It's a Christmas Miracle

So, yeah… Christmas. It was pretty good. Spent quality time with the family, hung out with some friends, did a bit of service, read “A Christmas Carol”… and, of course got some good gifts.

The big news (well, as far as I’m concerned) is that I got a lot of writing done. I mean, A LOT. I went back and revisited some old poems I haven’t TOUCHED in two years… and I got started on a new prose project that’s got me pretty excited.

Bottom line, though, is that I need a bit of help. I’m getting ready to start submitting poetry to be published again, which means I’d like a few volunteers to read and give me some feedback. And this, gentle reader, is where you come in.

If you’d like to help, I’ll send you a poem or two. Any feedback you can give will be greatly appreciated. I usually just ask that you answer a few questions for me:

1 – Did you like it? Why or why not?
2 – What was your favorite part or line of the poem? Why?
3 – Which parts of the poem didn’t work for you or were confusing? And, of course, why?

I thought I’d post the titles of the poems I’m considering submitting. If any of them catch your fancy, you can let me know, and I’ll send that one specifically to you. So the poems are:

1 – Captain America
2 – Showers
3 – Soap Bubbles
4 – A Poem on my Dog, Wilbur, Who Died when I was Eleven
5 – Curve
6 – Summer Day
7 – The Calculator Man
8 – Getting to Know You
9 – Sometimes
10 – Schrödinger’s Poem

As a bonus, I’m also offering to let people read the first little vignette from Angel of Mercy, the next big prose piece I’m working on. I’m pretty excited about it. It’s like Touched by an Angel, except that all the angels are complete $#@%s. It’s not an urgent read, though, so I don’t really NEED people to help with it… but I am kind of curious if people like it.

Anyway, I’d love for any of you to help… even you. Yeah, you. No, don’t be modest. I really value your opinion. No, I’m NOT just being nice, I mean it. Thanks in advance.

Isn't it Christmas?

Wish I Said It First #3

From The Jesters Royale improv workshop this past week:

#3

"Mathematics. Sometimes... I can see it."

Manelle Oliphant, performing as a conceited French poet.

(Maybe you had to be there, but darn it, this was funny!)

Evolve or Die

You may have noticed that most of the sketches I've posted so far have been of faces. I'll admit that's where I've focused most of my attention. It's also the subject on which I've done the most reading. The truth is, I'm kind of embarassed to try to move on to some of the other areas of the body.

For example, I caught myself the other day looking down the row of people sitting in church and thought to myself, "Hm, I kinda want to draw that girl's legs."

Of course, right after, I thought, "I can't be staring at that girl's legs! I'm in church!"

To avoid the awkwardness of ogling others (well, more overtly) during church, I decided to instead borrow a book on figure drawing from my buddy Aldo, a pretty darn good artist in his own right. Of course, the book contains pictures of full-frontal female nudity...

I think there's a disconnect in the tracks of my logic train...

Anyway, more sketches coming up soon.

Wish I Said It First #2

#2

"Batman is always the least interesting character in everything he's in. What can you do with a character who responds to everything by either punching it or deploying Bat 'Anti-Thing' Spray... then punching it."

Yahtzee Croshaw, "Zero Punctuation!: Batman: Arkham Asylum," The Escapist, http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/926-Batman-Arkham-Asylum

WARNING: Contains adult language.

Class Conscious Comedy - Courtesy of the Jesters Royale

Have you ever felt poor? I mean, not just “lower-middle class” poor, but dirty fingernail, uneducated, get-hit-in-the-face-by-a-wreath-thrown-by-Ebenezer-Scrooge poor? Well, if you haven’t and you’d like to, I recommend making friends with a doctor and heading over to their pad – which is likely the size of a small hospital itself, only, instead of sick people, it’s full of statues of naked women.

The story begins (and ends) on the evening of December 12, 2009. I, with a few of my comrades from the Jesters Royale comedy improv troupe (http://www.jestersimprov.com/ – enough pimping for you?) had been invited to participate in the Christmas celebration for the Maliheh Free Clinic. The party took place at the doctor’s home in Holladay, UT. Truthfully, though, I could have sworn that we drove through a wardrobe somewhere along the way, because we must have been in Narnia or some other magic kingdom. The house was fully lit up like a palace, the artwork and furnishings were strange and unusual, and I’m pretty sure I heard the house cat speak to me. Couldn’t understand it, though – must have been French.

The guests all mingled in the lobby room – which was larger than my childhood home and held a couch larger than my bed – dressed to the nines in nice sport coats and sparkly dresses. Meanwhile, we, the entertainment, stood off to the side with our filthy hands stuffed into the pockets of our jeans. One of the guests must have noticed our discomfort. She, naturally, assumed we just needed something to do, so she came over and politely asked, “Are you the help?”

We set up in the gym for our performance – and, yes, this house has a gym, complete with a treadmill, basketball hoop, and the mounted heads of water bison, deer, and gnus. Feeling a little uncomfortable, though, I wandered back to the kitchen in search of something to drink. The counter was full of bottles to choose from. Unfortunately, the bottles were each labeled with some hard-to-pronounce name and a year (must’ve been French). I slunk back to the gym, thoroughly intimidated. Thankfully, on my second foray to the drink bar (the others came with me this time, so I had reinforcements), I found a solitary bottle of 7-Up, which I had never been so happy to make mine.

Before the show, I decided it would be wise to use the bathroom. Just like everything else I’d encountered in this house thus far, the bathroom scared the… you know what? I don’t think I can tastefully finish that sentence.

Anyway, as I went in to the bathroom, I noticed a large, clear, circular window, about 3 feet in diameter, sitting at waist level just above the toilet. Just as I saw it, Blake (one of the other Jesters) called out, “Look out the window there and see if you can see that big white dog!”

“Well,” I said, as a member of the catering staff walked past the window, “I don’t see a DOG…”

I went to the sink to wash my hands. For some reason, the knob for the hot water wouldn’t turn. I figured they must have set up a faucet with those pull knobs, so I grabbed the knob and pulled it up. I knew I was mistaken when the knob came off in my hands.

Finally, the time came for us to perform. We included in our lineup a game called World’s Worst, in which the audience shouts out an occupation, and the players in the game act out what the world’s worst example of that occupation would be. When asked for an occupation that only required a high-school diploma, the audience was quick to respond with “improv performer.”

“Hey!” I said, a little heatedly, “I’ll have you know that I have a bachelor’s degree in Creative Writing!”

They seemed to find this even funnier.

Okay, so I kid a little bit. The performance wasn’t bad, the audience seemed to enjoy it, and the doctor who hosted the party extended every courtesy to us. He even joined us for a game of Sound Effects and made fantastic motorcycle noises (while he was trying to imitate an earthquake).

Still, though, I never thought I’d be so relieved to head back to our usual venue on Magna main, across from all the bars.

I'll See YOU On Broadway

I spent some time over the weekend at my parents' place - mainly because I simply HAD to take my mother up on her offer for a pizza dinner (if you'd ever had it, you'd know). Anyway, so I spent some time looking at the pictures my parents have on the wall. My parents have a little display for each of their children. So I saw:

1 - pictures of Joseph and his beautiful wife, Deborah
2 - pictures of Bryan and his beautiful wife, Patricia
3 - pictures of Robert, his beautiful wife, Allicia, and their beautiful daughter, Claire.
4 - pictures of me doing musical theater with a bunch of dudes.

I think my parents think I'm gay.

Wish I Said It First #1

Title's pretty self-explanatory: Every now and again I hear something funny/caustic (or both) that I WISH I'd thought of first. I'm gonna start keeping track of these quotes here, if you're interested. Just look for all entries with the WISIF header.

#1

"I'll put a bullet in your head and call it macaroni!"

The Nostalgia Critic, "The Top 12 Greatest Christmas Specials," http://thatguywiththeglasses.com/videolinks/thatguywiththeglasses/nostalgia-critic/3226-top-12-greatest-christmas-specials

WARNING: Contains adult language.

Fever Dreams on Psycho Themes

You know what the worst part about being sick is? Well, besides the headaches, nausea, fevers, dizzy spells, backaches, joint pains, and diminished energy? To me, it’s the weirdo dreams you get.

Here are the four I got during this last illness that I’m just now getting over:

1 – I was involved in some type of battle, where the position I took while sleeping in bed somehow correlated to my defense against the enemy attacks. For example, if I were to lay on my back like I normally do, the enemy would not be able to attack me from a certain direction. However, if they decided to come at me from the side, I had to shift my position (say, curled up on my left side) to counter their attack. So I spent the entire night twisting my superficially-sleeping body into various Tetris shapes.

I wish I could be more descriptive than that – it was a pretty surreal dream. I remember that, somehow, I was both commanding the battle from the trenches in army fatigues AND lying in bed in my pajamas. Not only that, but whenever I got up during the night and went back to bed, the EXACT SAME DREAM picked up right where it left off. And that happened about six or seven times (it was a bad night).

The weirdest part, though, is that I had the exact same dream the LAST time I got sick way back in April. I haven’t the faintest idea what it means, but I think somebody ought to notify Nintendo that Tetris Wars would be a pretty awesome game.

2 – I had to fight off a demon that had somehow taken up residence in my apartment. When I say “demon,” I’m not referring to a Legion-type swine-possessor, but rather a Doom-3 monstrosity, with skin the color of bad teeth and the face of Gilbert Gottfried. This particular demon made dolls out of people’s heads. I saw three heads just lying in the gutter outside my apartment, and, instead of being horrified, I idly wondered why the demon decided not to make dolls out of THOSE.

Anyway, for some reason, my shotgun didn’t hurt the demon at all (also, I had a shotgun). I retreated until I was able to locate a weapon better suited for combat, which I eventually found: a plastic pitchfork, the kind you use for your six-year-old boy’s devil costume. I found the pitchfork in a dumpster. In fact, I actually passed over three or four other pitchforks, because they weren’t sufficiently “cool.”

End of dream (I don’t actually know if the plastic pitchfork hurt the monster). On to number 3.

3 – My parents invited The Jesters Royale, the improv comedy team I’m a member of, to perform in the street in front of their house. I created a character for one scene named “Chunk-a-lunk.” He was supposed to be a caveman, but, for some reason, I was wearing a costume consisting of blue overalls with bright, colorful patches on the knees and (ahem) posterior and a yellow shirt.

Now that I’m awake, I realize that the outfit I wore in the dream was actually a costume I had to use during my high school’s production of the musical Li’l Abner, wherein I played a very unhygienic hillbilly… which is almost like a caveman.

4 - I've just woken up, and I'm washing my face in the bathroom sink as I'm getting ready for work. When I pull my hands away from my face, I'm actually holding bits of my face in my hands. I have two eyes in my hands, completely hollow (and blue, even though my eyes are brown), and also my upper lip, and bits of hair from the top of my head and from my moustache.

When I look up at the mirror, I see that I still have eyes in my head, but the hair from my face actually came all the way off. There's still a little bit of hair left on my upper lip, but there's very little of it, and it's all long, like mouse whiskers. And the hair from my head didn't come off from the lowest part but, about an inch above my hairline, I know have a perfect crescent-moon bald spot, slightly fough, like what happens a few hours after your shave.


So, on the one hand, these dreams have me TOTALLY freaked out (except for "Chunk-a-lunk." I may actually decide to pull that character out for an improv show one day - I'll find a better outfit). On the other hand, though, I think I might have some potential as a horror writer. In your stupid face, Clive Barker!

I'ma Go Grinching

Had a strange experience at work this past week. I found that my shoes didn’t quite fit right. My feet felt… uncomfortably large. Either that, or the shoes themselves had shrunk. It was unpleasant, and the tiniest bit painful, and I wasn’t quite sure of the cause – that is, until I remembered that Thanksgiving was nearly upon us, and, with that particular holiday done, Christmas would not be far behind.

In case you missed it, I just wedged a Grinch metaphor into the introductory paragraph. It didn’t quite want to fit, but two or three whacks with a giant hammer made sure it got into place. Now, I believe I’ve mentioned in the past that, while I used to be particularly fond of Christmas, I find it harder and harder to be jolly as the years go by. This year, I’ve found myself anticipating Christmas with two full cups of disgust and just a hint of dread. I’m not quite in full Grinch mode yet, but, if I were you, I’d keep an eye on your Who-Pudding when I’m around, just in case.

I’m trying to focus on the things about Christmas I like: the Christmas movies, the plentiful excuses to hang with family and friends, the music… although that last one’s pretty tough. I tend to favor the more solemn Christmas “hymns” – like “Silent Night” or “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (and I totally DID put that comma in the right place – philistines) – to the more inane carols like “Frosty the Snowman” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Although, here I have to admit that I enjoy a few notorious holiday songs more than most. Because of some good early memories I have associated with Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime,” I usually DON’T want to stab out my ears with a screwdriver when it comes on the radio. Also, I may be the only person in the world that still legitimately enjoys “The Hanukkah Song” by… *sigh*… Adam Sandler (may he be boiled in his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart).

Hm… while I just intended that last aside to be a derisive remark against Mr. Sandler and his unfortunate idea of “comedy,” I think it actually comes off a bit anti-Semitic, don’t you?

Anyway, focus… Last year I made the point that Christmas is a time for remembering. It’s a shame if you missed it – made for a heckuva blog post. Now, I’m not the first person to make that point, and I doubt I’ll be the last. The trouble is, though, many of the memories I hold from Christmases past bring me just as much unrest (if not outright angst) as all the commercializing we so frequently condemn (yet simultaneously condone every Black Friday).

My favorite memories from Christmastime involve… (here, I struggled for a euphemism for several minutes, and found that I could do more than tell the unadorned, straightforward truth) girls I’ve dated in the past. I hooked up with my first girlfriend (you know, that eternally-youthful sweetheart that always appears perfect in the misted, halcyon memories of childhood… kinda like Winnie in The Wonder Years) two days before Christmas my junior year in high school. That… is a long story, probably better saved for another date.

Another favorite Christmas memory comes from a few years later: After spending the afternoon with my grandparents on Christmas day, I went to spend the rest of the evening with the girl I was dating at the time, who lived just a few blocks away. We curled up on the couch and watched the movie Chocolat – she lay in my arms, rubbing her stocking-clad feet against mine.

(Okay, I know this sounds silly, but, darn it, those socks are an important detail. I can’t quite explain why – well, I guess if we were both still wearing shoes, it’d be uncomfortable to rub our feet together like that, and if we were barefoot, it’d be weird. And gross. Cuz feet are gross.

Seriously, though, the whole scene of playing footsie in stocking-feet, warm and cozy on a cold Christmas night, has stuck with me ever since. I’ve tried to make a poem of it, but every time, it comes off more forced than any frickin’ Grinch analogy I’ve yet to devise, so it’s on the shelf right now)

For those of you who might be confused by the cacophony of ideas that have been fading in and out of this verbal orchestration since paragraph one, here’s where it all comes together to create a familiar tune: Christmas time can kinda suck if you’re single. I’ve spent every Christmas for the past few years either trying vainly to recreate old memories or lamenting their absence. I’m dreading Christmas this year because, frankly, I don’t want to put up with all these ghosts again.

So, with the Christmas season looming like a kidnapper with a burlap sack, it’s time to grit my teeth and face it. I’ve got no worries about commercialism or anything like that this year – my shopping’s all done, anyway (thank you, Black Friday). This year, I’m going ghost hunting – and I’m going on the offensive.

Here’s my plan of attack – a plan to recruit an army of new Christmas ghosts to combat the old ones:

1 – I’ma read A Christmas Carol. I’ve always maintained that Charles Dickens wrote one of the best novels of the English language here, and it’s been years since I’ve actually READ the freakin’ book. So, yeah, I’ll pick it up again.

2 – I’m kind of excited by this idea – I plan to write a series of poems based on/inspired by A Christmas Carol. I wasn’t sure exactly how I was going to do it before this moment – I thought maybe a poem inspired by a particularly well-written line. The whole ghost image above, though, gives me a few ideas… (ominous trail-off).

3 – I need to find a way to offer some service to others over the Christmas season, to make it a bit less self-centered. I may not do much. In fact, I may just participate in a few Sub-for-Santa activities. But seriously, if I hate Christmas so much when my only complaints at Christmastime are “my shoes don’t fit and I don’t have a girlfriend,” then I need perspective.

4 – And, speaking of perspective, I need to make this Christmas a bit more of a… spiritual affair. I KNOW what Christmas is supposed to be about (I’ve seen Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown). The fact that I’ve never really felt the “spirit of Jesus” during the month of December is probably more indicative of my failing as a Christian than anything else. Guess this is the year to remedy that.

…Oh, fine. Here’s a last one, with a bit of a barb in it.

5 – I will kill anyone who sings that unbelievably atrocious “Holiday Season” song.

Holy CATS, that song is terrible.

Second Strike of the Sunday School Sketch Sniper

Good night, do I love alliteration!


Nothing too new in this set. The sketch in the upper-left corner comes from a painting of Jesus I saw in Sunday School class.

The upper-right figure doesn't look too much like the person I was trying to draw, but I actually LOVE how I did the hair.

The guy in the middle illustrates that my problems with drawing hair extend even to facial hair.

The guy in the bottom-right probably best resembles the person I tried to sketch of all the attempts I've made thus far. So I'm kind of proud of it.

Meanwhile, the woman I modeled the bottom-left sketch after looks very little like Hillary Clinton in real life, so I can call that one a failure.

The top two figures don't look a whole lot like the people they were based on. The guy's got a bit of a cut-off skull (his head's too squished). The sketch of the girl has a bit too much of a turned-up nose.

I tried to cartoonize both of them, and wound up with some extras from the Children of the Corn. We'll just move on now.

I recognize that I need to start sketching more inanimate objects as well as people, so we have a REALLY bad stool here, a fairly decent hanging lamp, and a bookshelf that I got tired of drawing books on, so I just gave up by the bottom shelf. People are SO much more interesting to draw.

In each of the corners here are cartoon people sketches I did without a model. The upper-left one I'm particularly proud of. For some reason, he looks like Guile from Street Fighter 2. Don't know why I drew Guile, and I REALLY don't know why I gave him serpent eyes. I think I was just experimenting.

I've been working so much on sketching heads in 3/4 view that I've neglected to draw front-on faces. Both of the faces above are based on characters from The Office. The one in the bottom left is Steve Carell as Michael Scott on the front of the Season 2 DVD boxed set. I think it's a fairly accurate depiction.

For the upper-left face, I paused the DVD on a close up of Jenna Fischer as Pam Beesley (sigh). Yeah, I do recognize that doesn't look a bit LIKE Pam or anyone else. We can now add TEETH to my list of things that I hate to draw.

I'm proud of this sketch: my first full-body person that DOESN'T make me cringe when I look at it. I designed him myself (which is probably why he looks a little bland). The hands still aren't quite the right size, but they're much better. Much, MUCH better.

I think I've pretty much figured out how I'm going to do cartoon eyes from here on out. They don't seem to look a whole lot LIKE eyes, but they work for me. My only concern is that the style draws too much from the big-eyed sparkle-faces you see in Japanese animation.

I need to get a better sense for proportions, especially from the front-view. Once again, I wound up drawing a face that I had to plant smack in the center of a rather chunky face to make the character even look HUMAN.

Oh, and I draw ties because they make the sketch LOOK better, but are really easy to draw.

And is anyone else surprised I hadn't drawn Batman until now?

Man, I love Batman even MORE than I love alliteration. Combine the two -

"Basically, Batman beats baddies by belligerently bashing their brains."

- and I'm in heaven.

Battle Beasts

I can’t help but feel incredibly depressed nowadays, and I don’t know why. Well, other than the usual: hate my job, hate the colder temperatures, got no heat in my apartment, girl issues that I haven’t ignored long enough for them to go away… bah! Seriously, it’s enough to make one want to go punch several small puppies right in their cutesy little sad-eyed faces!

And speaking of violence and animals, anyone remember Battle Beasts?


Sweet Christopher Walken, I LOVED these things. Back in the day when boys were boys and toys were toys, my brothers and I would play with these little beauties for hours on end.

By today’s toy standards, Battle Beasts are probably nothing special. Each little figure was completely immobile except for the arms and came with only a dinky plastic weapon and a heat sensitive sticker that indicated whether the beast belonged to the Fire Tribe, Water Tribe, or Wood Tribe.

And if I hear so much as a SNICKER from ANYONE after the “Wood Tribe” comment, I swear I will turn this blog around and we’ll head right the heck back to MySpace.

Sickos.

Well, for the most part, the toys themselves weren’t really that fantastic. The stickers usually fell off, the arms got pulled out, and the weapons found their way under the sofa or into the vacuum cleaner. Even so, Battle Beasts were the BOMB.*

My brothers and I had a huge ice cream bucket full of the little beasties. Not a birthday went by that my grandmother didn’t decorate her grandkids’ cakes with at least two or three Battle Beasts. We never got any of the “official Battle Beast playsets,” but we made do with a giant, unfolding Transformer called Scorponok and a Cinderella’s castle from Disneyland… and it never struck me as weird that a family of four boys and no girls should have a Cinderella’s castle playset until just now.

When we’d settle down to play Battle Beasts, my brothers and I would pass the bucket around, and each person would pick out a figure one at a time until they were all gone. Of course, being brothers, we fought over the best of the figures. As I recall, the ones most fought over were:

Ferocious Tiger…

War Weasel…

Sabresword Tiger…

Black Panther (who, to this day, looks hardcore)…

Pixelated Pointer (I swear I’m not making this name up)…

…and the mother-effin’ Crooked Crow.

I heard a rumor recently that some company had acquired the rights to distribute Battle Beasts again. If I find out that rumor is true, I’ma have to buy me a few, mostly for nostalgia’s sake. If nothing else, I’d like to remember the time when fun could be had with just a few pieces of plastic and a lot of fighting. Most of the time nowadays, fun requires several hours of preparation, a lengthy drive, and food from a country smaller than Rhode Island and with a name harder to pronounce than “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Hmm… well, I’m glad for that trip down memory lane. I feel much better. Go ahead and let all your puppies out of their kennels now. They’re safe from me. I promise.

*Do people still say “the bomb”? I don’t know anymore. I feel like I should sag my pants and turn my hat backwards or something to stay “hip.” Dangit, I’m too young to feel old!

Highs and Lows

This blog is the closest thing I have to a journal, so I feel kinda bad that I don’t update it that often and, when I do, I generally don’t talk about my personal life so much. I usually just use my blog as a sounding board for my opinions, which are numerous, boisterous, occasionally erroneous, and multiplying like salmon upstream. So, in an attempt to be more personal, I’m going to take a page from Ashley’s blog and write up a quick list of the highs and lows in my life.

HIGHS

1. I just finished a weekend of FANTASTIC improv shows with The Jesters Royale. Six hours of performance at Cottonwood High School on Friday, plus two hours both Friday and Saturday nights. It’s a total rush.
2. Garret Peterson, one of my oldest, dearest, and downright bestest friends of all time, came with his lovely wife to Saturday’s improv show. Afterwards, we went out for pie and hot chocolate at Village Inn. I got home at two o’clock in the morning with something that actually resembled a smile on my face.
3. My parents cooked dinner for the missionaries on Saturday and invited me to join them. They make some of the best food I’ve ever had. This time, it was Swiss steak, and it was glorious.
4. I sent off three requests for letters of recommendation to my old college professors, meaning I’m about three-fourths of the way done with my grad school application.
5. In the past two weeks, I’ve written five poems, which may equal (if not exceed) my output for the rest of the year to date.

LOWS

1. Snow. I HATE snow. I’ve said before that the snow is the devil’s dandruff, and I will stand by that statement till I die – likely in a horrible traffic accident caused by icy roads resulting from the freaking SNOW!
2. I’ve come, slowly but inevitably, to the conclusion that, while my day job leaves me feeling fulfilled as an active contributor to society, I actively HATE what I do. The professional path I am currently on is not going to lead me to where I want to be, and I’m not sure what to do about it.
3. I saw Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen last week. While the movie’s not as bad as everyone on the internet says it is… it’s pah-RIT-ty bad.

Hmm… five “highs,” and each of them something I can sincerely feel proud of/grateful for. Meanwhile… only three “lows,” and one of them’s really a movie review, not an actual tragedy…

When the crap did I become a happy person?