An Open Letter From Netflix To Verizon For Being A Bunch Of Greedy Selfish Jerks

Continuing in the modern trend of a never-ending ouroboros of open-letters, Netflix has sent a letter to Verizon about the letter that Verizon sent to Netflix about how angry Verizon was that Netflix was throwing them under the bus and blatantly telling its customers that their slow-loading time were entirely the fault of Verizon trying to throttle internet service (an unfortunate omen of the world to come, should Net Neutrality laws be abolished).

The Greatest Feminist Mermaid Horror Story Fairytale Ever Written

This is Alyssa Wong — or as I like to call her, Death Cupcake. Don't let her seemingly adorable exterior deceive you (or do — she'd probably prefer it if you do, as it gives her the advantage when she swoops in to devour your soul): Alyssa is a wonderful, wonderful person who writes some of the most brutal stories I've encountered. Alyssa's stories, much like their creator, are a perfect marriage of cutesy moments and grotesque, gut-wrenching horror. This seemingly incongruous combination is precisely what makes her and her stories so wonderful.

But don't let my biased voice fool you. Take it from SF Site, who just interviewed Alyssa about The Fisher Queen, her first professional fiction publication. I had the pleasure of reading the first draft of The Fisher Queen at Clarion in the summer of 2013, and it's one of the stories that has stuck with me ever since. The best way I can describe it is as a Feminist Mermaid Horror story. If that sounds weird to, well, that's part of the charm of Alyssa's work — she can write a feminist mermaid horror story and actually pull it off. I was legitimately squirming by the end of this story.

Alyssa was one-third of the affectionately named "Team Tiny Bonesaw" at Clarion 2013, alongside Isabel Yap and Gabby Santiago 

Again, don't take my word for it — you can download the entire story for free on Amazon in this exclusive sampler digest of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And yes, I would suggest you do so — if for no other reason than to appease the Death Cupcake Queen, so that she might have mercy on your soul once she rules the fiction landscape (which she will).

And lest I've frightened you too much, here's Alyssa posing with the UCSD Triton. She's get a weird thing for mer-people — but hey, I don't judge.

Oh Yes, DO Let's Ban Yet Another Book That Tries To Teach Kids About The Overreaches Of Authority

Because banning books has always ended well, and has never been held up as an eternal symbol of a corrupt society...

Yes, after approving Cory Doctorow's Little Brother for the "One School / One Book" reading program, a principal in Pensacola, Florida (where else?) has decided to ban the book from classrooms, because it encourages students to question authority and engage in hacker culture. Are you kidding me?

Cory himself explains it perfectly over at BoingBoing: "I don't think this is a problem because my book is the greatest novel ever written and the kids will all miss out by not reading it, but because I think that the role of an educator is to encourage critical thinking and debate, and that this is a totally inappropriate way to address 'controversial' material in schools."

I mean, I'm 28 now, and I still think this is a valid message.

Little Brother is an absolutely exhilarating young adult novel about teens fighting back against Big Brother. Most of us read 1984 in school (and other dystopian classic, such as Brave New World), but Little Brother arms readers with the necessary knowledge to fight back. Big Brother is watching you, all right — but who's keeping tabs on Big Brother? The book is set vaguely now-ish, and even reading it as an adult, it was both educational, and horrifying. I'm glad I read it after the Boston Marathon Bombings, or else I would have been even more freaked out during that situation, rather than being oblivious to the other real-life horrors of what was going on (the basic plot of the novel follows a teen named Marcus Yallow who skips school to go LARPing, which puts him in the wrong place during a terrorist attack and leads him into the torturous hands of the Department of Homeland Security). It's one of those books that I find myself recommending to absolutely everyone I meet, but especially to middle- and high school students. 

Fortunately, when not writing fantastic science fiction books, Cory Doctorow is also an advocate for Internet freedoms and basic Civil Rights (plus a fantastic writing mentor). His publisher, Tor Books (to whom I also contribute, via Tor.com), has agreed to send 200 free paperback copies of the novel to students at Booker T. Washington High School. And on top of that, you can download Little Brother for free in a variety of different formats directly from Cory's website, where he offers all of his books for download under Creative Commons licensing (the idea being that people will download the book for free, like I did, then tell someone about it, like I just did, which then leads to someone buying it. And it works). Even the National Coalition Against Censorship has gotten involved, writing a good ol' fashioned "strongly worded letter" to the educational administration in Pensacola.

So download Little Brother (it's free! You have literally no excuse!), give it to your friends and younger cousins and siblings. Because a society that still bans books is not a good place to live.

Orange Is The New Cat

We interrupt your regularly-scheduled self-promotions to bring you this hilarious parody of Orange is the New Black.

Writing Process Blog Tour: June 10, 2014

I'm on vacation this week, but my Clarion comrade / favorite robosexual Patrick Ropp tapped me for this Writing Process Blog Tour, so as long as my fiancé is still napping, of course I must oblige.

Me and Patrick (with Eliza Tiernan in the middle) battling to the death in a  water gun fight against Robert Crais & Kim Stanley Robinson

1. What am I working on?

Too many projects, all the time. I'm working on a novel, tentatively titled either The Good People or Dirty Old Town, which I usually describe "Magical Realist Irish Folklore Punk Rock Noir Set in Modern-Day Boston." Yes, I know, it sounds like pretty much the most stereotypical Thom Dunn project imaginable — but hey, write what you know, right? This story started as a short story at Clarion, though the idea had been bouncing around in my head for a while.

I'm also working on a play based on a short story I wrote (which I'm also editing to send out) called Autojektor, or Experiments In the Revival of Organisms, which I similarly describe as "Gay Russian Zombie Jew Ballet," and thus requires no further explanation. Then there's Evil Academy, a young adult graphic novel series I've been working on with my friend Dave about a private high school for aspiring supervillains. It's a black comedy, with each storyline basically taking the shape of a "Very Special Episode" of a high school sitcom, but it goes to some pretty dark places, and at the center of it explores what it's like to fight against the system when the system that you're inside of already claims to be fighting a system, but is still a system in and of itself (I don't know, I have authority issues).

Just a little sneak peek at Dave's artwork for Evil Academy

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre?

That's a great question that I'm not sure how to answer without coming off as pretentious about my own work, but sure, I'll try. Because of the nature of my hypomanic brain, my stuff tends to be, well, pretty ADHD, and/or very high concept. I draw as much from (post-)postmodernism as I do from magical realism and speculative fiction. Coming from a background in theatre, I tend to use a lot of snappy dialogue as well, regardless of the medium I'm working in. I like to think I'm pretty witty, too, even when I'm going to dark places. On the more thematic side of things, I've always leaned towards stories about outsiders and people or cultures who don't quite fit in, even amongst their own subversive subcultures. The outsiders amongst outsiders, I guess. I've also had that inclination, but as I've gotten older, it's made me more attuned to diversity and inclusion in my work. I pull a lot from my own subcultures of indie / punk rock and comics / nerdy pop culture. Of course, I've never felt completely comfortable in those worlds either, which probably explains my I gravitate towards characters that don't fit in to a world that already doesn't fit in with the rest of the world. I also draw a lot from my Irish-Catholic upbringing — I'm agnostic, but I have an intimate understanding of Biblical symbology (I'm less interested in blatant religious metaphors than I am in the archetypal symbols that have permeated all religions and cultures), and I draw a lot from Irish literature as well, whether it's folklore, oral traditions, or the black humor of writers like Martin McDonagh.

I also just got this sweet 1985 Word Processor, though I haven't quite figured out how to fit it into my workflow yet.

3. Why do I write what I do?

I think I kind of covered this above. But I write because I have to, because no one is telling the stories that I want to experience. That's kind of a cliched answer, but there is a lot of truth to it. I'm a very curious and also very empathic person, so a lot of times, I'll happen upon a situation — something I read in the news, or a story told to me by a friend — and I start to wonder how it got to that point, or why a person might have made those decisions (or, sometimes, how the opposite situation could have worked out). And I want to know the answers, and I want to understand them, even if I don't like them. So I write to make that happen.

4. How does your writing process work?

As far as "where ideas come from," a lot of mine spring up when I'm reading things in the news or hearing about my friends' lives. I read or hear or see a story, and (as I said above), I wonder how it got to that point, and then I start to wonder, "Well, what if...?" Sometimes it's "What if this horrible person was actually the good guy?" or "What if this technology had gone this way instead?" or "What if she had left for the party on time?" and then I extrapolate. I hook into a person caught in a situation, and then I go from there. How did they get there? Why? Where do they go from here?

As far as the actual act of writing is concerned, I do most of my first drafts by hand in a composition notebook. This prevents from self-editing too much; I get into a flow, and then I just keep pouring stuff out. Sure, there's a lot of crap that comes out that way, and only so many times you can scribble out a page, but I write a lot of notes to myself in the margins, that are often as simple and straight-forward as "Make this better" or "Less shitty next time" or "No, you idiot, of course she's going to lie about that." Then I start to type it into my computer using Scrivener (which has made my life / writing so much better and I could not recommend more highly) or a simple .txt file in PlainText on my iPad, taking my margin-notes into consideration as I go. A lot of these early by-hand drafts read like plays, even when I'm not writing a play — there's a lot of dialogue, with a mention of some action whenever it happens, which I then flesh out when I'm actually​ typing it into the computer. 

Also I just kind of compulsively consume liquids as I go. The art of WHICH liquids to consume, well, that's a delicate balancing act.

I think I was supposed to plan ahead and tape some other people to write this for next Tuesday but uhhhhh I forgot to do that. So if anyone wants on, let me know!

Fathers Hide Your Synthesizers — There's New Music From The Rentals!

Normally I wouldn't hype something on my blog that I myself am not involved in, but given my new commitment to up my blogging, and the fact that I'm incredibly excited about this, please excuse my HOLY CRAP THERE'S A NEW RENTALS ALBUM COMING OUT!

MOOGS! POWER CHORDS! LOTS OF LAYERED HARMONY ON FEMALES GOING "OOOH"!

C'mon, that was catchy, right? It's like...all the power-pop goodness that we all still want out of Weezer, but sadly never get. It's simple, sure, but with these tiny artistic / experimental embellishments — which is precisely what I love about The Rentals.

Which makes sense, of course, because Matt Sharp formed the band as a side-project back when he was still playing bass and supplying quirky falsetto background vocal embellishments in Weezer (his departure marking the beginning of their steady decline), and he's remained the only consistent member of the band (as well as its lead creative force). Weezer drummer Patrick Wilson and Indie Rock Violinist Sisters Extraordinaire Rachel and Petra Haden and even actress Maya Rudolph (because I guess she has a Moog?) have been among the band's rotating members; their upcoming album includes Patrick Carney from The Black Keys. The Rentals released their first album, Return Of The Rentals, in 1995, and it's an irresistible explosion of power-pop hooks, Moog synthesizers, and enough female background vocals to make Brian Wilson cry. It's certainly reminiscent of Blue Album-era Weezer, but with less angst and pop sensibilities cranked up to 11. It's almost overwhelmingly upbeat and catchy, not to mention incredible simple and just plain fun. Here's the lead single from Return Of The Rentals:

And now you're probably like, "That was stupid. Also brilliant. It was so...simple! Why is this in my head?! Why won't it go away and why do I like it?!," to which I respond, EXACTLY. They followed that album up with Seven More Minutes, which is bit more rockin', while also drawing on some Americana influence for the folky "It's Alright." They released Songs About Time in 2009, which was a whole multimedia project consisting of three mini-albums released every three months, 52 black and white short films scored and arranged by the band and released every week, and 365 photographs released every day for one year. They compiled some of the best parts into a single album, which leans more heavily on the strings, pianos, and acoustic guitar sounds. It's a gorgeous record, but I'm also excited that their new album is sounding like a return to form for their more rock-oriented sounds.

Despite the mild radio success of "Friends of P," The Rentals haven't been hugely successful, but I wish more people were aware of them, because I find them to be an absolutely irresistibile medley of many of my favorite musical things. So check 'em out if you have the chance (or, ya know, Spotify 'em or whatever)!

Princess Leia's 22nd Birthday Was An EPIC Party, Yo

A (very) short film directed by Chronicle director Josh Trank, who's just been tapped to direct one of the upcoming Star Wars stand-alone spinoffs. Sure, this fun little clip is more than seven years old now, but we can only hope that his contribution to the Star Wars universe is even half as awesome.

Thanks to The AV Club for the find.

Holy Adam West 60s Batman Jokes and Puppies, Batman!

Back when I was like 13, and just getting invested in the CT ska scene, there was this band called Flip Ya For Real that I saw, which at the time was fronted by a guy named Travis Holyfield (or, ya know, "Flip Ya Trav" at the time, because ska nicknames). At some point I started chatting with Travis over AIM (since his AOL email address was listed on their CD liner notes for booking), and for what reason, he actually tolerated and put up with me.

Flash-forward 15-or-so years, and Travis and I still stay in touch, even though FYFR and his other (even better) band SaveFace are now defunct. But with our musical pasts behind us, Travis and I and have actually reconnected over comic books. He's had a few short pieces out in various anthologies from GrayHaven Comics (who also published my first short comic book story in The Fifth Dimension, which I pitched on Travis's recommendation), and the company recently published his first full-length one-shot, DOBER-MAN, which is now available digitally at ComiXology for the low, low price of $0.99!

Dober-Man is fun, clever homage to the old 1960s Batman show, and Travis makes absolutely no secret of that. The allusions are clear to even a casual fan (The alter egos of Dober-Man and his sidekick Beagle, for example, are Burt West and Ward Adams, after Adam West and Burt Ward), but the book is also jam-packed with little silver-age gems scattered throughout the background. The puns are punderful — I mean, a Stage Irish T-Rex named Tyrant O'Saurus? C'mon! That's amazing! And even in 24 short pages, Travis and artist Edward Whatley manage to cram some clever concepts in between the homage campiness, such as a fully legal and legitimate staffing company that hires out henchmen for supervillains (many of him are thinly-veiled but gleefully silly allegories of established Bat-villains). This wacky bit of economic world-building plays out in remarkably interesting ways, and while Travis is wise not to spend too much time exploring the inner political workings of his superhero universe, he teases enough on the surface to get your brain working just enough beyond the surface enjoyment of it all. In the end, it's a wholesome, classic superhero romp that's appropriate for all ages — and it only costs $1 right now, so what are you waiting for? Pick it up, and support independent comic book creators! NOW!

Or, if you don't want to take my word for it (because let's face it, I might be biased and/or Travis may or may not be holding one of those "Bang!" guns to my head right now as I type this, forcing me to pimp his book), you can check out the review at IGN, which gave Dober-Man an A+.

Here are a few preview pages to further whet your whistle:

Me Am Do Talk Good

I found this fun little link on Twitter the other day: a quiz that proclaims to be able to guess which English dialect you speak, along with your native language. I like to think I have a pretty solid grasp on the English language, in all its bizarre permutations (except for verb tenses of "lay"; I will never get those right), but the results, as they say on the internet, shocked me.

Most of the questions are either "Which picture best portrays this sentence" or "Which of these sentences is correct?", and as I went through it the first time, I was pretty liberal and considerate with my answers. A few of the questions allowed for more than one answer, so I selected more than one — considering some of the sentence structures that were not immediately instinctual for me to use, or were not my personal preference for grammatical comfort, but where nonetheless "right," or at least, not explicitly incorrect. Also a lot of it was in passive voice, which was mostly just frustrating, because whatever dialect I do speak, it certainly isn't passive voice.

The results? Apparently I speak with a "US Black Vernacular / Ebonics" dialect, and my native language is Portugese.

Hrm. Okay. Well that was not what I was expecting, especially having grownup in the famously "accent-less"* (according to us, and no one else) state of Connecticut. I know that I sometimes slip into Hiberno-English (especially when I've been drinking), and that my love of hard-boiled fiction narratives sometimes seeps into my otherwise cheery demeanor (I could be talking about how much I love ice cream on a sunny day, but I occasionally imagine myself doing it while standing in a dark alley wearing a trenchcoat to hide my face and smoking a cigarette, with a flask of whiskey hidden in my breast pocket).

So I took the quiz again, this time being less forgiving in my answers, and as predicted, I speak in a "US Standard English" dialect, with "American" as my native language. OKAY SO FINE I'M PREDICTABLE AND I WAS JUST BEING DIFFICULT BEFORE. Either way, it's a fun little quiz to take (if you can ignore the poor writing), so check it out when you have a chance.

*And yes, I know that this should be "dialect," not "accent" — right? Or should it? Okay, so maybe I don't know, but I think it's supposed to be dialect but most of us say accent anyway. THE POINT IS, I've been told that the indicator of a Connecticut dialect is a softening of "t"s in the middle of words, so that they sound like "d"s instead. You know, like the way we say "Conedikit."

Attack of the Literal Grammar Nazis

Today on "Idiotic Psychopaths Desperately Hoping For Public Relations Damage Control," following on the recent news of the NRA asking their members to maybe not show off their Open Carry rights by "casually" bringing assault rifles into restaurants even though it is technically legal in some places, my buddy Jake retweeted a cryptic link from Heeb Magazine, which in turn led me to this remarkable gem:

Yes, that is a tweet from the actual real-life official twitter of the American Nazi Party, in which they are being fascistic about grammar. They are literally Grammar Nazis.

Perhaps more disturbingly, I agree with them. Good grammar IS important. I share personal philosophical beliefs with the American Nazi Party. This realization was slightly disconcerting, of course, so I decided to peruse their Twitter feed to see what other kinds of causes they tweet in support of. Things like...animal rights...sustainable organic foods...they're vocally pro-life...and encourage a straight edge lifestyle (less surprising than it should be)...they're anti-corporation, and support local businesses....ooh, and they also love Moms! Er, wait a second...

Okay well then so ignoring that last little hashtag there, and the swastika, and the specification of "Aryan" moms above all, maybe Neo-Nazis aren't so bad? It seems they care about a lot of the same things I care about, or the things that people like me care about. That's kind of weird, right?

Oh. Well. Nevermind. We're now back to your regularly scheduled supremacist scumbags. Still, this is certainly a lesson in the banality of evil — that for all my touchy-feely artist progressive politics, I could (unfortunately) find some commonality with the American Nazi Party. And in a weird way, I kind of respect their attempts to police the grammar of their followers. Poor language skills often (though not always) betray a lack of education, and, well, they wouldn't want us got-dayum libaruls to think that modern-day Nazis are ignorant, now, would they?

Ahem. Right. Anyway.

Discovering this horrifying corner of Twitter reminded me of a happy little tune I used to sing with friends when I was just a wee young lad haunting American Legion Halls across Connecticut. It went a little something like this:

Disney Princesses Singing to the DEATH! (And Also Kevin Sorbo)

This is Zach (the dude, not the velociraptor. Or the girl). Zach was one of my roommates at Clarion last summer. If the stars align right, you will someday revere him as the author of the Turnbuckle Jack series. In the meantime, you probably know him as The Guy Who Wrote This:

He's got a new wacky web series coming out called Muzzled the Musical, which is about a magical not-Disney kingdom where singing the greatest power. Did I mention that the cast includes Kevin Sorbo (aka Hercules of "The Legendary Journeys" fame) and Juliet Landau (aka Drusilla from Buffy / Angel)

I feel like most people who know me or are interested in the things I do have interests that fit somewhere in the Venn Diagram overlap between "Hercules" and "Disney parody" and "Death by singing." If you're one of those people, Muzzled is raising money to complete its first season, and if the above video is any indication, that's something that you're going to want to be a part of. Check out their (insanely elaborate) Kickstarter video below:

Like most smart Kickstarters, this independent team is essentially using this campaign as a pre-order of sorts, with "rewards" like a soundtrack and a download of the complete first season. But I mean, c'mon: who doesn't want a musical TV show about badass singing princesses?

Muzzled: The Musical on Kickstarter

Net Neutrality Explained With Basic Stick Figures & Do You Finally Understand Why This Is So Serious?!

Did I mention that Comcast has already begun discussing plans to limit your monthly broadband consumption and thereby prevent you from binge-watching your favorite shows on NetFlix? 

If you're still having trouble extrapolating how this is an issue, consider how the narrative structure of television continued to evolve in response to our binge-watching habits. I'm not here to argue about whether or not we are in a "Golden Age of Television" right now, but the truth is, there are some pretty great shows out there right now. The expectations have been raised, as narratives have matured. Networks used to prefer sitcoms because they had a better chance of new viewers tuning in every week. But now, with fewer people relying on live broadcasts, it's changed the way that we interact with TV shows — with episode pacing, exposition, serialized story details, etc. — and those narrative structures will continue to change and evolve. 

That is, unless Comcast starts to restrict your bandwidth. Then you only get about 70 hours of streaming a month (to say nothing of the data limitations on the millions of other things you do online). If that happens, then not only are you less inclined to catch up on Game of Thrones, but the writing team on Game of Thrones is less inclined to create quality programming that really grabs you because it's more financially viable for them to create formulaic programming instead, thereby returning television to the "Boob Tube" status of audio-visual brainwashing instead of a compelling narrative medium*.

Perhaps more importantly, if Comcast begins to limit streaming, then my fiance won't be able to listen to Law & Order: SVU every night in order to get to sleep. "How does Law & Order: SVU help her get to sleep," you ask, "when it's a procedural show that mostly consists of horrible, horrible acts of rape and violence against women? Doesn't that give her nightmares or something?" Look, man, I don't understand it either. But if it works for her, then it works me, and then everyone wins, because everyone gets to sleep, so everyone's happy.

DO YOU HEAR THAT, FCC?! MAINTAIN NET NEUTRALITY SO THAT I CAN SLEEP IN PEACE.

*Some folks would argue that binge-watching is in fact the greatest accomplishment of television brainwashing, and that we're even worse off now than we were before. They're probably right, and I'm probably so brainwashed at this point that I'm blindly spouting propaganda in their favor. Oh well. 

Smart People Who Are Funny But Then Also Sexy And Plus Smart

Here's a little video I put together for the upcoming world premiere of Lydia R. Diamond's Smart People at the Huntington, which starts previews this Friday and runs through June 29. Check it out!

We've also got one of those fancy 35 Below parties planned for it, after the Friday night performance on May 30. $25 gets you tickets + access to the party, including free drinks and live music. So it's basically a pretty sweet deal. Woohoo!

#StopTheSlowLane

As far as I'm concerned, Net Neutrality is up there with Climate Change under "Hugely Important Issues That Are Actual Realities (and of which most sane and educated acknowledge the existence) and We Seriously Need To Act On Them Immediately Before Our Entire Society Goes Kablooey," especially now that cable lobbyists have strong-armed Congress into signing a new anti-Net Neutrality petition as of yesterday.

This is a weird catch-22, because I care a lot about Net Neutrality and want to do my part to make more people aware of it. So I tried installing one of these widgets from StopTheSlowLane.com onto my website here, which essentially replicate what would be the experience of using a website (like mine) if the proposed Internet laws were to be passed. The only problem was, it made the experience of using the site incredibly obnoxious — which is precisely why it's an important issue to be aware of, but also would probably deter the little bits of traffic I'm already barely getting on this site. See what I mean by a catch-22? Luckily, there's the GIF up there (linked to more information about Net Neutrality) which gives an impression of A World Without Net Neutrality without actually slowing the load time on my site. In the end, I don't have enough faithful readers (hi everyone!) that there'd be any real benefit to show for giving you all such a frustrating on my website.

Here's Cory Doctorow, one of my Clarion mentors, explaining it in a recent column for The Guardian:

Anyway. That's all for today. Fight the power, save the Internet.

Become'd CUBA

This past weekend, my fiancé closed her production of Becoming Cuba at the Huntington. It was a fantastic for her, as well as a fantastic play — even if some of the reviewers had trouble grasping the idea that a play could have a Latina female as a protagonist (God forbid!), or be set in an historical context without being a "history lesson." I've seen various incarnations of this show...6 times now? And I still don't know anything about the Cuban War of Independence, other than that it happened, and that, in an incredibly over-simplified way, it's kind of the same conflict as what we call the Spanish-American War (meanwhile, we have done shows at the Huntington that could be described as "history lessons," but those were all about white dudes).

ANYWAY, in the end, the show was beautiful and successful, and that's what matter. I previously shared some of the earlier promotional videos that I made for the show, but over the course of its run, I made a few more as well, focusing on the relationship between Bevin and the playwright, Melinda Lopez, as well as the eerie synchronicity between the play and some of the actors' personal lives. Check 'em out:

Meanwhile, fellow playwright / bacon lover / renaissance man John J. King — the so-called "Child Wrangler" on Becoming Cuba — had some fun backstage (no, not like that) with "Chucho," the kid in the play. The two of them wrote a parody of "Royals" by Lorde sung from Chucho's point of view in the play, and I whipped together a quick video for it. I think it's pretty amazing (of course, it could be one of those "you-had-to-be-there" things, but c'mon — Lorde would be way cooler if she sang about guerrilla warfare and syphilis amiright?)

We also had our annual Gala fundraiser at the Huntington last week (in addition to some other, less uplifting news), for which I shot & edited a tribute to MacArthur "Genius" Mary Zimmerman, whom we honored at the event, and shot the footage for our new education video:

So, ya know. I've been busy. What else is new?

"Always be drunk. That's it! The great imperative!"

It's National Poetry Month, so I wanted to share a little poem with all 3 of you loyal readers out there. I somehow had never encountered this poem until today, when someone posted it on the private Facebook group for my neighborhood pub, The Brendan Behan (yes, there's a private social group for pub regulars in addition to the standard FB page, and of course, a pub named for Brendan Behan would have a bunch of drunken literary fanatics). It's by a French writer named Charles Baudelaire, and while this translation might not be as remarkable for its use of language/imagery/poetic devices (I can't speak to it in French, although there is a picture of the original French below), I think it accurately sums up the artist's mind (by exploring and exploiting substance abuse and addiction, naturally, because art.)

And so, without further ado: "Get Drunk."

Always be drunk.
That's it!
The great imperative!
In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
Get drunk and stay that way.
On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.
And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,
ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,
ask what time it is;
and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:
"Time to get drunk!
Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"

Meanwhile, if you want some more poetry, my good friend Brian McGackin has been sharing a new poem by a different poet for every day of the month over on his blog. And take it from me — his taste in poetry is at least as good if not better than his taste in friends.