message. Focusing your attention on the new thing you're trying to do or be, preferably in small increments, encourages the brain to permanently rewire itself.

Think about learning to ride a bike, drive a stick-shift, or type. Initially these tasks were challenging and frustrating, but if you keep doing them, they become effortless.

Using a combination of approaches, such as wearing two watches, setting your cellphone to warn you when you need to be somewhere and having your PC text you reminders, focuses your attention on the new behavior you're trying to learn. The actions of doing these diverse things generates the needed repetition.

3) Insight generates feelings of pleasure that calm and reduce the "fight or flight" effect.

So how do you develop insights about a change you're trying to make?

That one you have to figure out for yourself.

Fiction Friday: Limericks

Here are my two favorite limericks.

There was a young man of Japan
Whose poetry never would scan
And when they asked why
He replied with a sigh,
"Because I always try to fit as much into the last line as I possibly can."

And

There was a young man of China
Whose poetry was much fine-a
But his limericks tend
To come to an end
Quite suddenly.


Last Weeks Winners:

Berowne:, from Savage Reflections:


My name is Cho-cho San. I am a slave girl.
I do what my master tells me to do, no matter what he asks, and I receive no pay.
You see, I am a 1999 Toyota Camry. I used to feel so bad when I saw the newer models – cars with computerized brakes and so on – while my operation is pathetically simple.
These days I feel much better. My master looked over the newer Toyotas and decided to keep me. Ever since the mechanic said, “Tune her up once in a while and she’ll run forever!”

Steven G:

Healthcare Breakfast

My name is Jay.
I love the ladies, peanuts, and breathtaking morning sun.
Each day at 6 o’clock am
My job is fast begun

I love the redheads, love the poof
Your husband off to work
I laugh with chesty feathered gals
Out worming with a jerk

The feeder is so full each day
Each generation thrives
Don’t take away my feeder, please
Support our precious lives

We all will fly and eat your bugs
As dawn gives out its thrill
But if you take away our food
It’s you we soon will kill.

Next Week's Challenge:

This week, I thought we'd try something a little different. I'm going to propose the first lines for a couple of limericks. You can either finish it, re-write it, or create your own.

There was a tanned fellow named Boehner
Who thought making laws a no-brainer
So he rented his votes
To the men with bank notes
???

There was a lawmaker named John
Who considered poor people a yawn
They demanded health care
And water. And air.
???

Old Joke #32

An Irish priest is driving down to New York and gets stopped for speeding in Connecticut. The state trooper smells alcohol on the priest's breath and then sees an empty wine bottle on the floor of the car. He says, 'Sir, have you been drinking?' 'Just water,' says the priest. The trooper says, 'Then why do I smell wine?' The priest looks at the bottle and says, 'Good Lord! He's done it again!'

Old Joke #31

Cooter, Ronnie and Donnie are working up on a cell phone tower when Cooter slips and falls off the tower. He is killed instantly. As the ambulance takes the body away, Ronnie says, 'Well, damn, someone should go and tell his wife." Donnie says, 'I'm pretty good at that sensitive stuff. I'll do it.' Two hours later he returns, carrying a case of Budweiser. Ronnie says, 'Where did you get that beer?' 'Cooter's wife gave it to me,' says Donnie. 'That's unbelievable," says Ronnie. "You told the lady her husband was dead and she gave you beer?' 'Well, not exactly,' says Donnie. 'When she answered the door, I said to her, "you must be Cooter's widow." She said, 'You must be mistaken. I'm not a widow..' So I said, 'I'll bet you a case of Budweiser you are.' Rednecks are good at "sensitive stuff."

Change You Can Believe In

Watching the Healthcare Reform debate over the past few months has gotten me to thinking about why people have so much difficulty handling change. Simple answer: because our brains are wired that way. And why is that? The brain has two separate areas for dealing with the familiar and the unfamiliar. The familiar is handled by the basal ganglia:Located in an older part of the brain, the basal ganglia are really good at routing stimuli down established neural pathways. Because the vast majority of the input we handle is repetitive (choosing food, cooking, eating, working, hygiene), the same activities performed in the same way, they don't require a lot of thought. The basal ganglia are highly efficient, and don't consume much nutrition. The unfamiliar is handled by the pre-frontal cortex:This is a newer part of the brain. More sophisticated, it does our high order thinking. And like a snazzy sports car compared to an economy model, it requires more fuel to operate. Because we're built for efficient processing, as soon as a piece of stimuli reaches the brain, the pre-frontal cortex determines whether it's familiar in any way, and if it is, sends it along to the basal ganglia for handling. This is why the brains of older people, although not nearly as flexible in absorbing new information and technology, can perform rings around the brains of younger people when dealing with the familiar. (If you doubt that, watch an experienced doctor and a resident diagnose an illness.) But because we're wired for efficiency, we bend toward sending everything down the old familiar pathways (aka "ruts"). To further complicate this, when the pre-frontal cortex feels overwhelmed by new information, it sends signals to the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for "fight or flight." It doesn't take a lot of change to send the brain into full panic mode. So how can we help ourselves, and others, deal with change? We'll talk about that next week....