The Monkey-Boy Day Job has been a tooth-grinder this week, and it’s made me think of the Jewish ritual of havdalah. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture | Tagged havdalah, modern living, on-call, quiet living, work woes | Leave a Comment »
Ribbon vibrator. Platen roller. Type bar. Paper finger. Guide pointer.
Know what I’m talking about?
Smith-Corona. Remington. Underwood. Royal.
With me now?
I’m talking about typewriters. Manual typewriters. Old-fashioned, heavy, noisy, mechanical machines driven by the power of your fingers. Yes, those lovely old clackety-clack behemoths that used to be ubiquitous but now only exist as props in crime novels and on the “collectible” sections of eBay.
If you’re old (like me), you either love them or hate them. Otherwise, you may never have even seen one of these miracles of low-tech machinery, much less experienced the aching hands that come from a long session of literally “pounding the keyboard.”
I happen to love these old machines. As it turns out, so does Tom Hanks.
Posted in Hi Tech, Low Tech | Tagged collectors, hanx writer, manual typewriters, tom hanks, typewriter, typewriter app | 1 Comment »
Last week, I made the mistake of going to a bookstore. I avoid bookstores, as a rule. I always leave them with books. More books. Books I want to read. Books that sit on the shelf and taunt me.
This last trip had an interesting twist: I left with all non-fiction.
One of these non-fiction books was Gifts of the Crow, by John Marzluff and Tony Angell. It is dissertation on the nature of corvids–crows, ravens, jays, magpies, etc.–and through the use of anecdotes and field studies, it illustrates how intelligent these birds are, and how many analogues exist between their behavior and ours.
Marzluff is a veteran ornithological biologist and Professor of Wildlife Science at the University of Washington, here in Seattle. Angell is an illustrator whose line drawings accompany the text, and whose schematics of the corvid brain and anatomy fill the appendices. Let’s face it: these guys know their stuff.
It’s an intriguing subject for me. Ravens and crows are strong spiritual icons both here in the Pacific Northwest, and throughout the Native American cultures I studied for the novels of my Fallen Cloud Saga. Personally, blue jays (like the Steller’s jays that come to my deck and jeer at me until I give them some peanuts) are among my favorite birds. I’ve often noted how adaptable, how intelligent these birds seem to be. Their behavior always seemed to be a step more advanced than the other birds that frequent our back garden. In short, when I regarded the crows and jays that live around me, I often felt that there was someone in those birds, regarding me in return.
Posted in Books | Tagged are crows smart, book reviews, books, corvid biology, crow behavior, gifts of the crow, john marzluff, non-fiction books, raven behavior, Tony Angell | 6 Comments »
The Red Knight, Parry’s nemesis in The Fisher King
I got very angry yesterday, after hearing the news of Robin Williams’ death, but I wasn’t angry with him. I was angry with two other people.
The first person I was angry with was an acquaintance who berated Williams for his suicide, calling him selfish and weak. Thankfully, many came to Williams’ defense, chastising this person for both his insensitivity and his ignorance.
The other person I was angry with was myself, because there was a time when I would have said something similar. Continue Reading »
Posted in Culture, Movies, Television | Tagged depression, mental illness, Robin Williams, Terry Gilliam, The Fisher King, What Dreams May Come | 4 Comments »
I wish my brain had an OFF switch.
There are times when it just gets in the way. I mean it’s thinking. All. The. Time. Thinking thinking thinking. Every damned minute it’s filled with thoughts, memories, comparisons, evaluations, judgments, decisions.
And there are times when it’s a real pain in the ass.
One situation in which it really gets in the way is when I’m watching actors do something I know in great detail. You know what I mean. It’s that part of the movie where the star sits down to a keyboard and supposedly starts typing in code/prose like a savant, but you know–from the position of their hands or the regular stadium-wave pattern of their fingers–that they’re just frobnicating, mindlessly tippy-tapping the keys while they utter their lines.
I have the same problem with actors who “dance” ballet or “play” a musical instrument. Few actors can fake it well enough to fool me. Hell, few can fake it well enough for me to suspend my disbelief. Especially painful (for me) is when actors pretend to play a violin, viola, or cello. My decades as a concert violist and my knowledge of the instruments make the tiniest misstep a glaring error, and it just pops me right out of the story (like when a character in a story set in Victorian England says “Okay.” Arg!)
And so, it was with great trepidation that I queued up A Late Quartet, the story of which centers on the members of a world-famous string quartet. Continue Reading »
Posted in Movies | Tagged a late quartet, beethoven, catherine keener, christopher walken, movie review, Movies, philip seymour hoffman, string quartets, yaron zilberman | 2 Comments »
Sometimes, the word “interesting” isn’t enough.
This weekend past, as well as being sad, stressful, productive, lazy, and maddening, was also interesting.
It was the 31st anniversary of my wedding. It was the yahrzeit of the death of my wife’s mother. It was a weekend of plans, and of disrupted plans. It was a weekend with three reservations to the same restaurant, each one made and canceled in daily succession. It was a weekend of editing, rereading and rewriting my latest short story (“The Book of Solomon”), proofing it, polishing it, and then sending it off to a paying market.
It was also the weekend when I got an email from the Senior Librarian in Sumner, WA, asking if I’d be interested in participating in a panel, this October.
Yeah, “interesting” doesn’t really cover it.
Posted in Books, Writing | Tagged alternate history, books, creative writing, historical fiction, marketing, novel writing, novels, publishing, self-publishing, Sumner, Sumner Public Library, WA, Writing, writing tips | Leave a Comment »
In the world of Hollywood movies, the name Ishtar is synonymous with flop.
Ishtar, Elaine May’s 1987 version of a “Road to Morocco” type movie, stars Warren Beatty and Dustin Hoffman, and when it came out, it was an unmitigated flop, recouping only $14M of its $55M price tag.
The press that preceded its release was so bad that, despite its star quality and Elaine May’s impressive credentials (A New Leaf, Heaven Can Wait, Reds, Tootsie), I never went to see it, never rented it, and never even considered buying it.
Then, yesterday, I found this 27-year old movie available for streaming on Netflix. Curious, I queued it up.
Posted in Movies | Tagged box office flops, dustin hoffman, elaine may, ishtar, movie reviews, Movies, Paul Williams, Roger Ebert, Steve Perry, warren beatty | 4 Comments »
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 