10 Minute Rule

The best stuff I read is the stuff that comes out of left field–be it from perspective, relationships, context, or what have you. Looper, for example, caught me unawares because of the concept of having to murder your future self as the final act of your employment. I liked that in the way I like the guessing game that is Gone Girl, where you see two sides of a relationship gone horribly wrong or Room, which introduced me to a perspective I found unique and inviting. What all of these stories have in common is that they made the familiar unfamiliar in a way that made it interesting to engage with the story.

Lets be honest, every story has already been told. Your job as a writer is to find the human interest story within that an tell it from a different angle. Create a scenario–any scenario–and use that scenario to look at character interaction from an angle you haven’t seen before. That is how you stay creative.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Shout out to Kevin Hearne for agreeing to sit with my creative writing students for a period. The voice of experience and success is often heard more clearly.

I’m a bit rusty at this, so be gentle. Well, the truth is the Wednesday posts are the least read posts of the week/year/ever, so the only critic I need to worry about when it comes to football pics is myself. It is a shame nobody listens, though. See, I’m pretty damn good at this. Once I recognized that my athletic days were long behind me (though I still feel the need to make excuses for not showing up to the Sunday morning pickup game), I made an effort to learn all I could about the game and be good in terms of analysis. Last year that meant I beat all but 3 of the ESPN pros. This year I actually know what I’m doing.

So, its on. Here it goes:

Denver over Baltimore
Ray Rice is going to run wild and give me a heap of fantasy points. Unfortunately, the lack of a serious Raven secondary and presence of a hungry team of wideouts means Manning will be able to bounce back quick. Look for the second half to turn ugly.

New England over Buffalo
There is a lot of talk about the changes on the Baltimore defense. Remember, the guy they went with has a history of doing good things against Patriots offenses. Unfortunately, the Patriots have more talent and have a scheme they know better than the scheme Buffalo does not know. It will be closer than we could imagine on the surface, but Brady is still going to be Brady.

Seattle over Carolina
Upset alert! I want to believe that Carolina can show the fans something at home in this nascent 2013-14 season. I just don’t believe they have accumulated enough talent to do so against a defense that could very well be a top 5 this year. Get your Skittles ready.

Cincinnati over Chicago
Call this one the HBO bump. I wasn’t terribly interested in the Hard Knocks show this season, but I am aware of how much better the Bengals play when under the spotlight. Oh, and James Harrison is over there now. There’s that.

Miami over Cleveland
2013’s answer to the Sacko Bowl comes early this year. CLE was excellent in the preseason, and Miami was not. Still, the preseason is about developing a depth chart and where depth matters (at the top of the chart) CLE is still rather thin. Their running game should keep it close, but not close enough.

Oakland over Indy
Spoiler alert: Pryor is legit as a scrambling QB. He won’t shock the world this year or even perform at a Vick level, but he will do enough in the early going to give Raider fans hope. Hope that will be snatched away in week 2.

KC over JAC

NO over ATL

TB over NYJ
All three of those games aren’t even in contention. People will readily assume ATL is a good matchup, but it is week 1 and they are not 100%. KC is still healthy (wait for it), and my beloved Jets stink worse than a skunk in decomp.

Pit over TEN

SF over GB
Nnamdi has a lot to prove here, and he will get his chance against this 3 wide set where he will likely draw the job of covering Nelson or Cobb in the slot. As he goes so does the game, because CK isn’t turning into Superman in week 1.

Arizona over St Louis
Toughest pick of the night. STL did very well against division rivals last season–at least in comparison to the rest of their record. I believe in AZ early. I have no reason to believe in AZ past week 5.

NYG over DAL
No-brainer. Eli signed his name on the wall in the guest locker room on opening night. Giants have owned the stadium ever since.

PHI over WAS
Incredibly interesting battle of old philosophy vs. new and the eventual passing of the torch from dad the coach to son the coach. There is going to be a ton of offense here.

Hou over SD
Who Cares? Bowl 2013. Seriously. Does anyone believe either of these teams are contenders past the 1st round of the playoffs? HOU has the best defensive player in the sport, but their offense sputters and coughs like a 89 yr old smoker on a ventilator. Their #1 receiver is roughly that old in football years. Their #1 RB will dress, might play, might not. Ben Tate is more than a serviceable backup, and if I were coaching I would play Tate and rest Foster for a few more weeks. I would also have found a legit #2 wideout through trades or maybe the draft, but that is just me.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Finally started Gone Girl. I’m impressed with the female reader as much as I am with the flow of the writing for that character. It is the creepy male protag that has me unsure. The casting of Affleck as the lead in the movie version only confirms the creep factor.

I haven’t written a story in over two months and that troubles me. I knew–I know–August-September represents the nexus of all things extremely demanding and difficult in my life, so I half-believe I deserve a pass, but the non-believing half says a real writer fights through all life has to throw at him and still finds the time to take that fight and turn it into fiction.

I am not without ideas or motivation, but during this yearly downturn the needs of the world outweigh the means of the writer, and I find myself slipping into the fantasy reality of video game football, fantasy football, and quite a bit of youth futbol (which starts this saturday). Writing? I can make at least 10 minutes for that. Any more is way more difficult.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Erin Burnett has a glow. I remember that glow from my wife’s 3 pregnancies. Happy times there. I wonder how she is going to balance those first six months and the job? I hope she allows herself some time off to do what needs be done and then comes back super-charged. After all, she is one of the few newscasters who I feel is a straight shooter.
2. First day in a while I haven’t played the new Madden. I would play if I wasn’t so certain my wife would wake up.

Following Nolan’s completion of the Dark Knight trilogy and Derf Beckderf’s release of his Graphic Novel, My Friend Dahmer, I began nursing a theory about the relationship between these two dark forces. Dahmer, a real-life monster and Batman, a fictional vigilante, are more closely linked than one might imagine. Both are products of their environment and social traumas. I would argue that Batman’s evolving unwillingness to take life is the only thing that separates the two men.

Jeff Dahmer was raised in troubled household. His mother and father separated after which his mother spiraled into bouts of depression and other maladies. Her troubles contributed to her unawareness of his own troubles, which included closeted homosexuality and a proclivity for dead things. This, on the surface, seems to differ dramatically from the image of the Batman, but when you look closer things click into place.

After his arrest Dahmer was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), an affliction he shares with the caped crusader. Dahmer pointed to his traumatic upbringing and lack of supervision as a key enabling factor for his crimes. The same can be said of Bruce Wayne who–for reasons that seem to have never been explained–was left to the care of his butler. While in the care of his butler (who held the precarious role of raising the person who had the power to fire him. Explain what sort of discipline could happen there) Wayne developed a curiosity about crime that was only sated by donning a cape and cowl and stamping out crime all together.

The early Batman was a murderer. He carried a gun and killed bad guys at will. He was Dexter Morgan, living comfortably behind the white sheet of his code and believing that he was doing right because the people that fell to him were doing wrong. As the makers of Batman evolved so did the character. He moved away from killing and developed into the nuanced character that we know and love today. He, unlike Dahmer, became a person who recognized a limitation. Dahmer wanted to posses people. He wanted to be linked to them in such a deep and permanent way that he truly believed that ingesting their flesh made them one with him and, perhaps, honored them in a way. Batman wanted nothing of the flesh but everything of the mind. He wanted people to fear him as they would darkness itself. He beat and abused those he encountered so savagely that his work left an impression on all that witnessed it. He didn’t eat their flesh, he ate their souls.

It sounds thin here, but what doesn’t in 10 minutes of unscripted blathering. Maybe I’ll pen a real essay on this down the road.

This American life can be summed up in a series of montages that mostly involve shopping and watching TV. There is other stuff that happens in between–writing, teaching, conversations with the people I love–but if you added up the time of everything I do it would be bookended by large swaths of my life spent doing those two things. If there is one thing in my life that makes me unhappy, it is that. Yet I somehow feel powerless against those dual forces.

TV in particular is one that vexes me. I include video games with the TV time. Games are an interactive form of television watching. Instead of merely observing the action unfold, you are participating and even directing the action as it unfolds. Now I’ve been gaming for near on 33 years, and it is only recently that I’ve felt the time spent gaming actually eroded my ability to be productive. The TV has always nipped and my productivity, yet as if it were a drug, I cannot see myself giving up these shows I watch.

I suppose what I’m getting at here is the lifestyle I live. It needs to get better in some sense. I’m a writer first, but I spend so much time doing the other things that the productivity I have is but a shade of the productivity I could and probably should have. Of course, recognizing problems is somewhat easy. Fixing them is the hard part.

This is going to be a short post, because there isn’t a whole hunk of energy left in the tank.

Half-exhausted, I sat down to write this post and my eyes closed. Look: there they go again. 10 minutes is a lot harder to concentrate for when your body wants to shut down. Before I nod off for good I want to write about the Wire. I decided to incorporate episodes from the series into my SOC curriculum. I’d never studied the film through the social structures and implications. I walked my students through episode one and afterwards reminded them that everything, even street drug sales, has a structure. We’ll be talking about that structure next week. Maybe I am more awake then.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I can’t say that I am surprised that a QB other than the two presumed Jet starters put up good numbers tonight. The battle between Sanchez and Smith overshadows the quality backups this team.

I am half hoping to get to bed before midnight and half hoping I stay up a little bit longer to advance a week in Madden. Every year about this time I go into full Madden mode. I plunk down $60 to buy a game I bought so readily a year ago. There are upgrades here and there, but the experience rarely changes so dramatically that it alters the game experience. Case and point: I am still playing NBA 2K. Still the hype and allure of a new Madden game is generally too much to fight off. Given that this is the 25th anniversary edition, I had to go buy it.

I’m not disappointed…yet.

Madden is a game that lets you experience football at every level of the game. I can be a player, coach, or owner. I plan to experience all of these levels over the next 12 months, but I started with Player, so this is where I can start my review. I created a player and decided to make him an undrafted free agent. In last year’s experience, this choice would’ve meant nothing. This time around I am fighting for a roster spot and appreciating the little bit of time I get on field in the preseason and through special teams. I want to fight to line up alongside the stars. Getting it handed to me reduces the value I place on the roster spot.

I haven’t had the play experience to deliver a full review, but from what I can see I will have a lot to write about. Not tonight–I still have playing to do.

When it comes to the extremely niche market of the role player, popularity is a moving target. Unlike the wide open fiction market, you don’t become popular by overnight success. This is the turtle vs. turtle, book by book slow saturation of the market that makes you popular. You become known by knowing, by becoming approachable, and by maintaining the appearance of reliability. Instead of being the high flying super author known for creating movie adaptations and wallowing in your own personal version of the Hank Moody life, you are a friend to people who write good stuff. You go out for a beer at the Rula Bula and maybe watch the game at someone’s house.

The fact is I’ve looked at success all wrong for a long time. It isn’t about how many books you sell or how many total strangers know your name. I started writing because I wanted to tell stories that made my friends feel something. Now I feel that is the only sort of popularity worthwhile.

Some Thoughts:

1. Waiver Wednesday is likely to be a Madden edition as I unboxed the 25th anniversary edition of the popular game today. Yeah, it is dope again.
2. Early shout to my buddy and fellow writer Alex A. He’s going to hit 40 two years before I do.
3. My youngest recently asked me if I’d still sit and play games with him when he turns 63. I lied and said yes, but I knew that I would already be dead by then. It is a terrible feeling to know that you won’t always be there for your kids when they need you. At the same time it is somewhat of an inspiration, because it forces me to be healthy for as long as my body is willing to hold out. They deserve at least that from me.