Sandra Bullock Licks Her Lips - Report From Austin No. 2

As I was saying last time...I was at a statewide meeting of creative writing teachers in Austin, Texas over the weekend.

On Saturday morning I sat on a panel that discussed using research in creative writing. I shared how I was drawn to research because over the course of more than 140 posts on this blog I faced the prospect of having very little to write about of significance.

In a sense this has always been a blog, as they used to say on Seinfeld, " with the potential to be about nothing."

That's because for one year The Van Winkle Project required that I subtract from my life all information about anything happening beyond the great horizon.

What did that leave a "sleeping" man with that he might comment on that might be of interest to others?

A) He could talk about his memories and mire everyone in the muck of  his nostalgia.

B) He could focus on mundane daily activities and minutae and turn the blog into a quasi-journal slash diary no one cared about.

Ugh.

What I finally decided to do was try to strike a balance by writing on some days about significant moments in my past and on other days about interesting observations from my present life. But, I told the panel, I still needed more.

Take a bow research. The starring role, played by my best 21st century friend...

Most of the time before posting I found myself digging around and satisfying my curiosity about  various matters. I then included that information in my posts.

Example: I wanted to write about the concept of "brevity" and how we value it in this era in which are days are already packed with too much to attend to. So there are shorter songs (you can count jam bands on one hand), shorter sermons, faster advertising pitches, and texts and tweets instead of emails.

This led me to remember the word "brevity" as it's used in the cult classic film The Big Lebowski. Hmm. Let's read a bit and refresh our memory about that movie as well as see what others say. And while I'm at it, what did the Spartans think about the idea of paring things down to a minimum, especially in their speech?

Voila. I had my post, The Whole Brevity Thing.

I call this kind of posting sensibility "value added." I figure only the person writing a strictly humorous blog should get a free pass from having to offer readers value added. (That's because making us laugh is an unimpeachable public service on par with helping little old ladies cross the street, i.e., already valuable enough.)

The rest of us bloggers, right up to Roger Ebert with his million viewers, owe our readers something useful, if for no other reason than as non-monetary compensation for taking up their valuable time.

What might constitute value added on a blog post?

• A recipe.
• A practical tip.
• A factoid, piece of quotable trivia.
• An interesting story from history.
• A great quote
• A ponderable insight.
• A link to something cool.
• A great photo.

So in the midst of my utterly subjective thoughts about how to blog, here's my value-added for today.

If you ever visit Austin, Texas and are looking for some excellent dining in the medium price range, try Bess Bistro on Pecan.

The restaurant is in the basement of a former bank where the vault used to be.

Friday night found us dining for the first time at Bess where we met Telmond and Jackie, a wonderful Austin couple in their eighties. They fell in love 60 years ago as UT students a few blocks away on the campus. Jackie was an Austin gal. She told us she used to live just a little ways down Sixth Street from the former bank now Bess Bistro. She remembered what Sixth was like before became the street for clubs and live music, a veritable Bealle Street of the Southwest.

Not that it matters (but quotable trivia) Bess Bistro is owned by actress Sandra  Bullock.

No  blind side here.
Sandy knows good food!

What's the dining experience like?

The most expensive dishes are in the low thirty-dollar range. There's plenty of items one can order for under $20. The cuisine is comfort food or food you've heard of, all of it coming with a twist. Like how my ribeye steak was served with braised brussel sprouts. Or the quail that arrives on a bed of grilled greens.

We found everything to  be delicious, all the way to the finale. You've got to have the beignets with chocolate sauce for dessert. Killer! - A.H.

COMING: A Walk on the Grave Side, Report From Austin No. 3


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A Novel Idea - Report From Austin No. 1

I was in Austin, Texas over the weekend.

The occasion was an annual gathering of creative writing teachers who come from around the state to swap ideas and share their work.

I had the honor of reading a chapter from my new novel Evangel which is currently a lost puppy in search of the loving leash of a publisher.

Evangel is not a satirical novel, although at times I must say I find what the Christian faithful say and do in real life to be humorous. I often have the same response when I read the Bible. Am I the only one?

That trickster Jacob fooling his old man with a bunch of animal skins so he's as hairy as his brother Esau. Hilarious! Or there's that ultimate action hero who happens to be a half-dipstick short on intelligence, especially when it comes to women who whisper in his ear and give good massages. I speak of mighty Samson.

The New Testament is  richly humorous, too, not all sober and finger wagging like Mitch McConnell talking about the deficit. In the days before the story of Jesus turns grim and bloody his twelve disciples offer a combination of earnestness and not-getting-it that could be worked into a set of stand-up.

- Did you hear the one about Peter trying to walk on water? No, seriously, folks. He thought this was a good idea. And he can't even swim! I mean I'm afraid of heights, so I should think of jumping off a cliff?

- The other day I heard James and John were trying to book the best seats in a  place called heaven. Isn't that a little premature? Like getting your Super Bowl tickets a few thousand years early?

It's not that I don't take God seriously. I do. It's the humans in the Bible (as well as those currently walking the earth) who tend to make me laugh. I assume their creator laughs, too. Fortunately, though, the rest of the story is that the God of the Bible stops laughing just long enough to save humans from themselves. That's comedy, not tragedy...

The Sermon on Sex
There are no rules for how one goes about reading for 18 minutes from a novel. I thought it best to search for a chapter that perhaps would offer some liveliness and warm the corpuscles of the audience in the Double Tree's highly air conditioned Wildflower Room.

Ah, yes, let's try pages 92-103, what I refer to as the "Sermon on Sex" chapter.

In this section Pastor Frankie Wey offers a challenge to the married couples at On the Rock Temple Fellowship, a megachurch in Pinebridge Meadows.

"Why does the devil have all the sex?" Dr. Frankie asks rhetorically from the stage as he addresses 3000+ people. "I say it's time Christians stole back sex from Satan who has taken it and perverted a beautiful gift from God!"

To improve intimacy and strengthen marriages Dr. Frankie goes on to ask each married couple in the church to commit to the ultimate self-help regimen:

Have sex every day for seven days.

The husbands and wives are to report back the following Sunday and share the results.

This scene in my novel has roots in a real challenge a Grapevine, Texas minister issued his congregation in 2008. You can read about this notion of "putting God back in bed." here.

The "Seven Days of Sex" pastor in Grapevine, Texas also preached a sermon
earlier this year with a real Ferrari on stage.

In the sort of me-too'ism that's has long been rampant among American churches, which are just as subject to trends and fads as any other quarter of society, other preachers around the country have tried out the idea. Below is a billboard that sparked controversy when an Alabama church put it up, not because of the one-man, one-woman message, but, well, the preacher was talking about sex in church!

"Wine of Love" by Natalia Morez 2002

If you're a fiction writer and you hear about something like this, including preachers providing a public exegesis of (blush) the Song of Solomon, you think, "I've got to try this out with my characters and see what happens!"

Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.

Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.

Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee.

I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon.

Hot stuff! Somebody ought to write about it... So I did. - A.H.

COMING NEXT: Sandra Bullock Licks Her Lips - Report From Austin No. 2


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A New Literary Analysis of Rip Van Winkle

Now that Phase I of the Van Winkle Project has ended--avoiding the news--I'm in the midst of Phase II. In this effort I'm  somewhat like my literary inspiration, Rip Van Winkle.

Since 12 months was long enough for me to forget all the details of Washington Irving's account, I combed the house until I found my nice little copy of Three Tales with its handsome, vintage illustrations.

I wanted to read  the ending again and make sure I had it right in my memory.

I especially wanted to revisit how Rip deals with a flood of new information (America had become an independent nation during his sleep) and how he spends his days once he's newly awakened.

It turns out that Rip wakes to a sort of personal paradise.

As I read the full account I learned that twenty years is sleeping and aging and being completley out of it brings with certan advantages.

Because Rip is old no one expects him to contribute.

In addition, his nagging wife has burst a blood vessel and died years ago. She will never again critique his behavior or nag, nag, nag.

For the first time ever, Rip can truly be himself unimpeded and enjoy life as never before.

Set Free
Have I arrived at a "happy age" like Rip Van Winkle? Well, our cases are both similar and different. I have no nagging wife. Rather than wishing her away, I am proud of the fact that my wife has been with me this entire time. She endured my project heroically, even during those early days in May when she was dieing to tell me that Osama Bin Laden had been killed.

What I realize, though, is that I did have another version of a nagging wife living with me. For decades. A nagger par excellence. This other wife of mine has a name.

The news.

You see, one can read this little story as something of a parable. It breaks down like this:

There's something that bothers a person greatly in life. It hounds them. Then one day a wonderful thing happens. They accidentally escape it in an unexpected way (in Rip's case a magic nap). When they come back to their old life everything is new and better. All it takes is TIME.

Let's give this gradual de-toxing phenonomenon a name: The Rip Van Winkle Effect (RVWE)

How the RVWE Works For Me
Compared to before, my life now seems largely quiet and peaceful. The news doesn't have the hold on me that it once did.

I don't hear that nagging voice saying, "Check online and see what's happened in the last hour," or "You've got to watch the evening news every night, every minute of it" or "Read the newspaper as soon as you bring it in in the morning."

Nag, nag, nag.

And I used to obey. I was afraid I'd miss something I needed to know. But I realize the truth now. It wasn't about need. It was habit.

My news habit seems to have been burst its own blood vessel and gone away.

I realize, of course, that bad habits can return. In stressful times ex-smokers scrounge a butt and light up. Yesterday, habit returning, I said, "Hey!" to someone in the hallway after vowing weeks ago that such a low-grade greeting would never cross my lips again [See: Andy Rooney's Eyebrows: A Mini-Rant]

I'm hoping for the best this time. That I can model myself on Rip.

I especially like the bit where we're told he makes friends "among the rising generation." Whenever I have hope for the future, it almost never comes from anything I read or hear in the news. It comes from the young people, especially my students.

What else can I learn from the Rip Van Winkle Effect? That eventually all things pass. What I wring my hands over today at some point will simply be history and have an end date placed on it.

• The bad economy
• Global terrorism
• Mideast unrest
• Famines in Africa
• Assorted annoying people, both public and private
• Unfortunate musical styles and fashions

Yes, I may actually outlive the popularity of Justin Beiber, Snooki, and too many movies based on comic book heroes! However, I'm not naive. I know what any intelligent person is thinking. My list of "wish-it-weren't-so's" will be replaced by new ones. No matter how long one waits, true paradise never arrives.

Though it's no solution to try to sleep through all the bad stuff, I now believe it might not be a bad idea to take more short news naps than the nagging voice in one's head says is socially acceptable. Accrue some RVWE.  If upon waking the bad news hasn't gone away, at least it will be more distant.

It seems to have worked for me.

LAST THING: In case anyone is wondering, I don't plan to neglect the other aspect of the ending of Rip Van Winkle:

"It was some time before he...could be made to comprehend the strange events that had taken place during his torpor."

For the foreseeable future this blog will be my "bench at the inn door." I'll lounge here and idly chat and share my reactions to old news. Not that anyone cares. I'm just an old guy who is behind the times.

Still, I figure if I'm going to live on the same planet as everyone else it might be a good idea to at least get back into "the regular track of gossip." Next time someone says "Super Committee" or "Michelle Bachmann" I'd like to know what they're talking about. - A.H.

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Glory on the Gridiron (The Day After)

I just went one year without any NFL football. No preseason, no 16-game schedule, no playoffs, no Super Bowl.  As Van Winkle, I "slept" through it all.

To some this might sound like a hardship. But here's the deal...

I'm not that monster-size football fan that almost single-handedly supports the beer companies and cable TV. You know the type. He has to know the results of all the games and he watches three games on Sunday and doesn't miss Monday or Thursday nights either.

And he is a he.

Still, I dabble in football-watching the way I dabble in other things. I show up in front of the TV screen at opportune moments, hoping to be rewarded by some feat between the hash marks that suddenly shoots adrenaline to my brain, which then tells my vocal cords and tongue to go to work:

"HEY! DID YOU SEE THAT! IT WAS UN-BUH-LEEEV-ABLE!"

Which is what happened in the fourth quarter of the Oakland at Buffalo game yesterday.

I was semi-watching (okay, dabbling massively) on the couch, trying to mark a few student assignments from my Fiction Workshop. I had already seen the J-Lo Fiat commercial three times too many. This ad heralds the coming of a teeny-tiny but cool two-door car to America.

Ms. Lopez, so made-up and digitally retouched that she more resembles a polished piece of plastic than human flesh, overshadowed the whole thing. Especially when I made the mistake of turning off the mute and I heard the singing. Cue the robots, please...

'PLEASE! BACK TO FOOTBALL!"

There...that's better.

One thing I realized after no TV for a year is how eye-poppingly great HD TV looks when one is watching the action unfold on the field. Whenever there was a close-up on a player I could see the sparklies in the silver paint of the Raiders' helmet. Grass stains on pants. Fantastic detail on the tattooed biceps.

Football is eye candy.

Since I had missed 3/4 of the game I didn't know that the Raiders (8-8 last year) had blown a 21-3 halftime lead. The plucky Bills, who many said were better than last year's dismal team that lost their first 8 games before going 4-4, were on a tear with three unanswered touchdowns.

Then I woke up on the couch. This is one of those moments when all the dull penalties, the runs up the middle for no gain, the worse than useless necktie comentating, and even those interruptive J-Lo moments go away.

Buffalo has just scored minutes earlier to go ahead 31-28. The Oakland quarterback drops back and he heaves a pass 50 yards. Churning toward the goal line is rookie Denarius Moore. Mr. Moore has two Buffalo defenders on him. He gets a step on one, the other is gnawing his collar bone as he goes up and snags the ball and falls into the end zone with the defender atop him. Mr. Moore lands holding the ball.

Amazing catch! Oakland scores!

But we're not quite finished because the Bills will march down the field, helped by foolish Oakland face masking and pass interference penalties. The Bills will survive a fourth and 3 on the Oakland 24 yard line and at that point I knew they weren't going to be denied.

Sure enough they scored with 16 seconds left. There was time for three more Raider plays. The last one (6 seconds remaining) was a Hail Mary heave into the end zone. Multiple hands belonging to three Bills and one Raider grasped in the air for the ball. As they came down it appeared that both a Bill and a Raider were holding the ball? No. When they hit the ground, Buffalo had intercepted. End of game. Bills win it 38-35.

Is this a typical NFL game? Hardly. But it does represent the kind of sports drama I missed out on last season when I was Van Winkled.

Yesterday's game reminds me why I'll always watch some sports. Unlike the rest of the news, sports are reliable. If you watch enough games, something GOOD, something memorable, something that makes you for a moment feel "Yes!" always happens.

The rookie makes the impossible catch!

Maybe there are other ready-made communal spectacles that can reliably deliver this kind of thing, but right now, the morning after my Sunday "fix," this guy is having a hard time thinking of any.

Football, baseball, basketball, golf. All of them offer a peculiarly American Sunday afternoon liturgy. The people show up and watch the ritual performed over and over again. They know that at some point it's quite likely they will briefly touch the transcendent. When that happens they find themselves cheering for something beyond their smallish, seemingly insignificant lives.

I know exactly what it feels like.

And, if I partake via TV, all this comes with minimal or no cost to me, other than time invested. It seems like a pretty good deal...

That's why I'm not surprised that so many people worship in front of large screens, and the stadiums dwarf our churches. And heaven? Isn't that another name for making it into the end zone? Nothing but net from outside the arc? Home run in the bottom of the ninth? The eighteeen foot putt?

Maybe not. You see, it's all so brief. And in the end it may not work out like you expected. Ask Denarius Moore, ask the Oakland Raiders. I think those gentlemen will tell you. - A.H.

Sorry, Denarius. Even though you pointed heavenward and the score changed
seconds later to OAK 35 BUF 31, your team went on to lose.

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News of the Lowercase "m-e"

Twenty years later he awoke and went home.
"The Return of Rip Van Winkle" by John Quidor

Hello. My name is Albert Haley. I live in Abilene, Texas, where I am a writer and teacher of creative writing at a local university.

For the last year I've been de-emphasizing my identity, particularly on this blog where I once even went so far as to interview myself with a paper bag over my head. [See post.]

To all my kind readers, accidental, and otherwise, I remained Van Winkle. I signed my posts V.W.

Today I am not going to suddenly open up and invoke a cult of personality, but I will cease to remain in the awkward stance of an anonymous person engaged in an odd (and difficult) project of trying to avoid all news, sports, entertainment, and weather.

The person who thought it would be interesting to try to become a modern-day Rip Van Winkle has awakened. Albert Haley is now roughly like everyone else.

Except I'm starting to wonder after what I've done to myself if I really am.

Hangovers and Pummelings
Although it was a relief for my project to finally end last Sunday, Sept. 11, and thus be able to abandon the daily vigilance required to make sure I didn't overhear or glimpse news, it was the oddest thing to dive back into current events.

I found myself faced with the first newspapers I'd looked at in one year. [See: Sleeping Professor Wakes, Slowly Wades Back into the News]

I began with a weary sounding and downbeat headline story about the U.S.'s latest trillion dollar deficit and what must be done to trim federal spending.

It was clear from both the tone and content of the story that many people have been discussing this for some time. But I don't remember debt reduction being a front-burner issue when I went to "sleep" one year ago.

I thought then of how when Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle closed his eyes in the famous story there were union jacks waving in the breeze. He awoke to find a piece of red, white and blue cloth with stars on it raised in their place. "How did that happen?" he wondered.

I have a similar reaction after being debriefed  by family and friends and learning of Arab revolutions, terrible disasters, partisan vitriol, Congressional paralysis of action, and an economy that seems to be on life support. In addition, I gather that America has gone from having the equivalent of a neutral expression of patience on Uncle Sam's face to a full-blown frown that borders on "Holy Moley, what am I going to do now?"

Intellectually, as I continue "back reading" from my pile of saved newspapers and Newsweeks stored in the garage I can understand the current gray mood. A lot of tough stuff is buried in those pages in the garage.

Still, I don't feel any of this strongly myself. I think it's because my emotions haven't been run through the news ringer of having actually lived through any of it and (here's the big thing) I refuse to force feed myself 365 days of mostly bad news all at once.

Someone in the news business wrote to me the other day warning me what that might be like:

How I'm Actually Doing

While managing to avoid the sad, depressed, anxious state my correspondent described, a new "m-e" seems to be emerging.

    -He reads the morning newspaper in about half the time he used to.

   -He listens to NPR for about 4 minutes on the way to work in the

    morning, that's all, an espresso shot of news instead of a grande.

    -During the day at work he's no longer in the habit of checking the home

      page of the NY Times every hour or two.

    -He only watches the lead story, maybe a couple of more on the evening

     network TV news. Sometimes he skips the show altogether and

     concentrates on cooking dinner.

    -He's in no rush to find out every detail of all the big news events of 2011

     that he missed.

In many ways I'm still enjoying the sort of lifestyle that I forced myself into over the last year. Could it be that I'll never again be a news junkie? That I can now take news in moderation?

There are "social drinkers." They drink just enough to fit in with everyone else and be convivial company at parties and occasions. Maybe I've become a social imbiber of the news?

Maybe. But I'm still working it out. I worry that I'm taking up the mantle of the less informed and therefore, by my  own standards, I am becoming a less intelligent person who has little or no basis for critical thinking about life and the world.

And what do I say to all the journalists out there who are dedicated to working hard, most of them for mediocre wages, to bring us so much news because they believe it can not only offer truth, but it can yield valuable clues and lessons about how all of us should behave in the future? Do I tell them, "You're spoiling my party, so buzz off?"

                      

Excuse me, but to work this out, I think I'm to have to revisit something I did at the beginning of this project. I have a sudden urge to re-read the story of Rip Van Winkle, concentrating especially on the ending.

I'll find how Rip lived the remainder of his life after awakening with the world around him changed. After that I'll check back in with you. - A.H.

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