Month: November 2013

I’m a New Yorker. It is in my blood, my soul, the way I move, the way I think, the way I believe I am supposed to be and achieve; and it is the pulse of who I am. Above all else, being a New Yorker is a responsibility in the same way that being a Texan is a responsibility and being an Arizonan is sometimes not.

I am a New Yorker out of New York, and that is a different flavor of responsibility entirely. When I lived in the city I thought very little of the America that existed outside of the tri-state area. I considered Chicago in brief. I called it a sister city–New York of the Midwest and a little brother to our Gotham. I walked around with the arrogant belief that I lived in the greatest city in the world. I’m still convinced NYC is the best. My travels prove it is the greatest city in the United States at least. However, now I’m a post-New Yorker. Now I keep running into all these folks from New York (Maricopa is crawling with New Yorkers), and I’m left to answer the questions of the city, the questions of why I left, and the biggest question: What do you do After New York?

You become a representative of what people believe that place to be.

I am a meme. Whereever I go I carry the weight of a city, a race, an ideal. It is a responsibility that we each bear, often without ever thinking about it. People judge each other based on their perceptions about the visual and verbal baggage that person brings into the first meet. I’m judged in one sense because I’m black, in another because of how I dress and what I do, and another still because of where I come from. Since I carry love and respect for that place and what it did for me, I try to live up to the standard that it set while I was there. Yet another thing easier said than done.

I am thankful for a great many things in this life. I am thankful that I’ve walked this world for nearly 14,000 nights. I am thankful for the web that allows me to reach out to friends long lost. I am thankful for friends (old and new) that I hold dear. I am thankful for Shadowrun, because it gave venue to my voice. I am thankful for having a voice at all. The more I move through life the more I am struck by those less fortunate than myself. What I have discovered, won, earned, fell into by luck, born into by luck–all of it is a gift.

I’m thankful for my cat. She deserves her own line here.

I’m less thankful for my dog. We noticed a spot of pee after the big rain and guessed that his usual fear of rain compelled him to pee on our rug. I pulled out the blacklight to inspect the damage and discovered it is far more extensive than I first imagined. Looking at a room under a blacklight after your dog has had his way with it is much like the TV version of walking into a murder scene. I felt like Dexter. I’m not thankful for that at all.

I’m thankful for the family that loves me and puts up with me. I’m a tough dude to deal with. I don’t have the heroic patience I once did as a twenty year old. Nor am I the person I intended to be when I developed that patience. Maybe I’m still trying to get there, maybe I’m trying to go another direction. One thing I know is that they’ve stuck by me. I’m definitely thankful for that.

I live for silver linings. I want to see the best in everything. It is my belief that everyone should. It is my belief that we should find something we are thankful for every day and even in the dark moments we should be able to seek out that sliver of light. Most of all, I’m thankful that I can still do that.

For those who don’t watch Breaking Bad, sorry you missed it. When I turn this idea in to the Pop Culture Association I hope they don’t mutter, ‘too late’. I am too late to catch the tidal wave that was Breaking Bad. In truth I’ll be watching the series finale on Thanksgiving and giving out a review the moment I can compose myself. However, I wanted to get this one thought down on the web before I find out what happens to Walter and my brain becomes consumed by that. I want to talk about the colors people wear. Breaking Bad is outstanding for more than just its dialogues and situations. The use of color to tell a story is a breakthrough that Vince Gilligan et al should be proud of for decades to come.

What they wear matters. From the first episode it is clear that certain characters are known by color. Jesse is the red of chaos. Skyler is the green of envy, Hank and his wife are the purple of royalty and pride, the Greymatter folks are the beige of wealth, and Walter, well he changes as the story goes on. I became obsessed with spotting these colors and defining what they meant almost as a way of foreshadowing and sometimes reflecting situations as they were happening. White and Blue are particularly interesting color themes   in Breaking Bad. White, it can be argued, is the absence of color–a clean slate. The protagonist, Walter White is essentially a clean slate at the beginning of the show. Likewise, this substance he creates is clear (clean slate) at the beginning of the show. Over time it begins to become tainted by his manipulations and he tainted by the power it creates. The meth becomes blue and the color blue becomes a dominant color on all the characters and items and locations benefiting from the meth.

I want to write more about this, but ten minutes only allows me to get this little bit down. Black is another hugely thematic color and a lot can be said about the way the characters layer colors and how those colors reflect allegiances throughout the seasons.

Some Thoughts:

1. I bought two wonderful cat toys thinking they’d entertain my cat for hours. The Yorkie wont stop playing with them.

Yellow cones lined the road to work. Spaced evenly apart they created a guiderail between the road I usually traveled and the one road workers meant to put me upon. At one point the cones parted to reveal a gap and a choice. I could stay the course or turn, taking my chances on a new path. From the comfort of my car I chose to remain upon the beaten path. When I finally reached my class I found that I’d stepped away from my tried and true path entirely.

I deal with student confrontation exactly as I dealt with client confrontation as a counselor. ‘What I’m hearing is’ and ‘How does that make you feel’ leap to my lips as readily as ‘hello’ or ‘have a nice day’. These language conventions insulate me from student rage as much as they help me stem my own tension from the behaviors I fail to fully comprehend. I hold on to them like a mantra until I don’t.

What did it was the derisive laughter.

We were talking about a film the students were creating as part of an integrated assignment between two separate courses. This particular student was not interested in working on the project at all, deeming to put it off until the due date. This annoyed her team and led to my, and my co-teacher’s intervention. That’s when it went bad. I pointed out that these films were supposed to be socially conscious and point to a heightened awareness of the social conditions under which we survive. I then reminded them that, in that context, a bullying film where the only black kid in the film is the bully could be seen as negative reinforcement. She laughed at the idea. Then she laughed at the idea of stereotyping, claiming we could then only cast the big white guy as a bully because that would not be stereotypical. I challenged that statement, claiming that too would be a stereotype and suggested that she be the bully. She laughed again and remarked that I might be over thinking stereotypes, because they don’t mean anything.

To suggest that playing into traditional stereotypes doesn’t matter—especially in a context where the media being created and studied is done so in a sociological context—is not only asinine but also dangerous. For a student to look me in the eyes and say, “Maybe you’re over thinking this.” Ignores a hundred years of history that someone from an insulated suburban Phoenix background would never need to consider if they had no intention of visiting that small strip of reality outside of the 480 the rest of us call modern civilization. I don’t forgive her stupidity, but I understand it. For her, creating a scenario about bullying where the larger black dude goes after the timid Caucasian-looking student isn’t a big deal. Why would it be? For all the access to understanding that some people have, it takes a willingness to work at being better and to hear some things that may surprise, frighten, and even dismay you in order to improve. Often it takes facing discrimination as the result of dangerous stereotypes in order to recognize their value. Clearly she doesn’t have the growth needed to get it. Or maybe its like I said before: Maybe she doesn’t have to care.

I should’ve and could’ve let it pass and been the guy who accepts there will be ignorance in the world that I can do nothing about. I didn’t do that. I didn’t stay the course and continue teaching as normal. I stopped and made it a big deal. To me, it was.

Some Thoughts:

1. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are not great friends. They are great competitors and that is evident in the body language between the two in the post-game handshake. It’s just a handshake, but little things are deeply telling.
2.  Following a last-minute loss by the Giants to the Cowboys I must accept that Tony Romo is clutch. He beat a defense that abused him for the better part of the afternoon, and he did it knowing his post-season hopes hung on every throw. I can fault the Giants D a little (Thomas was playing soft zone in front of the TE in the endzone, which, considering the Safety help, wasn’t the best idea. He bit on a pump fake to no one and gave up a TD), but this was All-Day-Romo.
3. Seriously, I’m not staring at your boobs. I’ve become hyper aware of this phenomenon. The majority of time I look at a woman they immediately adjust their top to conceal cleavage. I’m making eye contact for peete’s sake. Perhaps it is because I’m taller and naturally looking down. No matter the reason, the assumption is generally false. I mean I’m still a man and sometimes a man looks, but I am also a gentleman who respects women enough not to drool over their cleavage.
4. Some people are terribly good at what they do with their lives. Some people clearly are not. Sadly, the ones who aren’t so good at their chosen lives are often the ones you can’t say a thing to.

The largest challenge of writing in a shared world is not having a clue what anyone else is doing. I write a lot of material in the world of Shadowrun. We do far better than most when it comes to communication and having consensus about where the world is headed. Still, even with our advanced communication principles little bits of lore slip between the shadows and become the stuff of confusion.

Too many cooks, some say, spoil the pot. On the other hand to few cooks lead to unfinished stories. I point to the recent(ish) deaths of novelists Tom Clancy and Robert Jordan and the rather eventual untimely demise of George R.R. Martin as reason why a story world should always be shared. However, how far should that sharing go? Canadian tandem Ian Esselmont and Steven Erikson created a massive series of novels between the two of them. Their styles and ideas are divergent, but the world works together for all their effort. It works because they came up with this stuff together and continue to believe in that shared vision.

Role-Playing gameworlds are a different beast entirely. The grandaddy of the all, Dungeons and Dragons is a massive universe built of several often interlocking worlds. This setup affords plenty of space for differentiation. In fact, the storylines are generally so locational that two dozen writers can be branching off in many different directions without once having to worry about stepping on each others tales. Shadowrun is not as lucky. We’re focused on a singular world–Earth. While our world presumably leaves the same sort of room for individual mischief that a world of dragons and sorcery does, the premise of our world removes a great deal of that possibility by demanding that everything be under the halogen glare of big brother in the form of a cadre of corporations that mean to control us all.

This means that everything we do is usually writ large and that means that everyone that does the writing is beholden to everyone else to be upfront and explicit about what they are aiming for. Easier said than done. Somehow we’ve managed to pull it off so far, but at what cost? It takes a toll and over the years a multitude of writers have come and gone through the system. We lose folks to stress, disinterest, overworking, and just plain time to move on. I’ll say this though: we’ve gotten to the point where some solid new writers have moved into the system and finally I’m excited to see where Shadowrun is going to take me next.

The calendar tells me there are two weeks left to the semester. I’m ready for the end, but not because I’ve had just about enough of this semester. No, I am ready to get down to some serious sci-fi and fantasy writing and I am ready to step back and overhaul my classes. The real problem of the semester was how it started. I went into it not as far ahead of the planning as I’d like and as a result the papers caught up with me and things slowed to a crawl. My mind is absolutely bursting with ideas right now and I’m starting to see the time to get them done. If only I can manage to squeeze all the sleep I need into a few less hours each night, I’d be producing a lot more.

Some Thoughts:

1. 23.7 points away from a third and completely avoidable fantasy football loss I’m starting to think that I’m not real great at this fake sport. It requires you to be part coach and part Kreskin. My mental powers will not land me on a late night talk show, nor have the Trojans picked up the phone to interview me for an O.C. position. In truth, compared to folks who’ve spent much more time watching film, reading blogs, and checking the magazines, I’m not that good at this. On the other hand, for the time I put into it, 9-2 aint bad.

I think I’ve been going about this Zombie thing all wrong. The first sign of trouble was when a trusted colleague revealed a dislike of Zombies. He didn’t get the relevance. After all, they are not ‘the other’ so much as they are dead things without the good manners to lie down. There are far better metaphors for ‘the other’–Aliens, mutants, sociopathic gang bangers, werewolves,  etc. So, why use an essentially hollow metaphorical shell?

Because it is the hollowness that defines the argument.

I’ve come to see zombies as a metaphor for the craving we all, at one time, feel for something that is missing in our lives. We can become consumed by that craving and forget ourselves entirely until that craving is satisfied. However, as zombies tell us, that craving has no end. They want brains, but we may want fame, or wealth, or love, or passion, or belonging. Most of us can control the urges for what we crave, but what if we couldn’t? What if all of us thought about nothing but the craving? We’d be zombies soullessly searching for the thing that satisfies us but realizing that there is never enough of what we want to satisfy us.

Its a nascent theory, but I believe it has legs.

I think there comes a point where most of us realize that our lives don’t belong to us anymore. They did for a while, and then one day we wake up with a job and bills and kids. Family becomes priority one and the fantasyland of youth slips away like Peter Pan through  Wendy’s window. This is supposed to be a good thing. I learned that having responsibility meant growing up and growing up meant being mature and a healthy and productive member of society.

Somehow being a writer got lost in that conversation. Writers, i’m told, aren’t really healthy and productive members of society. Instead we’re trained to be pattern people; nine to five ants shuffling a bread crumbs and leaf bits back to the hill. Every once in a while I get nostalgic for my life before I became an ant. It is no knock on my family. You can love one thing yet still appreciate the memory of something else. I remember possibility; and when I didn’t know what I wanted to do or be. I remember a time when choice was only limited by my wallet and my imagination. These days choice is measured in a slice of afternoon instead of a month, a year, or even a lifetime of possibilities.

Somehow being a writer got lost in those possibilities too. My mother wanted me to be anything else. She wanted a concrete job with insurance and long term pension and commitment from an entity that wouldn’t collapse. She suggested a great many things, but I only ever remember Garbage Man and Fireman. Once I tested to be the latter. I scored well enough, but it wasn’t something I ever wanted to do. I’d rather write the sequel to Backdraft than be the sequel itself.  Somehow I found a way to get those things she desired, easing the strain of daily complaints and worry. I did it without having to be a garbage collector or dash into burning buildings.

I found a way to write, and maybe even live a life that allows for writing. Still I cherish the memory of times where writing was all there was.

Some Thoughts:

1. It is entirely possible that rain depresses me. See above post for evidence.

Watching ‘This is 40’ while making football picks is more depressing than I thought possible. The film is grossly accurate with a sense of humor that I find compelling… and terribly familiar. I’m not even 40. Days like this I feel like I’m living in a sitcom—The League maybe. I’m going to plow right through that and make some picks.

I went with a general theme here: For half these games the more talented team isn’t going to win. That strategy is the result of specific game situations. Minnesota will beat Green Bay based on the D-line. The same can be said of the Jets. San Diego is a sleeper team and so on.

1. NO over ATL
2. NYJ over BAL
3. PIT over CLE
4. DET over TB
5. MIN over GB
6. HOU over JAC
7. SD over KC
8. CAR over MIA
9. CHI over STL
10. IND over AZ
11. OAK over TEN
12. NYG over DAL
13. DEN over NE
14. SF over WAS

A convenient way to get at the heart of a character’s inner being is to look in their closet. The things we keep in our closet (real closet or the headspace) are indicative of how we see ourselves and what we want to project or sometimes even want to hide from and avoid projecting. The actual closet is where we store the things that we want to wear and where we prepare ourselves to share ourselves with the world. The fictive closet–the head space–is where we hide out and keep the parts of oursleves we don’t  want people to see until they earn our absolute trust.