About me, some stuff
When I was eighteen and a college freshman away from home for the first time, I learned that I was supposed to be afraid to walk alone in urban areas after dark. I learned this on the phone with my mother. I was telling her about my experiences settling intoContinue Reading
I grew up in southern California with a full quartet of grandparents, something Paul envies. My mom’s parents, Bernice and Judson Phillips, lived in Brea, near a park with a jungle gym shaped like a rocket ship. Grandpa Judd and I shared a birthday, and we celebrated together nearly everyContinue Reading
A few months ago I saw the movie Room 237, a documentary about obsessive super-fans of Stanley Kubrick’s movie The Shining, who have watched it more times than you’ve seen Star Wars and developed interesting interpretive theories about Kubrick’s film. These range from the relatively plausible (small incongruities aren’t continuityContinue Reading
Paul: I learned to do specific, useless household chores as a kid. Like iron towels. Julie: My mom asked me to help fold towels once. Then she told me to stop because I was doing it wrong. I don’t think I ever did anything around the house again. Just thisContinue Reading
The theme this year is pirates. I just realized I am on no pirate-related programming. So I will throw this out there: a few years ago I was saying that pirates are the new zombies are the new vampires. Steampunk is the new pirates. I don’t know if there’s aContinue Reading
Some things are weirdly predictable. A woman will write something about how much she hates being told to smile by strange men — such as [Smile, baby!] and [This morning a man told me to smile] — and the comments section will be full of guys telling her that beingContinue Reading
Over at Amazing Stories, Paul Cook decided to poke the anthill with a post titled When Science Fiction is Not Science Fiction. He says a number of rather silly things about science fiction that isn’t really science fiction, but the silliest is this bit right here: Another writer well-praised (fromContinue Reading
(Now that I have updated the website, I am doing some electronic housecleaning. Sometimes I run into a fairly complete, but unpublished essay, such as this one.) So, we saw the new Tron movie. I have inexplicably fond feelings for the old one. I saw it as a teenager, butContinue Reading
This is actually a post about writing, but I’m going to start out talking about Bikram Yoga. There is a pose, called standing head to knee. It’s supposed to go something like this: 1. Lift one leg and balance on the other with a locked knee. 2. Reach down toContinue Reading
[inspired by this Slate article: Mermaids are not the new vampires] The concept of something being the “new vampires” is almost exactly like the concept of something being the “new black” — it’s a joke. There is no new black. There is never a new black. Black is black forContinue Reading
Saw Pacific Rim on Sunday… another movie I wanted to love, and unfortunately didn’t. Guillermo del Toro! Nerd obsessions! Giant monsters! Mako Mori! Idris Elba! It looks pretty and there are some parts of it that work great, but overall I was bored too often and surprised and delighted tooContinue Reading
Yes, you can still support me (or anybody else) in the Clarion West 2013 Write-a-thon. If you support me, I will give you a cookie! Well, not actually a cookie. You get a book that I wrote for Nanowrimo in 2008, plus groovy illustrations. Personally, I would rather get a bookContinue Reading
This recent Slate article [Save the movie!] suggests that an over-reliance on the beat sheet from Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat” books is ruining Hollywood movies, but I think it’s completely wrong. The problem with dull blockbusters isn’t that they are following Snyder’s beat sheet — it’s that they aren’tContinue Reading