I want Ryan Reynolds to play me...

When I become famous (or infamous) and there's a movie made of my life. I don't care that we look nothing alike (did Alexander Graham Bell really look like Don Ameche?) or that he's Canadian and I'm from California or that he doesn't even have red hair (Clairol #16 is close enough of a color). He'd bring integrity and strength to the role, something I can find myself lacking in, all too often.

You see, I just watched his elegant PSA for clean energy, making so much better a point and offering a better suggestion on how to end this oil nonsense than any other news story or commercial or anything dealing with the destruction of the Gulf of Mexico has...all in the space of 35 seconds.

Here's the link -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNaD-tjYvHs

I admire people who put themselves up front like this. And while I may make my liberal, card-carrying-member-of-the-ACLU comments on other blogs under my real name (or my nickname...and I really AM a member) it's done from a safe distance. No one really knows my face or how to get hold of me except those whom I want to. But now Ryan Reynolds will get blasted by some right-wing nuts for daring to put forward a "librul" agenda, and never you mind that it only makes sense. Hell, he may even get death threats. Hey, if the freaks on the right send them to Paul Krugman for pointing out simple economic reality, they'll send them to anybody.

Ryan, I know there's no way in hell you're gonna read this, but I still have to say -- love ya, mean it...and not 'cause you're beautiful.

Hmm...I must be feeling better. I did nothing today because it seems I actually did get a small sinus infection going on top of working my butt off. So I self-medicated. Slept till 11 and even took a nap, this afternoon. Ate light. Didn't go out, at all. And now I'm back to making political comments, even on my own blog. Helps that I've only had two sneezing fits, and both were much earlier, today.

What days like this help me do is think. My favorite film of all time is "The 400 Blows" (which some so-called film school graduate on a film shoot I was helping out on actually wondered, aloud, if that was gay porn...and he wasn't joking; he was honestly freaked that I might be discussing gay sex on the set, the backwoods little fuck). Anyway, it has lots of humor in it, following the antics of Antoine Doinel as he goes from being a rambunctious kid to winding up in a reformatory thanks to his parents' casual disinterest in him. And my favorite book, "War & Peace", has humor in it. So why am I such a humorless writer?

I mean, I can do witty, sometimes...which is a poor substitute. But even my farce -- "The Lyons' Den" -- doesn't really generate laughs in people. I think I have a couple of good ones in "The Cowboy King of Texas" and "The Lavender Curse" -- but those will depend so much on the readings of the actors and how the directors present them, I can't say they're really mine. I just suck at writing humor...and I can't figure out why. Kyle Cicero works it into his books with no effort.

That said...humor makes for more realistic humanity, and that's what I want in POS. So...how do I add it? How do i FIND it?

Okay, Kyle (me not the other guy), did you really need to add another level of impossible to this story?

I need to live to be a hundred

I've got 12 books and 3 plays I want to write, as of now, and at the rate I'm going, I'll need to be around that long to get them done. Hopefully I'll still be continent at that age, but you never know how you'll turn out, do you? All I really know is I'm tired to the bone and can't wait for the plane to start boarding.

I got extended by a day in NYC to go see a collection of artwork and photos being shipped to London along with the shipment I packed...if they can work it out. I reworked 58 boxes into 86 and it was rough. As I dug into each box, I found books that had been just shoved in, wrapped in nothing, and bundles of 2-3 books wrapped with no protection, all in different sizes and shapes...and it hurt. This packing job was done by someone who did not care about books at all. Nor did the person whose collection this came from do anything to keep them in shape. So many had front and back boards torn off and/or missing, pages folded, spines cracked and flaking, rust on some of the leather volumes (that's when the leather is so dried out, it turns to dust) and on and on. I've never let my books get to that point. I don't dust them every day...hell, even every month...but I do wipe them down and keep them in decent shape, even though the majority are for research. It actually hurt to see them done this way.

But they're better packed, now. In boxes of a decent weight -- 35-40 pounds instead of 55-60...in the same size box -- and wrapped in bubble and packed tight. It's funny, the woman I was dealing with thought I was CONDENSING the books into tighter packages and was surprised when I mentioned how much less the boxes now weigh. Jesus, these people are clueless.

So here I am...watching books fall into disrepair as I decide to write more. And I'm writing them in the face of learning my books so far are a bit depressing. I need to do more farce. Or maybe see if I can bring some humor into POS before I have it set in stone. I don't know. right now, my mind drifts and I think of nothing if I can help it.

Hell...I can think of nothing even when I don't mean to.

Chelsea Boiz

I worked till nearly 7 then had dinner at Ruth's Chris (finishing off my gift card with a perfect small filet and potatoes au gratin) and hopped a train down to 19th Street to make my visit to The G Lounge. It's a very toney place with dance music and a too-cool bar. Patrick was too busy to come over to talk (he's mentioned in the Mark Julian books) so I had an appletini (which was nice and light, to my surprise) and left a note tell them why I'd come in. I doubt the bartender who did serve me -- this tall, broad-shouldered, male-model type -- paid any attention to it. Doesn't matter. I enjoyed being there and seriously doubt I'm the kind of guy they'd talk to, anyway.

On POS, I had a moment pop up while I was working and now know what I'm writing next -- a dream Brendan has that seems more real than his life.

I just finished talking with Kyle C about the G Lounge and he made some points about "Mr. Lucky" that have me thinking...dammit.

Okay...brain is about to crash and burn. Nothing more tonight. Doesn't help my sinuses are being driven nuts be something in the NYC ACs. That or I'm getting a summer cold.

Double-dammit.

Ping-pong ball

Bounced back to NYC, today...on a plane that was scheduled to leave at 7:05 am but didn't take off till 8:15 am due to "technical issues." Didn't stop Jet Blue from loading the plane, however, and letting us sit there for nearly an hour and a half. So I got here late and got started on everything late and busted butt to try and get caught up...and now I'm dog tired.

BUT...I did have a nice long conversation with Kyle Cicero, who wrote the "Mark Julian" series of vampire detective novels with a gay twist. I'd call them gay detective novels but while Mark is gay and has a husband, so many of the other characters are straight it seems like it'd be false advertising. I was supposed to meet him for lunch at noon but I ditzed and didn't notice the time till after 1pm.

Kyle's a hoot to talk with, and he's convinced me to make an homage of a visit to The G Lounge down in Chelsea to have both a frozen Cosmo AND a frozen Appletini...and maybe flirt a little with Patrick and/or Pedro. We'll have to see how this goes over. I don't drink a lot -- maybe a beer at dinner -- so this may be a bad idea. BUT...I'm in NYC, the place for bad ideas to happen (unless you're in Vegas, but then try to find anyone to have those bad ideas with; it's all family-oriented).

We chatted about writing and it's nice to know he's having the same troubles as me -- focused on a story and then some other thing slams into your brain to take over and make your life scatter in a hundred different directions. (I love being able to commiserate with a fellow author about the horrors of writing.)

I mean, I want to finish POS now. I'm so close I can taste it. I've finished Bobby Sands' book, "A Day in My Life" and it's given me ideas on what to do with Brendan's troubles with the RUC and British. I know how to write his part in a couple of the major moments in The Troubles. I just need to buckle down and do it.

But even plotting out "Mr. Lucky" and assigning the story its own folder hasn't shut the damned thing up. Maybe I'll work it out as a novella and see if that will let it be. But I don't know if that'll be all right. When I wrote "Desert Land" under a similar circumstance, it sent me into blankness for weeks. Don't think I want to risk it, again. I'll never get POS done if I succumb to that.

So my obnoxious story is being deliberately placed on a back burner as I tend to the slow-cooking stew that's just about ready to eat. Some say it's the best way to cook a stew -- slowly, over the course of 36 hours (or months or years, as the case may be) because everything blends together in a new flavor.

Wait -- am I using the right analogy for POS? Maybe I should refer to T-Bills or reconstructing an antique car. Hmm, I like the last one...especially since Brendan's into car repair.

My room is near the overhead Metro tracks and trains can be heard passing every few minutes. Ahh, New York.

WTF?

I have an odd battle brewing in my schizo head. A new story that's slammed up -- "Mr. Lucky" -- is trying to muscle POS aside so it can be told, and we're about to have a replay of the Irish civil war...i.e. short, brutish and insanely stupid. But Mr. L deals with the insane stupidity and hypocrisy of Arizona's anti-immigrant laws and their enforcement, mingling in the fact that a lot of trafficking in human beings for sexual purposes happens in that state (much of it catering to Anglos looking for more than just gardeners, maids and dishwashers) and it's another pissed-off story loaded with in-your-face-sexual encounters and abuses to illustrate my points.

Thing is, this time the lead character will have no real name, just his nick-name (which is also the story's title). And unlike my other stories, I get the feeling nothing bad happens to him to make him turn on the world; his actions are just a natural outgrowth of what's going on not only in Phoenix and Tuscon but Juarez, Tijuana and Mexico City with the brutality of the drug wars. It'll be about the lessening of human empathy on a large scale, and I also get the feeling nothing bad will happen to the narrator, even in the way of punishment...which makes me uncomfortable...but is probably more realistic in this day and age.

It's interesting...well, to me it is...that the second of my revenge stories, "Porno Manifesto", is turning out to be the gentlest and most moral. What happens to Alec sort of explains and almost excuses his actions (he wants to find out who nearly killed him in a gay-bashing and, since the cops won't do anything about it, punish them, himself) but at the end he actually steps back from the abyss of hatred on his own terms, not winding up in jail or under threat by the judicial establishment, and he does feel a hint of remorse because he's injured some innocent people. He's the closest I have to a hero in these stories. In both HTRASG and RIHC6, the narrators are about as anti-hero as you can get.

I don't include BC as a revenge story because it's really a tragedy and the sex is so completely overshadowed by the building horror of events surrounding Bobby and Eric and how there's nothing they can do to stop any of it. In a way, that's what I'm aiming to do with Brendan in POS -- build the life of a person in as real and consistent a manner as possible as events slowly envelop them. And in both books, I've known the endings and beginnings before I began writing them, while with the other three...I had no idea where they'd wind up; they just hit the ground running and I was more of a stenographer than a writer on those (tho' v2 of RIHC6 played with my mind, a lot).

The thing is, I'm ready to start at the beginning of POS and fill in what needs filling, now that I know the path it's taking to get to its end. Now it's time to let the flow settle in over me and wash me along...and then comes this smash-up of a story screeching to a halt in my mind and revving its engine so loudly, I can't hear anything else. On top of this, Mr.L's already announced his moral base, and I'm not sure I like how amoral it is. But it fits.

Shit, I don't know what to do. If I don't get going on POS, I won't make first draft by the end of the year.

To which Brendan replies, "Focus!"

Catch up

Man, it seems I'm way behind on everything. I did laundry and paperwork and e-mails -- I have 5 e-mail addresses which is WAY too many but each one has different people on it as well as some of the same people and I just never can find the time to consolidate them since it would be really hard to do. Of course, I let myself sleep late so that got me started late, and I caught up on my sites and now feel up to date with the news of the world.

One budding problem -- my AC has a leak of some kind...or maybe it's just condensation...except I haven't run it all week and yet the carpet under it is wet and beginning to mold. NOT cool...nor does the damned thing do all that MUCH in the way of cooling. ACs in this part of the country suck.

So...pulling together my next trip to NYC on Wednesday with a Thursday return. I think I can pull this off if I work steady at it. Then the following week I'm off to LA and SA.

No writing done, today. I just fiddled with some of the images I shot in NYC over the last two days. Turns out I screwed up my camera's settings, so half the images are in low-res and look like crap. See?
But I DO like how the Chagall window in the UN building turned out.

Home, again, home, again...

And brain dead to boot. I think all the shifting and changing and running around this past week finally caught up to me and I'm about to do a crash and burn, so one quick note.

I like NYC...but I could never live there. Everything has been so completely downsized, a medium-priced hotel room is half the size of my studio apartment. The subway system is easy to use once you work it out...but good luck finding working escalators or where the hell the elevator to the lobby is at any station; it's all walking up and down stairs, and few of the stations have even a hint of AC. Some areas of the city stink (especially where there have been horses of any kind), and while some people are very helpful, others go out of their way to be difficult...which adds WAY too much burden to an already difficult city. My best meal was fish and chips in the diner at the base of the Empire State Building (Heartland Diner?); my worst, a sandwich from Dean & Deluca's that was nearly inedible (even with mustard and mayonnaise). And worst sin of all -- you have to HUNT for Dr. Pepper. Horrors! I also noticed no grocery stores anywhere, just markets. So...great place to visit, for a few days.

Pictures will follow. Right now, I'm dog-tired and still need to shower. Problem is, Brendan keeps nudging me. "Okay. We're home now. Let's to work." Slave driver. I'm about to go on strike...but I can't figure out which union I'd belong to for a novel. Can't do the Writers' Guild; they're just scripts. Damn...I may have to start my own.

Thoughts begin, again

I made some notes on POS as I was driving back from NYC and they're scribbly as hell (I was traveling about 70 at the time for one of them) but I know what's up. It's a reaction to actions that I wrote about, recently, and yet another indication of what the ending will be. Should prove fun to actually write...once I get down to it.

I'm off to meet friends, tomorrow, and do some touristy stuff in NYC. I did none of that while I was there the last few days; I was usually too hot and tired and smelly to even think about putting myself around people. And on the last night, I didn't have enough clothes to wear to even think about going to a play. In fact, I washed out some things in the bathtub...and I do NOT like doing that. Took them forever to dry and I don't feel like they got all that clean. Next time, I find a friggin' laundromat, no matter how beat I am.

Of course, from now on I'm taking extra clothes, too.

I passed through some beautiful country on the drive home, most of it shrouded in storm clouds and mist, all green and hilly and so very elegant. I tried to find the Delaware Water Gap to take a picture...but the exit to it off the 80 just leads to the town and the Visitors' Center is nowhere near the river. Considering how PA is handling the Susquehanna River, I'm not surprised. It's like they're embarrassed at having natural wonders within their boundaries, so they make it hard as hell for you to appreciate them. I guess I could have asked directions, but that would have taken even more time and I wanted to off the road by nine. Didn't make it till ten, thanks to construction along the 90 in WAY too many spots.

I'm beat and have to be at the airport by 9 in the morning. No posting, tomorrow; I'm not taking my laptop. It's been through enough.

Pissed off fates.

After today, I'm not discussing my travel plans online -- because they KEEP GETTING CHANGED. Now I'm heading back to Buffalo, tomorrow, to turn in the car and coming back next week to do the extra packing job. Which I'll be busting my ass to get done.

I'm also less than pleased with Best Western. I'm in the Best Western Presidential Hotel on W 48th Street near Times Square. They're bragging about a recent $15m renovation...and this hotel is styled to within an inch of its existence. Too bad they didn't spend some of that money on replacing the ACs. Mine wasn't working and it took 2 calls to the desk to get it even looked at, then another 45 minutes of the guy futzing around with it to get it to work. And it needs cleaning. I'm sneezing like crazy, thanks to it. Nice choice -- roasting or sinus trouble.

On top of it, the WiFi wouldn't connect till I'd made two calls to THAT service center...and it's REALLY slow. I was going to stay here Friday night, when I come down to visit with a couple friends coming into town. I think I'll stay at the La Quinta.

I'm whining. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm just jinxed as a traveller. When I did this on my own as a freelancer, I didn't have this much trouble. It's irritating...and deadening to my love of travel. Since I can't find a laundry in the immediate area, I actually washed some clothes in the bathtub. I didn't have enough for the extra day I'm here.

I can't think about writing, right now. I seem lost in weariness and more than a bit of malaise verging on stupor.

Plans change yet again

I'm in NYC till Saturday. This packing job suddenly expanded to a full-scale re-pack of boxes that were supposedly ready to go onto a skid and head for London but that had barely even been wrapped in paper and put in a box. And those packed boxes weight 55 lbs when they shouldn't weigh more than 35 or 40. My plane ticket for this weekend is non-refundable, but I might be able to get a credit; I'll have to call Delta.

I'm close to broke and overcharging on my card, thanks to this. Just when I think I'm getting ahead on it, BAM, something happens to put me light back at the limit. Me and money. Hah!

I don't MIND staying in NYC; this'll give me a chance to see the city...and I'd actually kind of wanted it. It's like the fates heard me and said, Okay.

So WHY can't the Fates hear me when I tell them I need money to live in Ireland for 2 years and fix it so I can? Selective little beasts, they are.

I've had some more ideas about POS. Brendan's still sitting off to himself, relaxing; these are about other characters. Including an elderly woman in Houston who's so racist she can't see how racist she is. I wonder how I can work her in?