Happy New Year: Update

Now who’s a happy guy?  This guy right here, that’s who!  The biggest and best present to me this holiday was that from the Latina Book Club in their great review of PUMPS.  Although I have only gotten positive and sometimes, extremely positive feedback on PUMPS, I was on pins and needles for this one.  To actually have someone from the industry give props to my story is the ultimate compliment of all.  The Latina Book Club’s review of PUMPS came in on December 23^rd, just in time to float my boat soaring so high into the air that I still haven’t come down yet.  By the way, if you haven’t checked out the reviews and recommended readings by the Latina Book Club, you should definitely get over there.  They are promoting books related to the Latino community, which is a great thing in my opinion.  It’s good to know that someone is doing it.  They are great!

Now onto the typical rants that have come to makeup the material on this blog, here goes today’s puff piece.  We are at the start of a new year.  I am on the last day of two weeks off from my regular 9 to 5 day time job for Christmas vacation.  It’s been a glorious 2 weeks of doing nothing. 

It turns out that my brain has decided to take the entire vacation off.  Where I should have been using this time to hard charge it on writing LA Ninja II, I have been bullshitting around playing video games and staying up late watching old reruns of Martin and In Living Color.  I mean, what a serious waste of time.  But it won’t be something that I feel too bad about.  I know that about myself.  When I take a vacation, I completely unplug and stop work, including working out, reading and writing.  Conversely, when I’m back to work, I’m back to work on everything.  It’s just the way I’m wired, I suppose.

It’s been fun though.  My daughter who is only 21 months old kind of got the idea of Christmas, at least the lights and Santa Claus.  It’s kind of amazing to see the world around you transform with decorations.  Seeing it through a first timer’s eyes like hers slows it all down for me and makes me think about the little things.  She didn’t quite understand the presents or the idea of Jesus and God though.  I can’t wait to try to explain that one, haha.  Santa Claus and God, that’ll be fun to explain.  It was fun to watch Christmas through her eyes, but in the end I think she liked Halloween far more.  We’ll see how that turns out next year.

Other than that, the weather’s been pretty shitty.  I hate talking about the weather, especially because it is closely associated with classic “small talk”, but it is always on my mind.  The whole two weeks has been nothing but Sahara desert type heat waves.  Now I don’t care what you say about it being colder than a witch’s tit on the east coast, or in the Yukon or in whatever arctic-like conditions you deal with.  The weather being sunny and hot every single day of every single year is annoying. 

Ungrateful am I?  No.  I love the “mediterranean” type of climate we have here in San Diego, I just hate the Santa Anas; they are hot and they cause nosebleeds.  Would it be too much to ask for a few days of rain?  How about we go from 80F to maybe 66F?  We took the baby to Lego Land and the little lego men were building shade canopies.  We went to the zoo and the camels were eyeballing my water bottle.  Plus, our plans to drive out to the local mountains to see snow went to shit.  There was none.

Anyways, I know I’m alone on this issue, well, not entirely.  My wife shares my disdain on this issue.  But besides us, every other San Diegoan thinks I’m nuts when I bring it up.  They love the Santa Anas, if you can believe that, which brings up the last thing I’ll say on the topic.  I think the constant sunny weather fouls up the brain receptors in people.  Maybe not exactly that, but there is definitely something in living with the four seasons.  There is something therapeutic in watching the weather change and spending the winter indoors with your family.  I think families must be closer when they spend more time together indoors.  I think their relationships must be better too.  There is something great about watching a movie, listening to music, cooking and dancing by a roaring fire with your closest family while evading the terrible weather outside.  You don’t get that when every day is groundhog day.

Well, enough of that.  During the strenuous task of not reading or writing or working, I’ve been watching movies over the past two weeks.  I saw “Here Comes the Boom” with Doug Heffernan, er, I mean Kevin James.  It was a good movie with a common storyline that delivered well with the UFC backdrop.  It was funny and entertaining, and it tugged at the heart strings when things finally worked out in the end.  Hooking up with Salma Hayek though?  Puleeze.  And how Doug pulled a girl as hot as Carrie (Leah Remini) in King of Queens still boggles my mind, but it’s all good.  More power to you Doug!

I also saw Dark Shadows.  I know I’m late on all of these, but having a new kid will do that to you, so cut me some slack, jack, will ya? lol.  Dark Shadows was totally awesome.  It was funny, interesting, fresh, and deep.  Johnny Depp is easily one of my favorite actors.  And whoever the witchey woman was, she was hot in a dark, crazy way.  While it was no surprise that Tim Burton had his hands all over this, I was surprised that Graham King produced it too.  Graham just knows how to make movies.  It is my dream to work with him someday.  A guy’s gotta have a dream, right?  Haha, that looks fem on paper.

I also saw Anchorman II.  This movie was off the chain funny, I mean it was sofa king funny I had three laugh attacks in the theatre.  Who says that when you reach the big time, you “shit standing up”?  Jack Lame does, that’s who.  I lost it on that line, I truly lost it and almost had to leave the theatre, but I hung in there.  The movie not only didn’t disappoint, but it far surpassed Anchorman I, in my opinion.  Anchorman I pretty much falls apart after Ron Burgundy gets fired and leaves the station, but this movie never does that.  Anyways, I have made plans to go see it again, and I won’t say anymore now to avoid giving away the plot.  That’s been my two weeks on vacation.  Now it’s back to the grind.  Smell ya later!

Fast LA and Hot Girls Farting: Update

This is an update in general of my pervasive and sad but curious thoughts on the world.  After the long local confinement that’s been my life for the past almost two years, we finally took a road trip.  The truth is, we’ve been terrified of our daughter to the point of not wanting to wander out any further than the city limits of our sleepy big town that is San Diego.  The fear has been that she’d crucify us with her undying contempt and disapproval by means of shouting and crying.  Be that as it may, we felt that we were finally at a place where we could handle a small trip to LA.

Our beloved love child was great during the trip, so there was definitely no issue there.  And while it was awesome to get out of the city, it was even better to get up to LA.  Anyone who’s read either of my books will know that both stories were set in LA.  There’s good reason for that.  LA is an amazingly vibrant, exciting, and powerful city with a huge culture and mix of interesting people of worldly elite.  I love LA.  And, as I’m writing this, I’m reminded of the attitude that San Dieogoans have towards LA, in general, but I will address that piece separately.

While we were hanging out with my cousins at a park, my babygirl was playing in the playground.  My wife and I watched proudly as she maneuvered through the play structure when a few of her peers wandered on to the sand.  I said to my wife, “here is the real test.  The LA kids don’t mess around, they will test her.”  My wife smiled nervously, and while she generally knew what I meant, I of course went on to explain.

I have spent a lot of time in LA, growing up here in San Diego.  Most of my family lives there, so I spent a lot of time as a youth there.  Plus, it’s only a two hour drive, and if you’ve ever seen the traffic on the 5 freeway between LA and San Diego, you know that it is as heavy as it gets.  But, even though the city is so close, it is so far, and also so much faster than San Diego.  You grow up fast in LA.  The fit are simply more fit and the weak do not last long.  I know it’s the same in most big cities, but through my experiences I know that San Diego is a lot further behind in that sense.

When I was a kid, I’d get to LA and the kids my age were doing things that the older kids were doing.  They were smarter, had quicker wits, knew all the cool shit out there, dressed cooler, talked cooler and even listened to cooler music.  And I know that everyone pretty much learns the same things over time, but they just learned them faster in LA.  And everything is magnified more too.  Flaws are magnified and exploited and virtues are magnified and reveled at too.  You gotta have tough skin and you can’t be afraid of the spotlight.  In San Diego, you can get away with being a weirdo; well maybe just being a bit off, but in LA the kids will call you out on that shit.  You might be the coolest in your school in San Diego, but when you get to LA, you aren’t so special. 

Another thing I just thought of is food.  In a big city you can keep the night going, but that’s pretty hard to do in San Diego.  Even when I lived in Toronto, I could get chinese food or pizza at three in the morning.  You think I can get anything like that here?  Hells no.  I gotta hit up Walmart for some frozen pizza if we get a late craving.  We did that at least once too, on the way back from the one short strip of clubs that makes up San Diego’s club scene.  Don’t get me started on that either, because once you start going to the clubs here on the regular you just run into the same old people over and over.  The club scene in Toronto was off the chain, and the music was way way better.  Listening to San Diego radio stations has driven me to talk radio.  Can you say, put on top 40 and hit the repeat button?  

That’s the gist of it anyways, and that’s part of the allure of big dynamic cities over the sleepy, slow life of smalltown, USA.  It’s way bigger than that, of course, and to really cut to the core of it as Baxter would, you’d have to dig a lot deeper into it.  It would require more analysis, including psychological and sociological impacts, economic and environmental impacts, industries, politics, race and culture demographics, climate, geographic topology, equatorial relationships, and so on and so forth.  Alas, I try to keep my puff pieces light.  Let’s just say that life in the big cities and fast and exciting, whereas life in the small cities and towns is a lot slower and mellow.  Which one is better is not the point.  At any point in one’s life, one or the other might be the best medicine. 

Oh yeah, and I guess I never got to the hot girls farting part of this piece.  I guess I’m saving that for next time.  For now, just try to imagine.

Ugly A$$ Fools

“I’m not what you would call a handsom man.  The good Lord chose not to bless me with…” – Paco from The Waterboy

I remember seeing that scene for the first time and thinking the opposite.  Ron Howard’s brother, Clint, played the part of the “ugly” guy in that movie and scene, and I remember thinking that I just didn’t get it.  He seemed like an ok looking guy to me.  However, I also remember thinking that I suck at being able to tell if a dude is good looking or not.  This thing really goes back way before that though.

Many years ago, when I was a teenager and even into my twenties, I couldn’t tell if a guy was good looking or not.  And why would I?  I mean who gives a crap?  All dudes pretty much looked ugly to me, just in differing degrees, perhaps.  When the world went crazy for NKOTB, I was like, why.  All the chicks wanted those dudes, but they looked whack to me.  Nice hair, guys.  Back then, I’d see a blond guy with blue eyes and I’d say, hey, Allie (my wife), that guy’s gotta be good looking, right?  “Gross,” she’d say. 

Fast forward to today.  It’s getting a bit better.  Maybe it’s because I’m a bit more in tune with myself and my own standing in the world.  Maybe it’s because my eye for details has gotten so much better.  For example, I see the straight lines in face structures; I can see cratered skin, crooked noses, uneven eyes, sloping foreheads, bad teeth, funny chins etc…  I see those things now, when before, possibly because of some mental block, I didn’t see any of it unless it was super obvious.  Whatever the reason, I think I come a lot closer, but still (and proudly) I cannot tell.

Just the other day, I laughed that Channing Tatum was going to be a guest on the Ellen show.  My wifeypants got all super excited that this ugly a$$ fool was coming on that day.  Now, this dude makes pretty good movies, and he seems pretty cool.  “Fighting” was an awesome movie.  This guy is cool enough to be my friend, from what I can tell, but that says nothing about his looks.  I never thought anything of it until he blew up and got every chick’s attention.  I ain’t hatin’, and congrats to him and all that, and I guess I know he’s not an “ugly a$$ fool”, but I’m just saying, he doesn’t look like anything special to me.

Anyways, that’s what prompted me to write this piece to begin with.  Oh, and I lol’d when he didn’t show up to Ellen in person, but telecommuted instead.  Pretty funny!  So I got to wondering how it was that women can always tell.  They can tell if other women are hot as well as men.  If things were fair, they’d be able to tell if men were hot but they’d be confused about other women, right?  Not the case.  Now wouldn’t that be so easy and nice?  How many female problems would just vanish if they couldn’t tell if the other were hot or not?  Jealousy?  Poof!  Be gone!

Fat chance.  But, there was something else.  Some dudes can tell if other dudes are hot.  What’s with that?  Maybe the ones who can tell are more in touch with themselves.  Maybe those dudes are more on the sensitive side, which in all honesty I can’t see how, would make a difference.  I think it’s a little more than that though.  I haven’t done any research, and I doubt that I ever will, but I think it is simply people having an eye for these sorts of things.  Like and art collector or anyone else that has a keen eye for the beauty in the flowers, the even sound of a well-pitched note, or even the beautifully combined words of thought provoking prose, maybe it has more to do with the eye of the beholder.  Maybe only those, male or female, that have reached a certain level of enlightenment can discern real beauty, and beauty that is beyond skin deep?  Does that mean that women are more enlightened than men?  Maybe.  You tell me.

Stuff I’m Doing Right Now: Update

So I recently made mention to all my FB friends how fall is my favorite time of year.  The summer releases its relentless grip on us and gently gives way to a comfortable season where I can get to where I’m going without breaking into a sweat.  In addition, fall is good for football season, all things pumpkin, primetime TV, beautiful changing colors of the natural world, and of course the holidays. What’s not to love about that?

I’ve been watching TV and trying to read books and other stuff.  I’m watching the Vampire Diaries, and the spin-off, the Originals.  Both are easily my favorite shows.  I don’t care much for the tired Vampire themes, but the characters keep me wanting more.  That goes to show how important good characters are in a story –just ask the Breakfast Club.  I’m also watching Revolution, but I’m barely hanging on.  The storyline is getting a bit sloppy.  Two Broke Girls are smoking hot, and the show is good too; Dads is sofa king funny; RHONJ is pretty good (don’t ask), and I’m still watching some of the old shows and a few other new ones that are not yet worth mentioning.

I’m also reading a few things.  I (virtually) bumped into Ernest Hogan at Labloga and I started reading High Aztech and his short story, the Frankenstein Penis.  I gave up, for the time being, on High Aztech, not because it wasn’t good, in fact, I’d like to see where the guy (protagonist) ends up, but I stopped because I didn’t have the vocabulary needed to get through it easily.  It was a bit hard to read because Ernest artistically chose to use a made up language, mixed with Spanish and Aztec.  I’m sure I’m fucking that explanation up, but that’s what I perceived it to be.  I have the Frankenstein Peen bookmarked, but I haven’t got around to it yet.  Either way, I’m glad Ernest is out there doing what he does, and from what I can tell, he is a pioneer in the Chicano Sci Fi genre.  ChiFi?  I don’t know what my obsession is with coming up with short cut phrases.

I’m also reading Happy Hour at Casa Dracula, a free promotional e-book from Marta Costa.  It’s ok so far.  I just started chapter 7, and it’s probably a bit too chick lit for me, but I feel vested at this point and I will probably finish it.  More to come on this one.  Uh, I also started reading a book on my iPhone called Shoe Strings, by Christy Hayes.  I found it because I was scoping competition in the “Pumps” category of stories, but this didn’t turn out to be that at all.  I read the first four chapters, and the story was taking too long to develop.  The writing was mechanically good, but the story lagged too much.  Sorry Christy, if you’re reading this, but not enough was happening.  I kept hoping that the lady (I forget the protagonist’s name) would do something, but she just kept hanging out with the old guy and giving the young guy the cold shoulder.  And why was she not working on her shoes?  She just ran away for no reason, which I’m sure Christy explains later…?

Lastly, I found a friend of mine online.  She is a poet out of North Carolina, just beginning to get her stuff out there.  Her name is Tye and this is her.  She is a very outspoken free thinker with a strong voice and mind.  Tye is definitely a strong woman, as is my wife, Allie.  Love the strong women out there standing on their own, representin’!  Tye has some very raw pieces out, and I love them.  Can’t wait to read more, Tye!

Lastly again, aside from all that, I’m working diligently on LA Ninja II: Rise of the Cartel.  Nobody will read it, as nobody read LA Ninja I: Fallen Love, but amazingly, it doesn’t stop me from the insanity –lol.  Anyways, I’m on chapter twelve, and even though I had the blueprint all set, the story has taken me in a different direction.  Surprise surprise, not.

I will say that writing LA Ninja II has made me feel a bit embarrassed for writing LA Ninja I.  It’s not that LA Ninja was bad; I still think it’s good, but the story was very singular and linear.  It was written more like a movie script, which at the time I had purposely set out to do.  But now, my writing is very different.  I have many plots going on in parallel, right from the start, in LA Ninja II.  It’s turning out pretty good, and Sergio Munoz, Gabe, and some others are doing some pretty interesting things.  I wonder how it will turn out?  Anyways, that one is almost to the halfway point, I'm guessin, so it’s gonna finish out at about 27 chapters or so.  That’s my life in books and TV at the moment.  And don’t you guys get any ideas about me not spending QT with my two girls –they wouldn’t let me have it!  I’m the quintessential NightWriter.  NightWriter, I love that!  It’s so me.