W-Week

I'm hoping my arrival in Korea won't look exactly like this.

It's W-Week, and as we count down to D-Day, H-Hour—the moment I leave for Korea, in other words—I'm beginning to think I tried to pack too much into it.

What day is it today, Tuesday?

Yeah, okay, here goes:

On Monday Miss H and I just sorta hung out. Oh, and we packed my bags. Two of them. Duffel bags crammed with shirts, pants, shorts, belts, socks, underwear, shoes, and coats. Whatever empty space remains shall be filled by decks of cards, harmonicas, shoeshine cans, grooming kits, and whatnot. They weigh 43 and 35 pounds, respectively. Maybe there's something to what Miss H says when she tells me I have more clothes than she does.

Today was jam-packed. Miss H and I went in and hung out with a friend of hers, Steve, at his apartment. (We found all sorts of interesting ways to kill Lara Croft.) Then we grabbed some fast food: Tom's Burgers, which happen to be massive, succulent, and fantastically tasty. [Insert naughty metaphor here.] We drove to Hesperia Lake Park and ate lunch under the skeletonized trees, listening to the babbling brook and the entitled honks of strident geese vying for pieces of bread from the other park-goers. Then we fed the ducks some crusts and read a chapter of our books (I'm reading Skeletons on the Zahara, and Miss H is digesting Don Quixote).

After a quick stop at the post office, we went to a used bookstore in Victorville and turned in some old volumes my parents didn't want anymore. In exchange for these, I nabbed some serious military nonfiction: The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan, Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us by Peter Goldman and Terry Fuller, and Abandon Ship!: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis by Richard F. Newcomb. (Believe or not, these aren't just for fun: they're valuable research material for future novels.)

Then we went to the mall to try to find a bigger duffel bag. No joy.

Tomorrow I'm riding with Miss H's father as he delivers a load of lime to the airport in Camarillo. This'll be my first time riding in a big rig. I've always wanted to. I have a thing for heavy machinery. I occasionally cheat on airplanes with tanks, ships, bulldozers and excavators.

Thursday I'm running around like a madman trying to make all the arrangements for my dad's birthday (February 12), Miss H's birthday (February 13), and Valentine's Day (you-know-when). All of those dates, as you'll notice, fall after my departure on February 6, so I'd better have my act together.

Friday Miss H is coming over and helping me do the final packing, and we'll finish that blasted thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle we've been beating our heads against for ages.

Saturday is a big day: all my friends are coming over for one last cocktail party. Cheers.

On Sunday (assuming I'm not totally useless) Miss H, the folks and I will be driving down to Medieval Times for dinner (another thing I've never done), and staying in a hotel in Los Angeles (ditto, actually). This way we won't have to leave my house at the crack of dawn and drive two hours to get to the airport on Monday morning.

And on Monday morning, I leave.

I'll try to blog at least once more before I do.

Wish me luck.

let the countdown begin!

Technically it's already begun—you've probably noticed that cute little widget over on the right. However, the gears have finally meshed. Two days ago I received my passport back from the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, stamped with a shiny new E-2 work visa classifying me as a "foreign instructor," and guaranteeing me a one-year sojourn. This was the last piece of paperwork that I needed. I can flash this little honey in the faces of the Korean immigration officials, waltz through customs, and enter South Korea as a legal immigrant. All of my ducks are in a row. I could leave tomorrow if they wanted me.

But they want me on February 7. After a little jockeying, some back-and-forth nonsense, a glut of vacillation and a smidgen of misinformation, the date of my departure was finalized. I am, needless to say, tremendously excited. The contents of my room (stuffed into way too many heavy cardboard boxes) are safely tucked away in a storage unit in town. My suitcases are half-packed, and all the equipment I'm bringing with me has been inventoried and set aside. Decks of cards (three normal decks and a pinochle set); my grooming kit; shoeshine supplies; hat brushes; journals and notebooks; battery chargers; plug adapters; packs of gum; medicines and taco seasoning; and, perhaps most important of all, books. I've got all my cocktail recipe books with me, and some stuff about card games, and my Worst Case Scenario: Travel guide.

And then are the works of fiction I've selected. Sapsucker that I am, I neglected to choose these volumes before packing up my personal library, so I had to go back through the boxes and mine these buggers out of the tenebrous depths.

They are:

• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, which I'm reading now.

I've read Heart of Darkness before, but that was years ago, in school, and I didn't pay it much attention because I was too busy trying to avoid having my upper body dunked into a trash can. Like Moby-Dick, I have attempted to read Frankenstein repeatedly, but always petered out near the end of the first chapter. The Great Shark Hunt (also known as The Gonzo Papers, Volume One) is Thompson's true account of his adventures as a drug-addled gonzo journalist in a country turned upside-down by chemicals, counterculture, rock 'n' roll, political corruption, and war. (The Sixties, in other words.) Skeletons on the Zahara is likewise nonfiction: a tale of woe, desperation, suffering and privation regarding the crew of the American brig Commerce, shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in 1814 and sold into slavery by Saharan nomads.  It's pretty good so far. Should be a good read on the plane, if I don't finish it before that.

Speaking of books, I am so far behind on my book reviews that it ain't even funny. Okay, maybe it is a bit funny. But that's beside the point. I'll spare you a long, dull, wordy series of reviews that you undoubtedly wouldn't have the patience to read. Instead, I'll review each book in one sentence:

• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: A breathlessly suspenseful epic and yet also a sinewy and hard-lined analysis of patriotism, military service, war, and human conflict, in the guise of a rollicking good science fiction tale about well-trained space soldiers in powered armor battling hideous alien bugs. 9/10
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Journalist and inveterate traveler Krakauer details and examines the life, motivations, adventures and ultimate downfall of the ill-fated super-tramp Christopher McCandless. 9/10
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson: An excoriating satire of drug culture, chemically-enhanced ramblings, and late 20th-century vice in the world's most sinful city—sportswriter Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, speed off to Las Vegas in a giant red convertible and a trunk full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. 8/10
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: A powerful, gut-wrenching, no-holds-barred peek into the lives of black folks in the American South in 1959...seen through the eyes of white novelist Griffin himself, who darkened his skin artificially and set off to the South to find out the truth about the "Negro Problem." The truth is viscerally shocking. 7/10

There. Now you know what I've been reading. Incidentally, I've never read any of these books before. I don't know what took me so long to get around to Starship Troopers. Perhaps it was the awful movie adaptation. Thankfully I set my prejudice aside and read the book, which, as I understand, is required reading at West Point, and a great favorite among the 75th Ranger Battalion (the guys who fought through hell in Mogadishu in 1993). Now if only Barack Obama and the Democratic Party would read it...[sigh]...

And finally, since I will become an immigrant (emigrant?) in ten days, I'll leave you with a little song. Yes, yes, I know. I should be using "The Final Countdown" or something, but I hate that song. So take it away, Zep.

if I had $300,000,000

I don't like television. As a general rule, I find it flabby, unwholesome, dissatisfying, crude, and pointless.

So when I tell you that my favorite television show is Firefly, you should understand that the show itself is none of those things. It is, in fact, pure awesomeness incarnate.

Tragically, it was canceled after a measly 14 episodes had been filmed, due to Executive Meddling. More's the pity.

In an interview, Firefly's male lead Nathan Fillion stated that, if he had $300 million on hand, he would buy the rights to the show, and probably continue it, free of interference from the powers-that-be.

That got me thinking. What would I do if I had $300 million?

I'll tell you what I'd do. I'd start up my own movie studio.

On-Target Productions, I'd call it. Or maybe Faithful Studios. Something to convey my sententious but entirely truthful belief that Hollywood is incapable of producing a piece of cinema which is in any way faithful to the source material, and that my studio, by virtue of its firm grounding in literary value (and complete disregard for monetary gain), is.

Anyway, the name isn't important. What's important is that I'd outfit this studio with the best equipment my limited budget could buy, hire the most hardworking personnel I could find, write a bunch of screenplays (the way I like 'em), and make some movies that are entirely accurate and complete interpretations of the media upon which they're based.

I mean that quite literally. Entirely accurate and complete. No chopping or dissecting or mulching being done here; if I mean to make a movie out of a book, I'm using the whole goddamn book: every scene, every line of dialogue, every sentence if needs be. There'll be no "lost characters" like Tom Bombadil from The Lord of the Rings or Peeves the Poltergeist from Harry Potter. And there'll be none of this cutting-out-minor-scenes-because-they-don't-advance-the-action-fast-enough-and-we-can-totally-skip-those-scenes-anyway-because-all-they-do-is-reveal-minor-nuances-of-character-that-we-can-gloss-over-in-the-third-act malarkey. These are going to be faithful interpretations, like I said. That means every little scene, no matter how insignificant a two-bit brain-dead Hollywood screenwriter might consider it, will be reproduced in exact facsimile. No exceptions.

Having my own studio (and not giving a fig whether my productions are marketable, or even if they will be marketed) will give me room to breathe. I don't have to worry about length, or mass appeal, or tone, or censorship, or any of that other crap that the Gilded Mulcher has to worry about in order to sell movie tickets. I can reproduce these great source works as I see fit, with complete creative control, and revel in the realness and truthfulness of the results. I can bring my imagination to life for myself and a few other acolytes to enjoy. Everyone else can go spit.

I'm not saying these films will be unwatchably violent, sexy, or disgusting. There's practically no sex in any of the works I have in mind to adapt. And the violence won't be worse than anything you'd see in a typical action flick. As for the darker, scarier stories...well, it all depends on what you think might blast your soul from your body with cosmic horror.

                                                                                         by Pete Amachree

And mind you, I won't object if a few independent-minded cinemas agree to pick up my works and release them at a few small drive-ins and dollar theaters. Those are the kind of folks I'd want watching my films anyway, not the bigwigs from Hollywood and Cannes.

But that's beside the point! Aren't you curious to know which books and stories I will be adapting for the screen? 

I thought you'd be. I have some very specific ideas on that score. They include, but are not limited to...

• Several tales from Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian mythos. If you haven't read any of Howard's original Conan tales, it's time you started. Howard's barbarian makes Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a pantywaist choirboy. The stories are gritty, bloody, sweaty, and hard-boiled, bursting with darkness, danger, hideous evil, swashbuckling adventure and testosterone. Some of the stories I have in mind are Beyond the Black River, The Tower of the Elephant, Iron Shadows on the Moon, and Red Nails...as well as a weird Western tale, unrelated to Conan, The Horror from the Mound.
• Selected works of H.P. Lovecraft, including At the Mountains of Madness, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Shunned House, The Haunter of the Dark, The Shadow Out of Time, The Whisperer in Darkness, The Shadow Over Innsmouth, and The Dunwich Horror. It'll be interesting to see if Lovecraft's works translate well onto the screen. A lot of the horror and suspense in his stories is conveyed through description and inarticulate mentality, not through dialogue or action. Many of the horrific implications and disgusting monsters are best left to the realms of the imagination, too, rather than put up on a screen in CG and pixels. Still, I'd be willing to give it a shot.
• Most of H.G. Wells's full-length works, including The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and The Island of Dr. Moreau. Most have been made into films already, but none of them have been done correctly. That's not my opinion, that's fact. I'll treat 'em right if no one else will.
• Many of Jules Verne's classic tales, like Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. Can you imagine what giant squids, raft-rides through lava tubes, and thrilling heroics on speeding steam trains would look like on a humongous theater screen? It gives me the chills!
• Dozens of science fiction novels and short stories by writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, C.M. Kornbluth, L. Sprague de Camp, Lester del Rey, and Fritz Leiber. Here are a few I've got in mind.
• The Wendigo by Algernon Blackwood
• The Novel of the Black Seal by Arthur Machen
• The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein (a respectful interpretation); also The Roads Must Roll and Universe
• The Empire of the Atom, The Wizard of Linn, The Weapon Shops of Isher, and Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt
• The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Big Front Yard by Clifford D. Simak
• Baby Is Three by Theodore Sturgeon

• A live-action film adaptation of the superb and underrated Hanna-Barbera cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian. A fur-clad warrior with a magic sword wanders the post-apocalyptic Earth in the year 3999, after a rogue planet cast human civilization in ruin. In his ongoing quest to save the scrawny, ragged survivors from evil wizards, mutants and strange monsters (many of which are holdovers from the 20th century), Thundarr is aided by the beautiful Princess Ariel, a sorceress, and a huge, furry Mok named Ookla. I'm thinking some big-budget disaster scenes and a lot of Scenery Gorn. 
• Some of the video and computer games I've played have definite potential, such as Crimson Skies. Maybe if I'm in a really fun-loving and goofy mood I'll do Serious Sam.
• Yes, I know I've railed against remakes on this here blog. But I can't help it. I'd redo a few of the old stop-motion monster flicks, not because I think CG would make them better (certainly not; Ray Harryhausen has no equal and never will), but simply because I'm curious to see what they'd look like with a technological makeover. Just curious, is all. I can't help but wonder what a reboot of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, The Valley of Gwangi, Them!, Jason and the Argonauts, and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad would be like. Specifically, the monsters. You know how much I like monsters.  

And that's it. I think it'd be a lot of fun. I've always wanted to try my hand at screenwriting. And I'll bet I could hire an assistant until I got good at it. Then I'd just go to town. My studio would crank out these films, and they'd go for limited theatrical release or direct-to-DVD, and whoever was interested in real, faithful, true adaptations of good books and cartoons and movies could buy 'em and watch 'em. That's all I want. That's what I'd do with $300,000,000. Maybe a few bucks to charity here and there, but for the most part I'd launch my vendetta against  Hollywood and revel in unmitigated artistic license.

What would you do with $300,000,000? Buy a monkey?

 

the best sci-fi stories you've (n)ever read

Science fiction is arcane stuff. I get that. Not too many people are into it, except the science professor with the corduroy trousers and the geek down the block with the inch-thick glasses. More people are into fantasy (you know, that weird crap with unicorns and leprechauns and sparkly vampires and swords and magic and sexy witches) than sci-fi.

But I didn't come here to pontificate.

The odds are you're not a sci-fi fan. Two-thirds of you reading this probably aren't. Either that or you're a mere dilettante, someone who claims to love science fiction when the most you've ever done is go see Thor and Spider-man in the theaters, or glanced at Fahrenheit 451 in high school, or taken a shortcut through the sci-fi/fantasy section in Barnes & Noble because it was the quickest way to get to Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama at the mall entrance.

Oh, right. I'm not supposed to pontificate. [ahem]

So I'll help you out a little, because I happen to be a real sci-fi fan.

My collection includes everybody from James Blish to Poul Anderson, C.M. Kornbluth to John W. Campbell, Jr., Fritz Leiber to Gordon R. Dickson, Robert E. Gilbert to Edgar Rice Burroughs, A.E. van Vogt to L. Sprague de Camp...and it may soon extend to Piers Anthony, Robert Heinlein, Jack L. Chalker, and Orson Scott Card.

I know my stuff.

I know who Isaac Asimov is (and therefore I know just how much the Will Smith version of I, Robot sucked).

I have read pretty much every story that H.G. Wells or Jules Verne ever wrote.

I know what happened in the year 802,701 A.D. I can carry a gun for dinosaur. I know why sea monsters love lighthouses. I can (probably) flush out a shape-shifting alien. I've learned what a "gestalt organism" is. I know what lies at the earth's core. I can recite the Three Laws of Robotics. I remember what happened to Thor V. I discovered where Captain Nemo lives.

I think I'm pretty qualified to judge what constitutes "good" sci-fi and "bad" sci-fi.

If you're not a science fiction fan, but have been curious about the genre, the following would be my pick. I have here, for your consideration, a list of what I believe represents the best science fiction written in the last hundred years. Some authors' names you may recognize, some you may not. The stories themselves are, to you, probably unfamiliar. Even if you haven't read them, though, you've probably seen them on the silver screen. A lot of these were made into classic, memorable, or semi-memorable films.

More importantly, though, these works have influenced me on a profound level. Someday I hope to be half as good as the people who wrote them. If you, dear reader, should choose to peruse them, you'll receive a crash-course in the mind-blowing storytelling and incredible writing the world of science fiction has to offer.

And as an added bonus, you just might mutate into a full-blown sci-fi nut. Here's hoping.

I was originally going to make this a ten-item list, but you can't read three science fiction anthologies (and have a used book store in your town bursting with dog-eared arcana) without, you know, winding up with a few more favorites than you'd like to admit. More to the point, however, there is absolutely no way to distill an entire genre down to ten items. I needed enough leeway to clue you in on both the genre's classics and its lesser-known short works in order to give you the full picture of the organ's merit and the writers' genius. Then again, you lot are uninitiated, uncultured swine, and I can't overload your gnat-like attention spans with as much material as I'd prefer.

So here you go, twenty items. I slaved over the list for months. I picked these works because (a) I liked 'em and (b) they will literally blow your mind. I dare you to read even three of them and see if your universe hasn't widened a smidgen.

1. The Fog Horn . . . . Ray Bradbury (short story, 1951; inspired the 1953 film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms)
2. Who Goes There? . . . . John W. Campbell, Jr. (novella, 1938; adapted into 1951's The Thing from Another World and 1982's much more faithful The Thing by John Carpenter)**
3. Black Destroyer . . . . A.E. van Vogt (short story, 1939)*****
4. Nerves . . . . Lester del Rey (novella, 1956)**
5. Code Three . . . . Rick Raphael (novella, 1963)*****
6. The Spectre General . . . . Theodore Cogswell (novella, 1952)***
7. Thy Rocks and Rills . . . . Robert Ernest Gilbert (short story, 1953)*****
8. A Pail of Air . . . . Fritz Leiber (short story, 1951)*****
9. The Time Machine . . . . H.G. Wells (novella, 1895; so much better than the two movie adaptations)**
10. E for Effort . . . . T.L. Sherred (novella, 1947)***
11. The Last Question . . . . Isaac Asimov (short story, 1959)*****
12. A Gun for Dinosaur . . . . L. Sprague de Camp (short story, 1956)*****
13. Heavy Planet . . . . Lee Gregor (short story, 1939)***** 
14. Scanners Live in Vain . . . . Cordwainer Smith (short story, 1948)*
15. Arena . . . . Fredric Brown (short story, 1944; provided the basis for a Star Trek episode of the same name)* 
16. The Machine Stops . . . . E.M. Forster (short story, 1909; adapted for TV in 1966 as part of the U.K. sci-fi series Out of the Unknown)***
17. A Rose for Ecclesiastes . . . . Roger Zelazny (short story, 1963)* 
18. The Big Front Yard . . . . Clifford D. Simak (novelette, 1959)***
19. Microcosmic God . . . . Theodore Sturgeon (novella, 1952)*
20. Call Me Joe . . . . Poul Anderson (novella, 1957)**

A in case that wasn't enough, here a few stories I thought deserved a nod. They may not be as "good" as the ones I've listed above ("good" here having the meaning of deep, profound, insightful, provocative, didactic, romantic, or mind-blowingly awesome)...but they're fun. So there.

• The Escape Orbit . . . . James White (novel, 1983)
• The Island of Doctor Moreau . . . . H.G. Wells (novel, 1896)
• Harrison Bergeron . . . . Kurt Vonnegut (short story, 1961)****
•  At the Earth's Core . . . . Edgar Rice Burroughs (novel, 1914) 
• Tale of a Computer that Fought a Dragon . . . . Stanislaw Lem (short story, 1977)****
• The Gods Themselves . . . . Isaac Asimov (novel, 1972)
• A Clockwork Orange . . . . Anthony Burgess (novel, 1962)
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream . . . . Harlan Ellison (short story, 1967; made into a computer game in 1995)
• The Hammer of God . . . . Arthur C. Clarke (novel, 1993)

And that's the list. Pick a few out and give 'em a whirl.  You won't regret it. All I ask is that you read, think, and above all, enjoy.

That's what sci-fi is all about.

* The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume I, ed. Robert Silverberg, 1970.

** The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume IIA, ed. Ben Bova, 1973.

*** The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume IIB, ed. Ben Bova, 1973.

**** The World Treasury of Science Fiction, ed. David G. Hartwell, 1989.

***** The World Turned Upside Down, ed. David Drake, Eric Flint, & Jim Baen, 2005.

sordid tales of me and music

Dear Blogsphere,

I've joined a writer's workshop here in the High Desert. We meet every alternate Wednesday at this charming little coffeehouse called The Grind. The affair is supervised by an English teacher from the local community college (and the mother of one of my high school buddies). It's mostly for poets, but we stick some fiction in every now and then. I've already gotten help with one of my short stories, and was glad to find out what worked and what didn't.

The overseer doesn't give us "prompts" at the end of every meeting; she gives us "dares." One of the ones she gave us yesterday entailed the following: write about the first time you ever heard a particular song. Any song. Pick one. Write about the context. Where were you? What were you doing? Who was with you? Describe the scene in excruciating detail. (She didn't the word "excruciating"; that's creative license on my part.)

So, for your consideration, I thought I'd give you my response to that dare. It concerns South Korea, for which I am leaving in three weeks. And it concerns one of my very favorite songs, one which I shall forever associate with Korea, friends, being an expatriate, godawful Korean lager, and...well, a whole bunch of other things. Read for yourself.

     I was halfway through my fourth glass of beer and moving steadily into to a lolling, drunken stupor.  Adam sat across from me, as tipsy as I was, a toothy grin on his whiskery face as he dealt the cards for another round of Tripoley.  Elaine and Jeff were in the kitchen, mixing up some vile concoction of soju, orange juice and various liqueurs.  The scent of cigarette smoke hung heavy in the air, soaking every surface in the apartment—skin, clothes, hair, upholstery, wallpaper.  Gossamer strands of vaporized carcinogens drifted up to the ceiling and hung there like lopsided spider webs.
     It was pitch-black outside, except for the streetlights and neon-lit storefronts.  The apartment was brilliantly lit by overhead fluorescent lighting.  The curtains were closed, providing few hints about the dank, humid night outside.  The linoleum floor was covered in crumbs, dingy tennis shoes, dog-eared paperbacks, smutty magazines.  The glass-topped card table was populated with stacks of shuffled cards, sweating beer glasses and their telltale wet rings.  Squashed beneath the glass were scraps of lined notebook paper with odd missives scribbled upon them in untidy ball-point: pot, kitty, king, queen, king-queen, ace, jack, 10, 8-9-10 all one suit.

     Another day in South Korea had drawn to a close, and four beleaguered expatriates—Jeff (the Canadian), Adam, Elaine (a Geordie couple from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), and their American friend had gathered together for a long night of decompression and relaxation.  A comforting dinner of beef and vegetables had been laid to rest in our bellies, various grievances had been levied against fractious students, copious amounts of booze were being consumed hourly, and the evening had gotten into its stride.  Now we all sat down to the table, drinks in hand and giddiness in our heads, to play cards for unshelled peanuts.

     Behind Adam, balanced on the ottoman, was a battered laptop computer hooked to a pair of squat speakers.  From this was blasting an endless stream of music—house rhythms reminiscent of English nightclubs, highlights of 1960s American rock, and several contemporary selections.  Among this was scattered a pleasing ensemble of R&B.

     And then it happened.  As Adam dealt the cards (a Marlboro hanging from the corner of his mouth), a wave of sound slammed into the alcoholic fog hanging over my brain.  It was a simple sound, but powerful, primal, elemental in its ferocity and intensity.  The power, the melody, and the pounding rhythm seized my soul in their sinewy clutches and refused to let go.

    It was an electric guitar and a drum kit.  That’s all.  Okay, there was some bass in the background, but the guitar and the drums were what got me. Two instruments bare-knuckling their way out of jerry-rigged speakers, filling the smoky air with raw noise.  It was the blues—but the kind of blues which human ears hadn’t heard on this earth since the fabled days of John Lee Hooker and Buddy Guy.  It was dirty, gritty, unfiltered, like a cigarette butt ground into the pavement.  It started low and slow, and then got loud.  It was impossible to keep my feet from tapping and my head from bobbing as thundering drums and jagged guitar riffs blasted ‘round the room like a sonic tsunami.  Even in the midst of a boozy funk I was stricken, overawed.  I leaned ravenously forward, elbows on my knees, straining to absorb as much of the music as possible from my remote position five feet away.

    “Adam,” I asked, “who is this?”

   Adam craned his head around and swiped a finger across the laptop’s touchpad.

   “The Black Keys, mate,” he said. “They’re mint.” 

   So it was.  I leaned farther forward and squinted.  The song was called “Busted.”

   Even the godawful Korean lager tasted good that night.

let's say "plans" instead of "resolutions"

...and while we're at it, let's call them "premeditated" instead of "late."

I was never one to go spouting my petty New Year's Resolutions to everybody within earshot, but listing them here would keep you from being caught unawares later on. And calling them "resolutions" would seem to invite them to be unequivocally broken in short order. So here you go, my plans for 2012 (to be immediately rendered null and void if the Aztecs decide to let the world end):

Number One: Ascend to my rightful place as a writer (i.e., have more confidence, dammit).

I'm through with the crippling lack of confidence and dithering indecision which plague me whenever I try to gauge markets, write relevant stories and articles, look up potential publishers, and submit works. Hunter S. Thompson never bothered with any of that crap. He just went out, did what he had to do to get a story, looked around and submitted it somewhere. That's what I'm going to do from this moment forward. I'm looking up markets for creative nonfiction as we speak. Who says I need only do travel articles and short sci-fi stories? I'm sure I've got lots to say on other subjects...and can tease it out of my brain without the aid of chemicals. So, to that end, I intend to become a more prolific writer this year...and a more assiduous salesman.

P.S. This may or may not include publishing that damn novel. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how easy it is to publish a novel from a foreign country, and I don't have Ernest Hemingway here to tell me. Maybe that magic Internet thingy will come to the rescue! TA-DA!!

Number Two: Go back to Korea (i.e., drink a lot of soju, meet crazy foreigners, do the cool stuff I didn't get to do before, pig out on bulgogi, and all that rot).

Well, shoot. That's taken care of. Helen the Eminent Recruiter tells me that my paperwork is where it needs to be and my E-2 visa is expected any day now. My room is still in rampant disarray, but order is precipitating out of the chaos. My desk is cleaned out, my closet has been divested of all garments which shall not be accompanying me on my Asian odyssey, and that big pile of stuff in the armchair is looking less like a war correspondent's personal effects and more like a roving journalist's kit bag. I should be ready to go in—criminy, twenty-eight days!

Number Three: Give Hulk Hogan a wedgie (i.e., sneak up behind him on the set of his reality TV show and yank his Fruit-of-the-Looms up over his cute little head).

Just checking to see if you're still awake.

Number Four: Live for others...a little bit (i.e., get involved in some charity work).

The only things I've ever donated to others are a few hours at an old folks' home in East Tennessee (which nearly scarred me for life; cue the old lady in the wheelchair screaming for her dead husband) and a few fistfuls of change for the Salvation Army. I aim to change that this year, and put some real charitable man-hours under my belt. Some of my foreign friends in K-Land have gotten involved with organizations which donate food and clothing to North Koreans in need, which interests me something fierce. I never did a flipping thing to help the poor NoKos the last time I was there, and the thought wracks me with guilt to this very day. Once I get back to the States I intend to put my time in planting trees and passing out soup at homeless shelters, too, but that's a story for 2014.

There's more to my list, but these snippets are all I can think of for now. I need to read more books this year (and write a few, too). I recently rediscovered reading for pleasure, and since then a whole host of worthy volumes has passed under my eyes. I'm way behind on reviewing 'em, too...especially since I decided to review only one book at a time on this here blog. I'm five chapters into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am enjoying the living daylights out of it. But more about that later.

Cheerio, people. Send me some heroic resolve...

Thoreau's hit list

If he had one, I'm on it. And probably Karl Marx's and Friedrich Nietzsche's, too.

Why?

I have way too much crap.

Way too much.

If Thoreau, Marx and Nietzsche were teleported into my bedroom at this very instant, and perused the absolute disarray to which it has been reduced, with piles of junk and trinkets and baubles occupying every flat surface, and umpteen bazillion hats and coats and shoes in the closet (yes, I'm a clothes-horse), and papers and notes and photographs and picture frames lying everywhere, and no less than seven cardboard boxes of books shoved into my brother's room for safekeeping, they'd be appalled. Thoreau would holler at me to simplify, Marx would fulminate about my materialism, and Nietzsche would aim a few mocking jibes at my sentimental and pointless memorabilia.

I wouldn't blame them. I've been doing likewise.

The intervening time between this and my last post has been spent desperately trying to whip my small room into some semblance of order, to cram the trappings of my life into manageable containers. I've lugged some cardboard boxes out of the shed, taped them together, and have been steadily stowing away all the detritus of my quarter-century's existence. I cannot believe I let this go so long, nor the sheer volume of material I'm dealing with. There are so many things which I should have let go long ago: old pictures, greeting cards, outdated documents, rough drafts of stories too puerile to preserve...the list goes on and on.

But I'm making progress. My nightstand has been cleared of CD cases, notebooks and electronics; my filing cabinet has been purged; only the dust remains under my bed. I still have, however, the daunting task of clearing the larger gewgaws out of my desk drawers, and packing up the clothes in my closet. This'll take some doing. And I must exercise caution and restraint as well. The well-worn seat of my armchair, now a repository for the equipment and essentials I will bring with me to South Korea, is near to overflowing.

Where did I pick up all this crap, anyway?!

I look around the room (a roadrunner just ran by the window, making me think of Jerry's desert musings). I see a beaten canteen hanging from the chair, along with the plastic bag full of taco sauce pouches I promised Smithy I'd take to Korea with me. Suspended from the other side is the plastic bag with all my medicines and first-aid equipment in it, and a shoulder holster with a ripped seam. Lying on top of the desk is a boggling assortment of trinkets: a Lego seaplane, several sets of headphones, cables and power cords to who-knows-what, a packing tape dispenser, an old Walkman, my new laptop speaker, a photograph from our trip to the Aquarium of the Pacific, a coffee mug with my name on it, library books, a jar of Korean wishing stars painstakingly handmade by my lovely girlfriend, and a desk lamp that has my prized Stetson fedora and the tassel from my university mortarboard hanging from it.

To my left, on the top shelf of my closet, I can see an untidy jumble of hats, a mosquito net in a drawstring bag, and the glow-in-the-dark hockey mask I wore at the Halloween party and scared the bejesus out of John and Matt with.

On the small TV tray in front of the bed there's a picture frame showcasing my great uncle's uniform patches and insignia from the cavalry regiment he served with in Vietnam; a pair of orange hat brushes; my brand-new HD webcam, still in its package; a tin of Icebreakers Sours; a lottery ticket; my checkbook; and the DVDs for Spider-man 2 and 3, awaiting transferal to some less discerning owner.

In and around the armchair are haphazardly piled a couple of laptop briefcases, several decks of cards, a small heap of books (concerning alcoholic beverages and card games, mostly), passport pictures, address books, important papers, artifacts from my travels, and my precious journals.

The dresser is by far the worst offender, a fountain of materialistic indiscretion. Quite apart from the raiment overflowing from its drawers, its summit is crowned with flotsam. Shammies and chemicals for cleaning spectacles and LCD screens; a small vanity filled with loose buttons, batteries, ticket stubs and foreign coins; a pinochle deck; more books (Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me); a ledger where I keep track of my spare change; rolls of quarters and nickels and dimes; a flashlight; a disassembled music-box, given to me by one of my Korean students; a nifty black pouch containing my five USB drives, and thereby my entire writing career; several pairs of glasses and sunglasses snug in their cases; a can of lighter fluid; a toy Model T and several metal-and-plastic warbirds; and a whiskey-tasting certificate from the Old Jameson Distillery in Dublin, Ireland.

On the hooks behind the door are two mostly-pristine flight suits in desert tan, American flags gaily gleaming from their shoulders; my old blue TacAir  baseball cap; two pairs of bathrobes; and a dusty ocarina from who-can-tell-where.

The walls are mostly bare; I've taken my Korean flag down, and all the pages torn from various warbird calendars; but the framed jigsaw puzzles and the Indiana Jones theatrical posters remain.

I've gotten rid of us much as I possibly could. I'm no hoarder, but it's difficult to lightly pass up the virtues of the pack rat. It seems like every bauble, every half-faded line on a wrinkled sheet of paper, every dog-eared book and creased photograph holds some happy memory within it.

I'll stop there. You know what comes next: a load of maudlin reminiscence. I'll spare you.

Suffice to say, this is a more monumental task than I anticipated (but isn't it always?). I'm slogging through it. I anticipate having my room entirely packed up, my existence encapsulated, by the middle of the month. All of it will go into storage while your humble author and a few select garments and trinkets and novels will sally forth unto East Asia. More about that later.

And by the way, Happy New Year.