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Wednesday, 30 July 2008

Entertainment Weekly

Stephen King writes a column in Entertainment Weekly, which might be the only reason why I still subscribe. There are two other columnists, Diablo Cody, and Owen Lieberman. Diablo Cody writes her own brand of snarky, self obsessed banter, and Owen Lieberman is clever and opinionated in the way of all very good columnists. But Stephen King harks of an old uncle, sensible, level headed, and good old fashioned fun, his columns warm the soul.

In the most recent EW he talked about movie snack food. It was a delicious little piece, and even though I no longer do the popcorn and candy, I smiled at King's wonderful descriptions of fake butter and mint kabobs. Yes, I can do without the snacks, but I don't know if I could do without King's descriptions of them.

Okay, health time! Buy the damage control master formula. It has tons of orac value!

Monday, 23 June 2008

King Makes the List

Entertainment Weekly occasionally goes list obsessive, and their most recent issue is a splurge of pop culture cataloguing. "The New Classics" they call it, and they sum up the best of Movies, TV, Music, Fashion, Books, and Video Games of the last 25 years. The issue has the missive stench of sophistry, and the quagmire of blurbs doesn't really guide the reader to any sort of agreement as to why certain films, shows, or novels were picked over others.

Stephen King is an occasional columnist for EW, so admittedly it wasn't surprising to see him on the list of best books. But oddly enough, they put "On Writing" on the list, rather than one of his actual classic horror novels like "The Stand," "It," or his magnum opus, "The Dark Tower." I'll admit, on writing is one of his best, it just doesn't seem like a CLASSIC.

Then again, not much on the rest of the lists really fit classics. It's just a pop culture melting pot, akin to one of those VH1 80's flashback shows. Nevertheless, here are the highlights.

The Simpsons beat The Sopranos for best TV show, closely followed by Seinfeld. Tetris won best video game, though the list was obviously made by someone who didn't play video games.

The book list was ripe with releases from the last 4 years, which is just plain wrong. Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" took the big prize, and it honestly may become a true classic, but it's just too god damned early to tell.

Angels in America took best play. At least they got that right.

I honestly don't remember their movie list, other than it seemed like a jumble of teen/fashion setting movies rather than time tested classics.

They didn't make a best health blog list. If they had, I bet they'd put the paleo diet blog near the top.

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Stephen King Inspired?

I've been reading screenplays, and I just finished one that feels like a combination of Stand By Me and Goonies. Though King didn't write Goonies, I can't help but feel that much of modern cinema was inspired by the Stephen King 'team of boys' stories he's so good at (read Tommyknockers, Stand By Me, It, and on and on...). So, here's the synopsis. You tell me if it feels at all inspired by Stephen King...

SAM is a 13-year old skate boarder living in Carson Valley, Nevada. He hangs out with a lanky mo-hawk wearing Asian skater, MO, and a tubby, flatulent skater, FOOF. The three pre-teens frequent the local Mojo Sk8 & Snow Shop, which is run by nature-hip FRANKIE and his alternative-skate-punk-hottie daughter BELLA.

The aptly named PRICKMAN is the local business tycoon, and he’s hell bent on taking over Frankie’s Sk8 Shop. Frankie owes Prickman half a million dollars in gambling debt, and if he doesn’t pay by the end of the week, the Sk8 Shop is forfeit. Sam overhears the news and decides to rally his friends to gather money to win back the shop and hopefully the heart of Bella as well.

Sam, Mo, and Foof put up flyers around town, but they only manage to scrape up $30. Just when Sam is about to admit defeat, his grandfather, GRAMPS, mentions a secret family buried treasure from the gold mining days hidden somewhere in the Sierra Mountains. Sam goes through his gold-mining ancestor’s old gear and finds the treasure map. Sam, Mo, Foof, and Sam’s candy-chewing little brother, NIC, decide to hunt for the treasure. Sam tells Bella, who decides to come along as well, and she brings one of her friends, the gum smacking HANNAH. These six treasure hunting pre-teens are “Mojo 6.”

But Sam isn’t the only skater in town. Prickman’s son and town bully, RIP, hears of Mojo 6’s plan. Rip gathers a couple goons together and they take off after Sam and his gang.

Mojo 6 start their journey buy sneaking a ride to California in the back of a big rig, but Foof’s outrageous flatulence clues the truck driver in to the stowaways, and they have to pick up another ride with a SHAGGY hippy guy who loves nutter butters. Shaggy can only take the kids so far, so they must hike the final stretch of their journey across a mountain to reach their destination of Butte City.

While hiking, they come across an old mountain man, GATES, who takes kindly to the kids and warns them of two gold hunting buffoons, LUCKY and BUCKY. Sure enough, as soon as Mojo 6 arrives in Butte City, Lucky and Bucky show up on their tail.

After a day of searching, the kids find a secret mine shaft in the desert. Lucky and Bucky follow them in, and Rip and his goons have caught up as well. The mine shaft is full of booby traps and creepy critters, but Sam and his gang finally make it to the end and find a huge pile of gold. Lucky, Bucky, Rip, and his goons all catch up, intent on stealing the gold, but old man Gates shows arrives just in time to save Mojo 6. He drives Lucky and Bucky away with his shotgun he calls Goldie.

The day is won, and Mojo 6 returns home in a Hummer limousine, gold treasure in tow. They save the Sk8 Shop and reunite with their parents, and Danny finally gets that long awaited kiss from Bella.
Finally, my list of washboard abs websites and other health links is as follows:

Omega 3 benefits tells you everything you need to know about healthy, fatty fish oils.

Damage Control, it's a place for meat heads and gym rats or just regular guys.

Wednesday, 30 April 2008

Readability 'On Writing'

Stephen King will admit he's not even in the same league as authors like James Joyce, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Jane Austen. In fact, he diagrams it out quite plainly in his book 'On Writing'. He creates a sort of pyramid. At the bottom is people who don't write, or write just to get the words out. The next level are the writers who want to write, who enjoy writing, but don't necessarily apply themselves enough to make a living at it. Then there are the good writers, the winners of poetry and short story contests in college, the trained bloggers, and people who do ad copy for a living. Next are the great writers, and above them, the legends.

The thing about this pyramid, is a person can not work to become a legend. Stephen King admits he isn't a legend, nor will he ever be, you're either born with the magic, or you're not. But you can work to become a great writer. This is the level King places himself in, and I agree with him.

And now on readability. It's a common mistake among novice writers. The amatuer (or the grad student) fills a story with style, vocabulary, and clever phrase turning, and suddenly reading his story is akin to walking through a bog in flip flops.

King is an expert at "readibility," he follows the path of Hemingway in shaping stories aimed at characters, emotions, and plot rather than style, form, or cleverness. Another great author I've picked up with the same readibility factor is George R.R. Martin, I've munched through two of his thousand page fantasy novels in under a month, and those things are readable!

You know what else is readable? This orthorexia post from Mark's Daily Apple. This private eye website is pretty readable too.

Wednesday, 02 April 2008

The First Time I saw...

The first time I saw Stephen King, I was in graduate school.My creative writing classes had reached a new kind of "blow" and I was desperate for something revivifying just to keep me in school. We were supposed to have a guest speaker come to teach our class for a week. Originally it was some guy that had written some stories for the New Yorker that nobody had ever heard of. I'd decided to stick around the program to see the guy, then low and behold he cancels, and we have no class for a week (mind you, the University still decided to charge us for the class, they just didn't want to give it to us).

My only good writing professor pitied the six of us MFA writers, so he pulled some strings and in a few days Stephen King had flown all the way from Maine to Florida just to give my class a few pointers and read us some of his unpublished work.

The first day he was there, I was too awestruck to say anything. I just held my copy of The Green Mile out for him to sign and that was that.

The second day he read us one of his stories. He proceeded to tear apart his story, pointing out all the holes and flaws and things to be fixed, which was why he hadn't published it yet. I still remember his lesson not only as a simple event of magnitude, but also as some of the best advice I ever received on revisions.

Years later I finished the Dark Tower series. My mind was flooded with questions for King, but I had missed my opportunity. Hopefully some day I'll get another chance to finally pick the brain of the man who taught me to tell stories.

And for all the vitamin kiddies out there, here's some primal nutrition and vitamin information to live by.