The "Ideas Issue" of The Atlantic is Out

I'm always looking for new articles and bits of inspiration about the creative mind.  I'm kind of a self help junkie for creativity as a way to overcome writer's block. 

It's funny, the way I used to understand it, writer's block was what happened when you casually and freely sat down to create your next work, and...nothing came.  For whatever reason, the corner you'd written yourself into seemed impossible to escape. 

But, for me, and I think for most people, writer's block is what happens before you even sit down at the desk.  It's the fear that if you take that chance and sit down at the computer, nothing will come, or what will come will not be worth the time spent.  If that's the case, why not spend the time wading through episodes of "Breaking Bad" or chomping on popcorn at a mediocre movie, or playing Farm Hero's Saga?

The way I combat it is to keep creativity on my brain in tiny segments, to consume ideas as much as I can, and the most recent issue of The Atlantic is full of terrific bits of inspiration and techniques.  It's the "Idea Issue", and features articles on the power of a creative partnership, insights on where creativity comes from in the mind, and 6 creative solutions to "thorny" problems. 

There's also an interesting article on the trend of killing off mother's in children's media.  Sure this topic has been discussed ad nauseum, but the writer's thoughts on  the recent addition of the "fun" father figure in films like Despicable Me, and Wreck It Ralph are worth reading.

Podcast I Love: "You Must Remember This"

I'm an avid reader of Entertainment Weekly's "Must List".  It's loaded with great recommendations for those who devour media, and it doesn't stop at music and movies, but branches out into crazy shit like...theater!!  And podcasts!!  And BOOKS!!!  Yes, they still print em.   And if you actually seek out some of the little gems, you'll feel real damn proud of yourself afterwards.  Occasionally it feels like they have some kind of weird deal with the distributors, but most of the time it feels legit. 

A couple of weeks ago, this caught my eye...

 



It was my lady, once again, in print.  It happens every once in awhile that I catch her image in a magazine (I mean, she lives on peeps.  Her legend is far fucking reaching) and two things happen. 

Thing #1.  My eyes widen and I shriek on the inside like a child at Christmas time.  I'm so excited that she's still being paid attention to in this modern age!  She is RELEVANT! 

Thing #2.  My eyes dart madly across the page, like a meth addict seeking his next fix (yes, I'm watching "Breaking Bad" now, and it's every bit as putrid and crusty as I thought it would be.  It's also compelling television) I seek out whatever trash they may have printed, so I can gird my rage against the turd who wrote it.  Is the word "tragedy" less than three words to the left or right of her name?  Do they bring up the damned pills, yet again??  "WHY CAN'T THEY LEAVE THAT POOR LADY ALONE!!!!)

In this case?  No tragedy, no slander.  Instead they point to a podcast by the name of  "You Must Remember This" which focuses on the untold or forgotten histories of some of Hollywood's greats.  If done well, this little podcast could be a gold mine, and yet, I had pretty low expectations.  I've heard a lot of media pieces on Judy and a lot of them have been salacious, or cheaply produced, and it was quite possible this could be one or the other...and yet?

I went straight to the episode focusing on Garland's later years hoping to love it and fearing I wouldn't.   Verdict?  The creator, writer and host, Karina Longworth has crafted a really thoughtful, very well written and insightful podcast with her unique perspective.  The Garland episode actually made me think about things I'd never thought before, which I certainly should have.  Possible-  Garland's hold on gay men was anathema to the male dominated straight media?  They used the connection to dismiss her and discount her hold on people?  Yeah.  Yeah they did.  Listen to the podcast, as Longworth illustrates it better than I could. 

 One of the great things about this show is that it doesn't just do a blanket bio on whatever star it's currently focusing on.  It zooms in on a particular moment, and unpacks it for the listener.  And she speaks with a very distinctive voice.  She's best when she's looking at the lives of women, as she does in the Garland, Novak, Frances Farmer, and Isabella Rossellini episodes, because you can feel her passion for the topic.

I'm personally hoping she'll do an episode on the weird pictures of Sammy Davis Jr and Jayne Mansfield at some freaky satanic ritual in the sixties.  I need that shit debunked or I'll never listen to Sammy Davis Jr with a completely untainted ear.

Stacked!

Sometimes I feel like I'm drowning in potential, pages of it in fact.  Drowning in books that I haven't opened because my head was turned by something else, or that I've abandoned because what lay within its pages wasn't as instantly addictive as I had hoped.  Below are just a few of the contenders for my next read, concluding with my current read, which I am determined to make it through.

Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi-  I am a sucker for Fairy Tales.  They cut through the bullshit and get right to the core of things.  Some people are good, some are evil, some beautiful people are clothed in the mask of beasts, dead people can talk to you through trees, and when you are nice to the world it will be nice to you back when you least expect it and most need it.  It's a brutal, but hopeful world where good triumphs in the end even if a few fingers or heels get cut off, or children are sold into indebted servitude, it will turn out right.  So when I heard that this latest novel by Helen Oyeyemi was a re-telling of the Snow White story which takes place in mid-twentieth century America?  I bit.  It digs deep into our feelings of race and beauty and what it means to be "good"?  Yes please.  One of the protagonists (in the role equivalent to the Evil Queen) is a Hitchcockian blonde?  All right already!!  And yet, in it's first fifteen pages as I lay drowsily in bed, it did not hook me.  And so, on the pile it goes, to sit until I have more resolve.

Not Without You by Harriet Evans-  A young woman in the forties becomes a major film star, and in the present day, a rising star who idolizes her begins to unravel the mysteries she left behind.  It's been likened to the films of Douglas Sirk in book form. 

A Stranger In A Strange Land, 1984, One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Slaughter-house Five, In Cold Blood-  These books I picked up in a surge of desire to read some of the great works that I've always wanted to dip my feet into and understand.  And yet, I haven't yet.  There's always something newer, and shiner, and less stalwart and true that attracts me before I truly give these a shot.  And yet, I own them, they sit in my home, so they are one step closer to being read by me.  Sometimes I wish you could soak books up like sunlight, just hold them close and absorb their wisdom.

Dorothy Must Die by some chick I'll probably end up resenting-  How much easier it is to cannabilize on a masterpiece than to write one from scratch.  I say "cannibalize" because this writer literally takes the heroes of the story and turns them into villains.  Dorothy, the Tinman, The Scarecrow, The Cowardly Lion?  They turned out to be real assholes and are enslaving all of Oz.  Glinda?  Grade-A bitch.  Who's the true heroine?  The character this chick dreamt up using as a template the very heroine she shits upon in print.  And still, I have to give it a shot even though this has already been done to death and I wasn't too pleased with the results of previous efforts.

You Must Remember This by Robert Wagner and some ghost writer-  An appreciation of the Hollywood way of life back in its golden age.  I checked it out from the library as part of research for a current project I'm working on, or projects I'm hoping to work on.  As fascinated as I am with Hollywood in its hey-day, it helps to know what the day to day life was like, even if it is a rose tinted semblance of it.

The Trip To Echo Spring by Olivia Lang-  The relationship between writers and alcohol is one that hasn't really been written about in depth, and it's something I've always been intrigued by.  In part, because I had fantasies that a couple shots would release my genius, and set me on a course of  typing that Kerouac would envy and that would lead to sleepless nights and pages full of heartbreaking wonder.  This is also the reason I've sometimes wanted to get my hands on Benzedrine.  Yes I know it's a terrible drug, and led to a life of sometimes Hell for one of my heroines, and yet, those writers in the the thirties and forties got A LOT of shit done!!!  Anyway, this book focuses on a couple of my favorites (Tennessee Williams and F.Scott Fitzgerald) one that I'm curious to know more about (Hemingway) and a few I really know nothing more than the superficial (Raymond Carver, John Cheever).  It's part group bio and part travelogue and it's not been cohesive enough, so far, to keep my attention.  I recently abandoned it to read my latest book...

10% Happier by Dan Harris-  My current book.  I'm nearly a hundred pages in and I'm hooked.  I don't recall ever having seen Harris on television, but his story of neuroses tamed through meditation, and his search for productivity without the hair pulling is readable and relatable.  Hopefully the answers he finds will prove applicable.

Roadside Humor

There's a gas station on Brodie Lane, appropriately named "Brodie Mart", that I must rarely drive by at night, as it's only recently that I've noticed the neon sign...

As nice as it is to imagine that the other letters died out purely by coincidence, and that this is proof of a Divine sense of humor, a glance at the liquor store next door thoroughly convinced me otherwise...

 

 

Well played, business owners, well played.



The Beauty and Courage of Marian Anderson

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of Marian Anderson's historic concern at The Lincoln Monument.  The story itself is truly moving, and a terrific example of courageous people coming together to do the right thing.   It's always been one of my favorite historical events, and every time I see footage of Marian standing in front of that bank of microphones before thousands of people, I'm struck by how regal, how graceful, and how brave she is and feel what I imagine to be a fraction of what it was like to witness that moment.

 

 

And yet, as important as this moment is, I feel like individual attention should be paid to Marian and her voice, because they stand on their own as worthy of awe.   The spiritual "Deep River" is one of many stirring performances...

 

 

 





Tell Your Story

"You own everything that happened to you.  Tell your stories.  If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better."--  Anne Lamott

This quote really resonates with me, and probably does with most writers.  Of course I keep things to myself for fear of hurting the feelings of those I love, and if I'm honest with myself I keep just as much to myself for fear of the repercussions of the ones I...don't love.  I mean, society demands that we keep quiet about those feelings, and we certainly wouldn't want them to leak out and bite us in the ass later.  But if we are writers?  If we want to be story tellers?  Aren't those the very stories we should tell?  Stories with meat, heat, and emotion?

Be A Huge Part of the Creative Process in Austin

 

   Hi Every one!  I'm reaching out to you to connect with you about Amplify Austin, the 24 Hour Festival of Giving to the Austin Community.  Specifically I want to deeply encourage you to give to Zilker Productions, and to tell you what it has meant to me, and why I it will make you feel good in your heart to give to this organization. 

Click here to give now

     My family and I moved to Austin when I was eight, and pretty much since then, the Zilker Summer Musical has been a part of my life.  As an audience member?  It was something we could do as a family, that was free, outside at an Austin Institution, Zilker Park.  We could join together with the literally thousands of people who saw this show each night.  And for two to three hours I got to be with my family and take a moment to dream.  I would save the programs, and pour over them later, draw my own versions of the illustrations on the front...basically just bliss out on everything Zilker.  It was my Broadway and one of my first dreams as a performer was to be up there someday.   

     The Zilker Summer Musical has been here for over fifty years encouraging people (kids, artists, and dreamers of all kinds) to escape into something pretty special.  I know how important these donations are.  I've seen what the money does.  It gives a small stipend to the actors who contribute up to three months of their time.  It pays for the sets, the costumes, the publicity...

     And just think, if you click here and give even $10 before 6PM today (BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN THE WHOLE MATCHING FUNDS SHEBANG IS OVER) you can watch the heartfelt community show that is The Zilker Summer Musical and know that you were a big part of what was up there.  If you can afford to give a little bit of a dream to that kid sitting ten people over and creating a previously unthought of future, you really should.

For those out of town who want to know more about this theatrical event, go to the zilker website

Click here to give before the time runs out

 

Failure Face?

So...if all had gone perfectly according to plan I would have blogged about The Judy Garland Show, one episode per day, and nearly be finished, if not completely finished at this point.  So what happened?  Am I lazy?  Maybe.  Was it difficult?  Yes.  Did it turn something I enjoyed into a chore?  A touch.  Here's the truth.

1.  It was turning into a chore, and I was beginning to drive myself crazy.  I LOVE The Judy Garland Show, but truth be told, I love it in small doses.  One a week.  So, maybe that's something I can commit to.  Maybe this was all too much from the get-go.  I was no longer looking forward to the show, and having a "critical eye" on something, preparing to write about it, can take away a lot of the pure joy.  It's like you've got one eye on the fun, and another on the door.  Plus, with the watching, the research and the writing?  It consumed a lot of time in any already time restricted life.

2.  I think I was beginning to drive my roommate crazy.  We share a tv, and night after night I was watching the show, and we were going to our separate rooms doing our own thing.  Not that we don't do this often, we are individuals pursuing our own lives, and yet... I was beginning to feel like I was dominating the tv and I hated how much time we were spending in the same apartment, as if we were completely alone.  He's certainly got an appreciation for Judy, but he's not a fan by any means, and I didn't want to bombard him.

3.  I lost my readers.  A lot of them.  Not that this is a hugely trafficked blog, but I do enjoy getting read, and my readership was way down, and thus the motivation to write for an audience that possibly wasn't there?  Low. 

4.  It's been done.  Beautifully.  So many people have written about this show, and the fans seem to have dredged up every single detail amongst themselves at one point or another.  So, what's the urgency???  Is anyone clamoring?

So there you have it.  I am going on a hiatus for an indeterminate amount of time.  Not on the blog, but on The Judy Garland Show blogging.  It may come back, but I ain't making any promises.  Yes, I feel like a bit of a failure face, but I will pick up the little pieces and continue blogging.  I ain't finished, yet.  Nuff' said.

You Can't Eat Glamour For Breakfast

It's become cliché.  You're in your car listening to the radio or lounging around watching television and someone  who works in a job that just about anyone else would die to have is sitting in a cushiony chair by a conspiratorily nodding talk show host, or sitting in front of mike in a radio studio, and they say something to the effect of "believe me folks, this job that I have that seems so awesome?  It's not as glamorous as it looks". 

Why do they say this?  What's the point?  Is it to say, "I may look like I'm having a blast wearing beautiful clothes and getting my picture taken for a living, but my life it still really hard and I'm to be pitied"?  Because that's what anyone who says this sounds like.  A big fat cry baby.

And I know, their motives may be kind of sweet.  It may all be in the vein of "don't be jealous of me guys, life is hard for me, too" but honestly?  I don't want to hear it.  Really?  There are downsides to your job?  People judge you more harshly?  You don't eat?  You have to work out a lot?  That's the price of glamour.  And even if you don't feel it, can't appreciate it, doesn't mean it isn't there.  It's just not there for you.

Glamour, most of the time,  is not something seen from the inside out, but from the outside in.  That's the point of it.  Nothing is truly as glamorous as it appears.  If you look closely, almost everything has it's dark sides, it's "shadow side".  But truth be told, none of us consuming the glamour wants to look closely.  Somewhere deep down, we "know", we just don't want to know. 

Glamour is an aspirational concept  it's for those who don't get to dress up every day and go to movie premieres.  They look at those who do and think... "that could be me someday, if..."  We don't want to hear that it sucks to be you, because to a small or large degree we want to be you, and if your life really is no better than ours?  If we have to sit down take a look at our lives and start fixing it from the inside to be someone's idea of happy?  How daunting.

That points to another aspect of glamour.  Not only is it ethereal, and mostly for the benefit of others, it's also relative.  So while it may seem like I was tearing all those nameless movie stars and makeup artists and chefs new ones, I was really tearing all of us a new one.  Our life?  The ones we live?  To someone else, it's a pretty luxurious lifestyle.  And while I don't want to boil everything down to a facile "let's all just be happy for what we have" lesson, we've all seen these people, these "glamorous" people who should by all preconceived notions, be happy, and yet are not. 

It's easy to look at those who have more than us and say "you should enjoy your own glamour.  You should, for one moment allow yourself to be the kid who has been pressing his nose up to the glass and looking at the Christmas display, and let yourself into the shop."  If you think of it, we are all that person, that glamorous person.  In a way,  we are all the kid inside the toy shop or the movie star at the premiere.  We just have to decide if, when we play, we are going to play "full out"  and appreciate the glamour the glamour surrounding us and within in us.  It won't last, that's the nature of glamour.  But it can be enjoyed for what it is, some fleeting glimpse of fancy that makes us feel the specialness that's always there.

"Coming Soon"

While I used to look forward to birthdays for all the material bounty that would shower down on me and make me feel worthy (and I admit that a Wonder Woman flash drive can still bring me to the heights of giddiness) lately I've come to look forward to them for a different reason, namely, the change they inevitably bring. 

It could be that I'm getting older and nature is whispering ever more urgently into my ear that time is growing short and I'd better make days count, but each birthday these past few years has brought about a major life change.  It was right around my birthday that I decided to quit my job at Keller Williams, that I decided to move back home to Austin, Texas after six years in LA, that I let go of a friendship or two, decided to really grab onto a dream, like writing a performance piece...  Birthdays mean change.

I can never quite be certain what that change will be, but I can already feel the restlessness building.  I can hear the questions, the wondering.  Of course, like many people do when the questions start to pop up ("What the hell am I doing with my life?"  "Did I waste to much time pursuing an artistic career?"  "Should I get out of that halfway world that I seem to be living in and fall one way or the other?" "When am I going to feel settled?"  "Am I already 'settled' and I just haven't realized it?"  times seem uncertain) I've started praying again, looking for signs.  Good old God, the parachute we go back to when we need him.  I've always been great at beginnings.  Always been great at leaping into something and giving 100%, but staying the course?  This I have yet to master...

Regardless, and please forgive the cringe worthy analogy, change is a brewing, and when that lil' cup of Life Coffee is ready, I'll let you know what it tastes like.

TJGS Episode 13: With Special Guest Peggy Lee

While the thirteenth episode was pretty routine in some ways, there are a few things that set it apart. 

First, there is Jack Carter, who is essentially taking Jerry Van Dyke's place for this show and who somehow manages to make the slightly insulting banter with Judy work.  He just throws it out there, lobs it out and is able to make Judy look Judy completely normal while he comes off as some kind of schmoozy, boozy nut.  And yet, he's still charming in this old school comedian way that no one could carry off today.  I can't quite put my finger on it, and I'm not saying I love the material, but he makes it work better than anyone I've seen so far.  He also has a number in which he complains about the youth of America, and while the material is a bit stale, again, he is so comfortable and confident in his delivery, spitting out "babes" and "honeys" left and right.  How can I not hate him?  And yet, I don't.  Of course we have The Judy Garland dancers to spread the corn around in an already corny number.  Thank God for them. 

 

Jack and Judy also share a routine in which they play different musical comedy teams throughout history, finishing with a tribute to "Mr. Wonderful" in which Jack Carter had appeared with Sammy Davis Jr.  For my money they could have done away with the rest of the routine and focused on the last material, as the earlier parts seem a bit gimmicky and forced, even if Judy does do a wonderful Ethel Merman impersonation.

 

 

Peggy Lee is the Special Guest of the episode.  Beautiful, bountiful Peggy Lee.  She's so meaty and sensual, poured into her dress, all topped with hair like cotton candy, her voice so smoky and rich.  I just love her.  And yet... part of the magic of Judy is that you don't even realize how wonderful she is until you see other people attempt the same thing.  Peggy never quite seems comfortable with the camera, and is a bit of a deer in the headlights; a gorgeous, busty deer in the headlights.

 

 

The "Trunk" spot of the show is wonderful, as Judy sings two terrific numbers.  She starts with Irving Berlin's "How About You" and sounds lovely (even if she doesn't quite give herself over to the sorrowfulness of the song) and closes with "When Your Smiling" and the finish is stellar, with Judy selling it in typical fashion.