|| Dregs ||

Space Available: Post-Mortem.

2012-01-02T23:18:00.001-06:00

So, the year 2011 has come and gone, and my experiment with writing a complete novel on Twitter--a book called Space Available, FYI--is now finished. Here's what I learned:

The level of difficulty was way harder than I anticipated.
I had no idea how hard it would be to tell a rich, layered story in 140-character bursts. I think I went into this whole experiment a little naively, because I've told stories before--lots of them--so I just assumed it would be a matter of adapting my storytelling process to the Twitter format.

What I wasn't counting on was the complete interruption of the flow of thinking that comes from having to mind your character count and click "Tweet" every few words. I found it to be much more disruptive than I'd originally figured on. Twitter works very well as a medium for sharing interesting links, or for expressing an opinion in a succinct way (this is why so many comedians have latched on to it--Twitter is the perfect one-liner delivery system).

But hashtag-free thoughts that run the length of more than a few tweets get bogged down easily in the type-count-tweet/type-count-tweet mechanism that is Twitter. In retrospect, I wish I'd made it more of a performance-art kind of thing, Cloverfield-style, like I was live-tweeting the story as opposed to writing my novel down on Twitter. Maybe that would've been just as difficult, but it would have fit the medium better.

I am an enthusiastic dreamer... until life gets in the way.
I started this project like I start all my projects: with a zest and passion for it, knowing that I am going to knock it out of the park. This is mostly the anticipation part, leading up to it. I announced it last December and was ready to hit the ground with my engines revving.

I started out with a darn fine first sentence, and that was all I wrote on day one. Then I had a good burst for a couple of weeks until my daughter was born, and then I took a couple of days off, and then I started back, and then I had other writing projects due, and then I was finding it difficult to work on the book, and then I got a corporate job, and then my family was the victim of a home invasion, and then I got let go from that corporate job, and then...

You see what I'm saying. The writing process was so difficult that any old excuse for not writing would do, and 2011 provided me with plenty of them--most of them not so fun.

Feedback helps.
I found a surprising amount of desire to push through the difficulties of writing anytime someone gave me feedback on it. Even something as simple as a mention at a social function that they were "enjoying" the story was enough to make me think, "Okay, time to do some more work on it."

And I do have to say, there is an unmitigated champion in this regard, and his name is Andrew Joyce, and I knew I could count on a tweet or two in my direction from @authorandrew, almost every time complimentary. There were many times where I felt like I was writing just to this guy. Seriously: a champ.

I do some of my best writing late at night.
There were many, many occasions where I'd think, "Oh, yes! I know exactly what to do next! I will go do that right now!" or, failing that, I would just have an urge to work on the book, and then I would look and see that it was midnight, or past midnight, or 5:00 in the morning.

But then I would realize that, of the 157 people following me, many of them who do so (or at least those who tell me they enjoy reading it) are doing it on their phone. If I send out a tweet, their phone buzzes to let them know it's there. And I don't want to disrupt any sort of sleeping that they might be doing, and so I, being a fairly nice person, would hold off on cranking out my awesome idea for a decent hour of the day.

And then I would forget to do it.

Cliffhangers are crazy-fun.
That said, one really fun development I did not anticipate was the rhythm of my writing output lending itself to an almost serialized feel to the story. I wound up feeling like a day of writing shouldn't be finished until I'd built to some sort of cliffhanger that I could pay off next time.

This was where I started finding the real pleasure in telling this particular story, and I really started to sympathize with the writers for the television show "LOST," because ending a story beat with a cliffhanger is really fun (and kind of easy), but paying it off later on is hard. That show loved it's cliffhanger-y endings ("We gotta go back, Kate! We gotta go back!" remains an all-time favorite television moment for me), and for the most part managed to address those cliffhangers later on (though they never wound up putting together that stupid army in season two).

It's okay to succeed only halfway.
This is the biggest lesson I learned, and it was also the hardest one. With about four or five months left in the year, I started to realize that, unless I really kicked on the afterburners, I was not going to finish strong. And that's when the whole project began to feel like a giant weight on my shoulders. I was already battling depression (it's a thing I deal with), and the added stress of feeling like a massive failure was almost debilitating.

Fortunately, with about six weeks left in the year, I had a good chat with Jeff Gerke, the publisher at Marcher Lord Press about the state of the book and where it could be. I also had a good chat with my wife, who helped me to realize something that I have a hard time owning up to:

Admitting my limitations is not the same thing as admitting defeat.

And one other thing:

Admitting defeat is okay, too.

And when it came to Space Available, I felt defeated. I had gone into it with such high hopes, and it wasn't turning out at all like I'd thought it would. It was way too short, it was scattershot, it was far afield thematically from what I'd set out to do, and it generally felt like a big, giant misfire.

But I was learning to be okay with that. These things happen (even the usually smart Apple released the Mac Cube). I was willing to admit that Space Available had, in a lot of ways, become a misfire, but that was okay. And even if it wasn't where I'd originally wanted it to be, I could give it the ending it deserved, bring some closure, and even leave the door open for a sequel, should the desire arise (though not written through Twitter). In the end, my novel turned into a novella that will be published as an e-book, and I learned a good lesson about biting off more than I could chew and that sometimes cutting bait was preferable to fishing when you're in over your head (and perhaps I could've learned more lessons about mixing metaphors).

All in all, I've come away from the experience a wiser writer and a better person, and that's really all I could hope for. We'll see what the future holds.

Space Available: The Press Deluge Continues.

2011-04-29T12:04:00.002-06:00

This time it's an interview with Where The Map Ends, the totally awesome and ultra-rad website that specializes in Christian speculative fiction (should we abbreviate that "Xspecfic"?), and which happens to be run by my friend and the publisher of Marcher Lord Press, Jeff Gerke, and which also happens to be featured in the current run-on sentence you just happen to be reading.

Thanks for reading!

Space Available: The Press Deluge Begins.

2011-04-17T22:26:00.003-06:00

So I get an "at" tweet from this cat @authorandrew from a website called Into The Book asking for an interview. I check the site and it is super-cool and so I look him up and we make the interview happen. You can read it here.

Space Available: Paralysis And Promises.

2011-04-10T22:11:00.000-06:00

Boy, I was not counting on this. I mean, I thought I'd have a little difficulty to push through, but I was certainly not prepared for the mental struggle I'd be going through right about now.

Writing your first draft in front of people is very, very hard.

And, to be honest, it's keeping me away. I sit down to read my Twitter feed and have now visually tuned out that big white box at the top that says "What's happening?" above it. It's just too painful to look at, the constant reminder that I need to write something for Space Available but am just unsure about what to write. I've navigated the story to a point where I know something major's going to happen; I just don't know exactly how it's going to happen.

Ordinarily I could just write whatever I want and see if it works, and if so, great; if not, no harm done. But now I'm transmitting this thing as it happens, writing without a net. Which is part of the exhilaration of it--if I uncork a good one-liner (which, there've been a couple), I get the satisfaction of immediate feedback on it (usually from one or two close friends).

But I'm so terrified I'm going to screw the thing up that it keeps me from writing it. And that's starting to happen more often. I've now had at least three, maybe four entire weeks where I didn't write at all, partially motivated by work and other things, but very often just out of sheer paralysis. A hope that tomorrow I'll know beyond a shadow of a doubt what I'm supposed to write, as if there is a "correct" thing to put in that white box.

Am I starting to feel overwhelmed by the challenge? Yeah, a little. But I'm also overwhelmed by my story at the moment. I know where I'm going (at least I have that much figured out), but I have little to no idea how to get there, and I'm afraid that I'm going to take it down a path that will block me from my original intent. So that makes me overthink it, and that leads to the aforementioned paralysis, which leads to the full week of not-writing.

So! From here on out, I make this solemn vow to you, the dear reader of Space Available: I will not tweet every day, but I will tweet every week. There will not be a week go by until the end of 2011 that I have not written a portion of this book. It's the only way to break me out of this funk--to commit to writing on it regardless, and then to make that commitment public.

Oh, and I also hope to write more blog updates. That's important, too.

See you on Mondays!

Media Review 2010: Top Motion Pictures.

2011-02-09T07:11:00.003-06:00

[The media review rolls on into its final installment as I break down my favorite films of the year.]

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Green Zone
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1
How to Train Your Dragon
The King's Speech
Secretariat
The Social Network
The Town

THE TOP FIVE:
5) Inception [Yes to the ideas. Yes to the characters. Yes to the imaginative visuals. Overwhelming yes to the masterful way Christopher Nolan worked in exposition without killing the momentum. Super-duper yes to the ambiguous ending. No, no, no to the bland directorial style and the James-Bond-villain-via-Hoth climactic battle setting. You fold up Paris for practice but when it comes time for the real thing, you just shoot a bunch of guns? Yawn.]
4) Exit Through the Gift Shop [While Inception is very good at provoking thought about the plot of Inception, this documentary is good at provoking thought about larger questions, like where should one draw the line between art and commerce, and how do free market principles play into that, and how awesome, exactly, is street artist Banksy? The first must-see documentary in a long time.]
3) Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [Not only is it outrageously funny, inventive, and smart--it is also far more perceptive about love in the real world than your average romantic comedy. Odd that a movie this off-the-wall has so much to say about the realities of relationships.]
2) True Grit [Pretty much perfect, and would've been my number one were it not for...]
1) Toy Story 3 [Based on the trailer, I was certain this was going to be Pixar's first grand misstep, a cynical cash-grab that just regurgitated the first two. So imagine my surprise when it turned out not only to be a wholly original story, but the story that the first two installments led up to. It's like they had this in mind all along. Storytelling at its best.]

MIGHT'VE MADE THE LIST IF I'D SEEN 'EM:
127 Hours
Four Lions
Inside Job
Lebanon
Rabbit Hole

THOSE OSCAR-BAIT MOVIES THAT COME OUT EVERY YEAR BUT THAT I'M NOT INTERESTED IN:
Black Swan
The Kids Are All Right
The Fighter
Blue Valentine

CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BUT ACTUALLY KIND OF TERRIBLE:
The Ghost Writer
Greenberg
Shutter Island
Winter's Bone

BEST FROM A PREVIOUS YEAR:
The General (1926) [I introduced my kids to the big three silent comedians on New Year's Eve, and we had a wonderful year experiencing some of these still-hilarious classic films. My favorite of all of them has to be this one, featuring Buster Keaton, a runaway train, and some of the most clever, seat-of-your-pants comic gags I've ever seen. The man really was a genius, and I can tell because his films still get belly laughs today, even from my children.]

WORST:
Clash of the Titans [Not nearly Transformers-level awful, but still loveably terrible, especially in its dartboard approach to mythology, Jamba-Juice-blender approach to editing, and who-cares approach to accents. Add in the casting of current interchangeable, mix-and-match lunkhead Sam Worthington as the lead, and it's just bland enough to be boring where it should be exciting.]

Media Review 2010: Top Music.

2011-02-07T21:09:00.008-06:00

[So much good music this year! I couldn't narrow it down to only five, so I cheated and made two top five lists: one for American bands, one for bands from places other than the United States.]

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Broken Bells, Broken Bells
A Chorus of Storytellers, The Album Leaf
I Learned the Hard Way, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Love and Its Opposite, Tracey Thorn
Magic Chairs, Efterklang

TOP FIVE (AMERICAN):
5) Leave Your Sleep, Natalie Merchant [Miss Merchant wanted to teach her daughter a few poems, so, she did what any loving parent would do--she set them to music, then recorded them so the rest of us can enjoy. It's like brand-new Americana.]
4) Beautiful Things, Gungor [At first, I was unimpressed. It felt like a checklist of tracks from all of Michael Gungor's favorite bands (here's the Muse song! and now here's the Regina Spektor song! and now here's the Switchfoot song! Sufjan, anyone? etc.), but the more I listened to it, the more it grew on me. Really good worship songwriting, and hardly a Jesus-is-my-girlfriend number on it.]
3) My Room in the Trees, The Innocence Mission [They coasted a bit with their last album (2007's We Walked in Song), so I set the bar a little lower than usual when I heard this one--and then had to raise it right back up, and they still cleared it. They have their thing, but they do what they do so unbelievably well that it never gets old. Fun fact: "God Is Love," the third song on this album, is the unofficial theme song of my newly born baby daughter.]
2) Provenance, Maya Beiser [There are very, very many musicians who are technically proficient on their instruments but who always sound like they're playing a bunch of notes by the rulebook. Maya Beiser is a cellist who uses her instrument for Art, who speaks through it, who lives through it, who breathes through it. Oh, and she covers Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir." What's not to like?]
1) Interpol, Interpol and High Violet, The National [I wound up getting these albums days apart from each other, and as a result, began listening to them back-to-back, so much so that they became a sort of double album. Now they are inseparable in my mind. And as far as I'm concerned, their drummers contribute most of the awesomeness.]

TOP FIVE (INTERNATIONAL):
5) Miike Snow, Miike Snow [The Official Adam Palmer Album of the Summer of 2010. Creative electronic music that goes far beyond the standard and mixes in some artistic flair. Perfect for barbecues, cleaning the house, or for bumping in your car, with the windows down, as you drive to go view the mushroom cloud that wipes us all out. Yes, it's that epic.]
4) Black Swan, Athlete [Not to be confused with the Darren Aronofsky film of the same name, this is Britpop at its finest. Break out the cigarette lighter and rest your arms well, because you're going to want to raise it up for every single song. An entire album's worth of anthems.]
3) Go, Jonsi [Exactly the sound you would expect from a pop album by the lead singer of Sigur Ros and produced by Nico Muhly.]
2) ...And They Escaped the Weight of Darkness, Olafur Arnalds [Breathtakingly beautiful minimalistic orchestration, again from Iceland. Holds a special place in my heart because, while I already had it at my #2 spot, it was playing while my daughter was born a few weeks ago. Great music to have your kid be born to.]
1) Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons [The nexus of great music, insightful lyrics, and at a time in my life when I needed both. Unless something crazy happens, this will be on my decade-best list in 2019.]

BEST FROM A PREVIOUS YEAR (TIE):
The Fountain Soundtrack (2006), Clint Mansell [I'm already a huge fan of the movie, but I never realized the degree to which Clint Mansell's score adds to the overall experience. This is some fantastic writing music.]
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997), Spiritualized [This is the same year that Radiohead released OK Computer and The Verve released Urban Hymns, and this album just may be better than both of them. Layer upon layer upon layer of musical genius that speaks to the futility of trying to numb pain through drug use, though it does have some unfortunate swearing.]

WORST:
Plastic Beach, Gorillaz [What a letdown, especially after the pleasant time I had with their previous album. Sounds like, instead of writing actual songs with something to say, they invited a bunch of celebrity rappers into the studio to smoke weed and spout the first things that come to mind. Total harvest? One decent song ("Stylo," if you must know).]

Media Review 2010: Top Books.

2011-02-07T07:00:00.002-06:00

[Time once more for me to reveal my picks for the best in media for the previous year. Today's entry: the best books of 2010.]

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer
From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, Sean Carroll
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, Mike Brown
The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English from Shakespeare to South Park, Jack Lynch
Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, David Sedaris

TOP FIVE:
5) Sonic Boom: A Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the New Economy, Gregg Easterbrook [Very interesting thoughts on the immediate future of our world as we experience a "sonic boom." The publisher positioned it as a "business book," but it isn't, really. It's just interesting, if you're into that sort of thing.]
4) The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, Michael Lewis [Still feel like you don't completely understand what happened with the credit crisis in the fall of '08? Still befuddled about what exactly is a "credit default swap"? Want to learn about the handful of people who made a bundle while the rest of us were losing our collective house? This is the book for you.]
3) Agent Q, or the Smell of Danger!, M.T. Anderson [There's a series of books called "Pals in Peril!" This is the fourth one. They are very, very funny, especially if you spent your childhood reading series books.]
2) Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality, Michael Spencer [Michael Spencer used to write gospel-centric rants about wrongheaded ways we do church and theology in 21st century America. He wrote them on the internet. Then he got a book deal and wrote this. Then he died. His was a clear-headed way of thinking about Jesus that sidesteps the pointless blather and speaks directly to the heart of the matter. Oh, and full disclosure--I am an infrequent contributor to his website, InternetMonk.com.]
1) After You Believe: Why Christian Character Matters, N.T. Wright [This is the natural progression from my #6 book of the decade last year, Surprised by Hope. Sometimes it gets a little egghead-y, but it's still entirely worth the read.]

BEST FROM A PREVIOUS YEAR:
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (2006), Francis S. Collins [Dr. Collins led the Human Genome Project, the conglomeration of scientists that unraveled the mystery of our DNA and figured out what every bit of it does. This book is a history of the project itself as well as Collins's firsthand account of the way he found Jesus in the midst of it. Awfully darn good.]

BOOK THAT SHOULD BE ON EVERYONE ELSE'S LIST:
The Soul of Spider-Man, Adam Palmer & Jeff Dunn [This one wasn't supposed to be released until next year, but then Regal brought it out anyway! My streak remains alive!]

WORST (TIE):
Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins [I was introduced to the very good book The Hunger Games this year, which I devoured with relish. Then I found out it was a trilogy and did a little dance of joy. I got the second book, Catching Fire, and thought it was so-so, but it picked up toward the end. So then it was time for Mockingjay, the final book in the trilogy, and I was cautiously optimistic--surely she would end on a good note? Nope. Collins makes bad decision after bad decision, forgetting what made the first book so great. Such a disappointment.]

Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race, Jon Stewart et al [It's no secret: I really like The Daily Show a lot, and I think Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert both serve a wonderful purpose by poking holes in the public discourse. Colbert's book, I Am America (And So Can You!) is smart, incisive, and seriously funny. This book, by Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show, is stupid, crass, and juvenile, with jokes that land as gracefully as the whale in The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. Stick to television, fellas. Full disclosure: It was so bad I didn't even make it ten pages in. Maybe it gets awesome on page eleven. I don't care.]

Fan Mail.

2011-01-31T07:17:00.007-06:00

Got this little note last week, through an "at" tweet from my friend Zach. Thought I'd share:

Adam - thought this "novel on twitter" idea was stupid when I first heard it. I was wrong. It's Awesome. I'm hooked.

So, with that in mind, today is a great day for you to catch up on Space Available, seeing that it's Monday, meaning that I've compiled all of last week's tweets, combined them with the previous weeks' tweets, and sent the whole thing over to Marcher Lord Press.

Taking A Few Days' Worth of Break.

2011-01-16T09:51:00.003-06:00

I've taken four days off from working on Space Available, but it's not because I'm being a slacker (for once). I actually have a good reason!

Visit my family's website to find out why.

I'll resume either today or tomorrow. Until then!

Space Available: First Impressions.

2011-01-10T16:37:00.002-06:00

I'm just over a week into Space Available and already it's a blast. Easily the most low-pressure writing I've ever done. Instead of putting my head down and cranking out content to meet a high daily word count or a publisher-mandated deadline, I am really enjoying taking my time and thinking through each tweet I send. I have an entire year to get this thing done, so instead of writing 2000 words a day, I can take it easy and write a measly thousand words per week.

I say it's low-pressure, though that first sentence was a doozy. I mentally crafted and rejected probably twenty first sentences over the final week of December. As New Year's Eve hit, I had one ready to go, but when the morning of January 1 rolled around, it just felt wrong. I opened up Twitter and meant to type it in, but I just couldn't do it yet. I waited and waited and waited (and quietly panicked) until finally, sometime that afternoon, something else entirely popped into my head and I knew it was my first sentence. Yes, the beginning of the novel sprang, fully formed, into my consciousness as I made macaroni and cheese for my kids.

I'm curious to see how this project feels as I get into the routine of writing and as the story develops. Obviously, I'm still introducing things and am not yet beholden to pay off much of it yet. The real work will be to make the ending live up to any promises I've made in the beginning, especially since I'm making those promises so early.

Thanks to all who are following and (shockingly) retweeting as it comes along. If anyone is interested in joining the journey now, you can head over to the official Marcher Lord Press Space Available page and catch up. It is updated every Monday, so that should make it semi-easy.

I said in an earlier post that anyone with questions can send them through email or Facebook, but I realized you can also tweet questions/comments/encouragement to me through Twitter at @AdamAuthor and I can then answer them here on Dregs.

Space Available: Parameters.

2010-12-30T15:49:00.002-06:00

I figure it would behoove me, as I set on the creation of Space Available, to lay some ground rules, some parameters as I embark on this experiment. Just a little something to make the challenge more challenging and to make sure I stick to my vision. It's always a good idea, when writing, to place some accountability out there, to let others know what you're doing, how you plan on doing it, and when you plan on having it done. Trust me, writers: this is to your advantage. It's far too easy just to waste time when you sit down to write, deceiving yourself into thinking you're using your time well ("I really SHOULD check my Facebook homepage again, even though I just checked it two minutes ago; what if someone made a status update I can use in my book?!"). Having some accountability keeps you honest.

Okay, so the rules. There aren't many, but here's what I have so far:

Writing. Writing must be done using only the Twitter interface. Writing it beforehand in Microsoft Word or any other program, and then copying and pasting it into Twitter is cheating and counter to the whole experiment. I'm not using Twitter to transmit my novel; I'm using it to create it.

Format. Since I'm writing it specifically in Twitter, I'm going to attempt to incorporate the methodology of Twitter into the story. I don't know exactly yet how this will happen, but it's a goal and something I want to let you all know about ahead of time so I don't get cold feet and bail on this particular challenge.

The Account Itself. Starting January 1, 2011, through December 31, 2011, my Twitter account of @AdamAuthor will be used exclusively and solely for writing Space Available. In other words, I will not coexist on Twitter with my book. I will not respond to "at" tweets and I will not retweet anything. If you want to communicate with me, you can do it the old-fashioned way: through Facebook or by sending an email to adampalmer 75 [at] gmail (dot) com.

Perspective. The reader must remain in the main character's head at all times. In other words, no switching around through multiple characters' points of view. I did this already in Knuckle Sandwich, and it was a conscious choice. In one respect it's limiting, in that it takes away the omniscience many authors enjoy, but on the other hand, it gives a concrete platform to work from. Also, on a completely practical level, I'm going to write it in first-person, a first for me. Why first-person? Because I have so few letters in each tweet, I don't want to waste any of them by constantly typing my main character's name over and over when I can just type "I."

Editing. For the time being, what's there is what's there. Obviously, I can't go back and edit previous tweets, but I'm also not going to go back and edit by selectively deleting any previous tweets either. For better or for worse, the book, in 2011, will be what I tweet as I tweet it. Now, when it comes time to go to press, I'm 100% certain my publisher will want to edit it (and I'm also certain it will need it), which makes it all the more important for you to follow along in 2011. The published version will differ, I'm sure, from the tweeted version. And besides, you only live once, right?

Blogging. I intend to write a semi-weekly-or-so post here on Dregs explaining some of my thoughts as I continue on with Space Available, just to keep track of my headspace throughout the year, and hopefully answer any questions you may have. You're welcome to ask those via the comments section here or by shooting me an email at adampalmer75 [at] gmail [dot] com. Hopefully these posts will be insightful as to the writing process and stuff like that. Maybe not.

Well, that's all I can think of rules-wise for now. It's going to be a grand experiment, for sure, and I'm humbled that so many of you are heading down this road with me. As I told someone else, I'm equal parts pants-wetting excited and pants-soiling frightened. And I think that's a good thing.

See you in 2011. I should probably think of a first sentence now.

Space Available: The Cover.

2010-12-28T14:48:00.002-06:00

[Many thanks to my good friend Sean Lorenz for his most excellent cover.]

Space Available: My Expectations.

2010-12-27T15:22:00.004-06:00

So, now that I've announced my upcoming Twitter novel, Space Available, I thought it'd be a good idea to lay down some expectations both for myself and for whomever winds up reading the thing. Just some thoughts and ideas, some of the ways I see it going and some of the ways I can foresee it changing. That sort of thing. Oh, and maybe some preemptive answers to possible questions about the writing process in general. So. Here goes.

Plot. I've written two other novels, and with both of those, I had a plot in mind before I began, but nothing really set in stone. With Mooch, I knew I wanted to write a heist caper, and I had the setup pretty firmly established (rich guy dies/ buried with fortune/ our heroes want to steal it), but I didn't really know how deviously mooch-y Jake would wind up being. And I had absolutely no intention of making it as much of a love story as it became--that just happened as I was writing it. I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic and couldn't help putting that stuff into it.

Knuckle Sandwich was a different bird altogether. Here's how I originally pitched it to NavPress:A local Christian rock band known as Knuckle Sandwich is doing their best to make it to the big time. They work hard, rehearse three times a week, play any and every show they can, and save up their money to record a demo. Then they finally get a gig opening for a major Christian act, and everything changes.

This one’s been percolating for some time, and it would ideally be a blistering (but loving) satire of the entire Christian subculture. Topics examined/lampooned: Christian music vs. secular music, bumper-sticker-deep faith, the recent explosion of selfish and self-centered Christianity, and the galling idea of the Christian celebrity.

What the book actually became was a coming-of-age/faith story about a college kid who realized that his idea of Jesus had been too small all along. Yes, some of the Christian subculture satire is in there, but the book became much less about that and much more of an examination of a kid who'd grown up in that subculture and who therefore had only an intellectual relationship with God.

Looking back at my original pitch, I can see that there wasn't a lot of plot to begin with--it was really just a kernel of an idea that lent itself well to becoming a character study, which it did. As I got deeper into the writing, I began to realize more and more the trajectory my characters were headed on, and I started to see some plot machinations I wanted to throw at them to see how they'd handle it. I didn't have a plot outline, but I did create a sort of timeline to keep track of the two years or so that the novel encompasses.

As far as this pertains to Space Available, I've decided it would be a good idea to outline as much of a plot as I can, while still allowing breathing room. My other novels I wrote in a month--they consumed all my time for thirty straight days. This time around, I'm writing it in small bursts over the course of an entire year, and that's a recipe for an extremely wandering and unfocused plot. So I'm mitigating that as much as possible by creating an overarching outline.

I've actually started to think of this almost episodically, not unlike my favorite television show of the past few years, "LOST." Once they got to season three and negotiated an end date with ABC, the creators outlined the entire arc of the rest of the series, episode by episode, to make sure they doled out the necessary information in a smart and satisfying way, and to make sure they treated all their characters fairly. I'm thinking along those same lines.

Characters. In both my previous novels, the characters sprang into my mind almost as I started writing. For example, with Mooch, I based Jake (loosely) on myself and Louisa (not-so-loosely) on my wife, and then added the other characters as I needed them. Jake needed a boss, so here comes Del. All good heist capers need a team of crack experts that each bring their own special skill, so here come Jeremy and Chiffon. In fact, I based Chiffon on a reality show personality who just happened to be on the television as I wrote her first scene.

Sometimes characters change the entire course of a book. The first time I thought through Knuckle Sandwich, I thought it'd be an interesting dynamic to have Matt and Jeremiah both be vying for Liz's affections. But when it came time to introduce Liz, I decided to do it at Club David, the Christian dance club they happened to be visiting, and I realized that this cool girl Liz would not be there by herself. That would be out of character for her. So I invented her friend Amanda, and adding just that one character changed not just that situation but the story itself. (And changed it for the better, I might add.)

The problem with Space Available is that I've locked myself into a certain plot structure, so what happens if I introduce a character who can make the story better in a direction I didn't foresee? I'm sure I'll have to balance out sticking to my outline and exploring more interesting avenues that crop up as I write. I anticipate this will be my most difficult challenge.

Plus, I abhor having the plot dictate the characters. That's really a backward way of writing, and a great way to write something completely boring. It's really fascinating to get to know your characters and let them take over your story. Fascinating both to you as the writer and to your eventual readers. I really hope to be able to let this happen as I create Space Available.

Again, I think of "LOST." While they had their overall plot planned out years in advance, they also built in room to adjust (or perhaps they'd say "course-correct") to the many, many different trials and challenges of producing a network television show. For example, they'd written a multi-season arc for one character, but the actor who played that character hated being in Hawaii away from his friends and family and wanted off the show. His arc was important to the mythology of the show, though, so they had to give his entire arc to a different character and find a way to make it work. That's sort of thing I'm anticipating needing to do, and I'm trying not to soil myself with anxiety thinking about it.

Medium. My previous two novels were written with the vomit-it-into-your-computer-and-clean-it-up-later method endorsed by the folks at National Novel Writing Month. I've had a blast writing like that, just pounding the coffee and then pounding the keys, letting whatever hops into my brain leak out onto the page, knowing that I'll go through with a big, fat, red pen and fix it all later on. It's freeing.

That obviously isn't going to work here. For starters, this is for keeps. Everyone is reading along, as I write it. I can't go back. There are no do-overs. Every tweet is final.

So how can I write with abandon while knowing that I can't go back and edit? I'll let you know once I do it. If I do it.

Next post: The rules of the game. What impositions and boundaries I'm setting up for myself as I write Space Available. Should be fun.

Announcing: Space Available.

2010-12-22T17:56:00.005-06:00

It's official. The papers have been signed and countersigned and my next novel, Space Available, will be published with Marcher Lord Press.

What will it be? Perhaps this handy checklist will pique your interest:

__Science fiction.
__Funny.
__Timely.
__Insightful.
__Humorous.
__Off-the-wall.
__Bizarre.
__On Twitter.

Hopefully I can hit at least two of those.

Watch this space for more info! I'll be jotting down some thoughts and expectations as I head into bold unknown of writing a novel on Twitter.

A New Project.

2010-12-13T21:32:00.003-06:00

So, I signed up for Twitter a couple of months ago as a means of using yet another social media platform to market my writing services. When I first started using it, I assumed it was a narcissistic way to vomit your immediate thoughts onto the internet, but as I began to navigate Twitter's waters, I began to realize: this is a marvelous construct to hone the craft of writing.

I began to "follow" (oh, how it galls me to use that word in this context) people who I knew to be good writers, mostly comedians, and began to gape in awe at their ability to fashion perfect zingers. The character limitation forces out every unnecessary word and distills the thoughts down to their powerful essence. Maybe Shakespeare was right when he wrote that "brevity is the soul of wit" (Or the Reduced Shakespeare Company when they wrote in their play The Compleat Works of Wllm Shkspr (Abridged): "brevity is... wit").

And in my mind began to form a challenge. One I would give to myself. And the more I thought about it, the more insanely fun and difficult it sounded. And so, I am proud to announce, in conjunction with Marcher Lord Press, that I am going to spend the calendar year of 2011 writing my next novel...

...using only Twitter.

Okay, I'm positive this has been done before, but not by me, and so therefore I'm also positive that it's going to be a blast. A challenging blast, but a blast nonetheless.

Keep an eye on this space in the coming days as I expand on the challenge with format announcements, self-imposed limitations, expectations, extra stuff with Marcher Lord Press (so excited about them!) and more. And as I continue on with the project, I'll be offering a running commentary here on Dregs with my thoughts about the novel as it's taking shape.

In the meantime, click here to visit my Twitter page and, if you're so inclined, follow along on this wild, wacky ride into the abyss of... I can't think of a way to finish that sentence.

Write on!

"Dogfooding," A Word I Can Get Behind.

2010-11-17T11:09:00.009-06:00

Much thanks to the great John August, a practicing screenwriter who isn't afraid to share the nuts and bolts of storytelling. He put up a post about "Dogfooding" and its "close cousin," which he refers to as "scratching your own itch." In his words:

If you’re writing a movie you yourself wouldn’t buy a ticket to see, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

It's tempting, when writing books, just to throw stuff in there to meet a contractual word count, or to vomit into the word processor in order to produce some letters that will go in between covers. But we must always fight the temptation and instead work to produce something we ourselves would value.

August's advice goes for any story you're telling, whether it be in fiction, nonfiction, or face-to-face. Heck, even the story you're telling with your life. Make it worthwhile, or you're wasting everyone's time.

FYI: The full post can be found here.

I'm Huge In Chattanooga.

2010-11-16T21:41:00.002-06:00

I did an interview last week with Clint Cooper from the Chattanooga Times Free Press, and it turned into this really nice piece about The Soul of Spider-Man.

An excerpt:

The third movie, Palmer said, makes a good catalyst to talk about the nature of sin.

"It's the idea," he said, "that sin is not really deciding purposely to be evil or anti-God but to be self-oriented."

When an extra-terrestrial symbiote attaches itself to Peter in "Spider-Man 3," an already more confident Peter Parker becomes more vengeful, selfish and arrogant.

Similarly Christians, according to the author, decide they know what's best for themselves and determine if something simply feels right -- not considering the consequences -- they should do it.

My favorite part is the "according to the author" aside in that last paragraph. It just made me chuckle.

Anyway, thanks to Clint Cooper for the pub.

Spidey Goes Viral!

2010-07-15T09:33:00.002-06:00

So, my friend Paul sends me a link today and says, "Look what I just came across. You never told me you did an interview with The Huffington Post!" He was referring to this piece, which appeared on HuffPo completely by surprise.

On Monday I did an interview about The Soul of Spider-Man with a very nice woman from Religion News Service, who thoughtfully wrote up my answers (edited for length--I'm a rambler sometimes [ask my kids if you don't believe me]) and published them on the internet. And somehow, one of the web's most trusted and widely read news gathering organizations picked up the interview and put it on their home page.

What a wonderful, mad, crazy world we live in.

Oh, and if you're wondering, you can buy the book in question here.

Turns Out That Surfing Can Make You Shallow.

2010-05-31T18:23:00.003-06:00

Roger Ebert wrote a splendid blog entry that sent me to this Wired story about the way we take in information from the internet, and what it does to our minds. Here's a salivary quote:

What kind of brain is the Web giving us? That question will no doubt be the subject of a great deal of research in the years ahead. Already, though, there is much we know or can surmise—and the news is quite disturbing. Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.

As an author of books (they're like an iPad, but with a different kind of pages), I've long felt that our society has become more fractured in its thinking, less able to think deeply. I see it even in myself (something that Mr. Ebert cops to as well). But the study referenced above gives an indication, possibly, as to the recent downturn in the publishing world. However, as scientists love to tell us, correlation is not causation.

Still, it's interesting to think about. And yes, I noted the irony of a story bemoaning the use of hyperlinks... using hyperlinks. In all fairness, the story originally ran in the print version of Wired, and is excerpted from a forthcoming book about this topic.

Good Storytelling Philosophy.

2010-05-14T19:42:00.003-06:00

So, as you may have guessed if you've ever read any of my media reviews, when it comes to television, I like LOST, and that's about it. The show is winding down to its final three hours, all the characters are in play, everything is poised for awesomeness, and the showrunners took an episode away from that focus in order to explain some of the larger island mythology.

Before I ever started writing books, I never really thought through the types of deliberate choices that authors--and all storytellers, really--make to get their characters from the first page to the last. Or even who those characters are. It really is a step-by-step process that requires a lot of decision-making. And when you're writing a book, you can make those decisions in a vacuum so that everyone gets to read them all at once. But writing an episodic show that will be told in 120 installments over a period of six years--that can get downright terrifying.

All that to say, I really appreciate what Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the two showrunners for LOST, have to say in this extensive interview. Lots of interesting looks into their overall storytelling philosophy, both about the show and about telling stories in general.

For example, Damon, speaking on how you have to decide what your story is, instead of deciding all the things it is not:

Usually, when we get criticisms, it's along the lines of, "I really wish you hadn't done that." Or "I wish it had been different." And you throw it back at them and ask, "Well, what did you want it to be?" And they say, "I wanted to see the statue built," or "I wanted the Man in Black's first name," or "I want to know about the guy Sayid shot on the golf course." Okay, that's cool, you wanted those answers and we decided not to provide them to you. It's not because we're being cutesie, it's because that that didn't fit with our vision of the show.

Or Carlton, explaining why, so late in the game, they're still introducing new mysteries to the fabric of the show:

We feel that we as storytellers, basically can only approach the storytelling the way that we do, which is it felt like there was no way that we could just be answering existing questions without the show feeling didactic. There would have been no larger narrative motor. For the show to devolve into running through a checklist of answers, we would have been, honestly, crucified for that version of the show. It's ironic that the episode that's generating so much controversy is one in which we answered questions, but it's not surprising to us. Between what the audience thinks they want and what they will find entertaining - we have tried ot make the show in a way that people would find it entertaining, moving engaging. To do that required having new mysteries. That's the way we operated.

Anyway, lots of good stuff in that interview. If you haven't watched up to the most recent episode ("Across the Sea"), you'll probably want to avoid it. If you've never watched the show before, you can at least watch seasons 1 through 5 for free at Hulu through December 31, 2010.

Look Under The Mask.

2010-04-18T17:25:00.005-06:00

Coming soon, to a bookstore near you: The Soul of Spider-Man, a legendary exploration of spiritual themes that my friend Jeff and I found in the first three Spider-Man motion pictures. It turned out really cool--so cool, in fact, that Regal is bumping up the release date to this summer because they love it so much!

You can pre-order it now on Amazon or go bug your local bookstore for it. Hound them, please! Incessantly!

Many happy returns.

Love,
Adam.

Media Review 2009.

2010-02-15T12:55:00.007-06:00

Movies
I thought my exile to Uganda would leave me movie-less during my time there, but I didn't count on the various friendly neighborhood bootleg DVD shops set up along Main Street in Jinja that sell DVDs for just under $2 each. These guys actually got pretty decent copies of just about everything that released in the States, though usually with "Property of [Studio Name]. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited" at the bottom of the screen popping up every thirty minutes. But I worked around it and saw more movies this year than I would have back in the US. Thus, my list was very difficult to compile, because I had a lot to work from. Anyway, here it is:

5) Inglourious Basterds [Loved the audacity of it, and loved Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa. Well-written screenplay that goes places you don't expect--I'll always appreciate that.]
4) The Hurt Locker [I knew absolutely nothing about this movie before I saw it, other than the fact that a bunch of critics liked it. Pretty much blew my mind.]
3) Up [Sentimental and screwball at the same time. Is there anything Pixar can't do?]
2) The Informant! [I thought this was going to be one thing and then it turned out to be something completely different. Soderbergh's most genius stroke (in a movie full of them)? Hiring Marvin Hamlisch to do the score.]
1) Fantastic Mr. Fox [I became convinced this was the top movie of 2009 after I watched it a second time. Only then did its brilliance settle into place for me. It's a cracking good script, for starters, and visually inventive while remaining distinctly human. Well done, Wes.]

THE BEST MOVIES YOU DIDN'T SEE BECAUSE THEY WERE ONLY OUT FOR, LIKE, TWO SECONDS
In the Loop [Hands-down the funniest movie of the year. Actually of the last several years. Incredibly well-written and acted, especially by Peter Capaldi, who is able to contort profanity into shapes never before imagined. Be warned, though: it's very, very profane in the language department.]
Moon [Thought-provoking science fiction that asks more questions than it answers. That's my catnip.]
Goodbye Solo [Probably the most emotional time I had during a movie this year. It's a small, character-driven drama that focuses mainly on the odd bond between an African cab driver and a sorta redneck old man. Very affecting.]
A Serious Man [The Coen brothers personal spin on the story of Job, with maybe a little King David thrown in there. Pretty much beyond description.]
Five Minutes of Heaven [An actors' picture, this may have been a stageplay converted into a movie. Don't know. Anyway, it's Liam Neeson, who you know, and James Nesbitt, who you probably don't, and it's very Irish and intense, and very, very watchable.]

THANKS FOR TRYING, BUT YOU DIDN'T QUITE GET THERE
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
(500) Days of Summer
Coraline
Where the Wild Things Are

NOTABLY MISSED
An Education
The Road
Bright Star
The White Ribbon
Ponyo

NOT INTERESTED
Precious: Based On The Novel Push By Sapphire
Avatar
Crazy Heart
Invictus
The Blind Side

BEST ACTION MOVIE OF 1995
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

FAVORITE FREUDIAN SUBTITLES
The Rise of Cobra
Revenge of the Fallen

BEST TREND OF 2009
Artistically sound directors of my generation tackling children's movies in a thought-provoking and creative way (i.e. Pete Docter's Up, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are and even Henry Selick's Coraline). What's next? Michel Gondry's The Little Prince and Quentin Tarantino's Pat the Bunny?

WORST
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen [My thoughts on this movie were fully documented on my decade list.]

Music
5) Surrounded by Lights, Jesse Sprinkle [Remember the '90s Christian band Poor Old Lu? This is the drummer, writing music that you would find at the intersection of Elliott Smith and Vigilantes of Love. Seriously good art-pop.]
4) Wilco (The Album), Wilco [The best Wilco record since Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. "You And I," with guest vocalist Leslie Feist is a real treasure and makes me wish she would come out with a new record already.]
3) Sex, Drugs & Self-Control, John Reuben [John Reuben consistently restores my faith in hip-hop as a valid art form.]
2) No Line on the Horizon, U2 [I was on the fence about this one when I first heard it--it felt like another minor U2 album, like Pop or Zooropa. But the more I listened to it, the more it became a part of my psyche. I'm not ready to stand it alongside The Joshua Tree or All That You Can't Leave Behind, but it's definitely up there for me in the overall U2 pantheon of legendary records.]
1) Kingdom of Rust, Doves [Typical Doves--brilliant from start to finish. Flawless.]

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Embryonic, The Flaming Lips
The Good Album, All Star United
The Open Door EP, Death Cab for Cutie
Zero Balance, Isaac Witty

WORST
No idea.

Books
Due to limited availability over there in Uganda, I read hardly any books from this year. So, with that in mind, I've bookended my list with two classics, while the middle three books I got from the library within the first month of being back in the US.

5) To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee [I bought this from a missionary garage sale after they were done using it to homeschool their kids. I hadn't read it since high school, and I was intrigued as to whether I would even like it. Well, it's even better--definitely an American classic, and with good reason. And if I was Harper Lee, I wouldn't have written another book either.]
4) Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon [Chabon takes a break from alternate-history novels and completely awesome-sounding screenplay writing (he's currently adapting Edgar Rice Burroughs's John Carter of Mars for Andrew Stanton!) to collect a series of essays about the different roles of being a dude (husband, father, son). It's kind of hit-or-miss, but when he hits, he knocks it out of the park.]
3) Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware, M.T. Anderson [It would be best if you read the first two books in this meta-hilarious series (Whales on Stilts and The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen), but even if you didn't, you might enjoy this delicious spoof of all those crappy series books that have been cranked out for kids since Tom Swift. You will marvel at this depiction of Delaware as a third-world country full of savage natives, ancient ruins, and tropical jungles. Brilliant.]
2) Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: A Natural History of English, John McWhorter [McWhorter is a linguist who writes with an attitude, and this informative yet compulsively readable volume presents much of his humor on display as he takes you from the beginnings of Olde Englyshe to the language we currently call our own. By turns fascinating and hilarious--and I learned a whole lot, too.]
1) C.S. Lewis: Signature Classics, C.S. Lewis [Totally cheating here, but whatever. This is seven classic books from Lewis compiled into one volume (the titles being: Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, The Abolition of Man, and A Grief Observed). This thing preserved my sanity while I was in Uganda, and I don't know if I could've made it there without my good friend Lewis with me.]

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Set Apart: Devotions of God's Steadfast Pursuit of You, a bunch of people including myself
I AM Standing Up: True Confessions of a Total Freak of Nature, Luke Lang

WORST
The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown [It was better than The Da Vinci Code, I'll give it that. But it was still, quite literally, stupid. And condescending. And that's difficult to do, to be both of those at the same time. Anyway, I'd like to say that I can't understand how something like this can be so successful, but, unfortunately, I understand it all too well (see my thoughts on American Idol from my decade review for further reading on this topic).]

Television
I watched one show in 2009. That was LOST. The show would air on Wednesday nights here in the States, and iTunes would make it available overnight--usually about 12:30 Thursday afternoon my time. I would begin to download it on my 64 kbps connection (that cost $100/month and that never achieved the 64 kbps speed) and it would generally, barring any power or internet outages, be finished downloading between 22 and 24 hours later. So, the LOST episode everyone saw here on Wednesday night, I would watch as soon as possible, which was generally late Friday afternoon. Incidentally, the two-hour season finale took exactly two minutes shy of 48 hours to download.

HONORABLE MENTION
Someone loaned me the first season of Flight of the Conchords on DVD during our Uganda stay. That stuff's pretty funny, but it wasn't around in 2009.

2000-2009 Media Review

2010-01-07T22:13:00.017-06:00

Well, I'm waiting to see a couple of movies before I can give the full 2009 breakdown, but since those movies will likely not wind up in the decade-best list, I thought I'd go ahead and jump-start the decade-best conversation with my take on the popular entertainment from 2000-2009. This is, naturally, a snapshot of my psyche right now, and this list will probably look very different with a few years' hindsight. But, nevertheless, it is what it is. My 2009 media review will be forthcoming, but until then, I now present:

THE BEST CRAP OF THE DECADE
a list that means something to--and was compiled by--Adam Palmer

|| Books ||
I read a lot of books, but not many I would consider life-changing enough to include in a list like this. So, these aren't judgments of really the "best," these are all books that had an impact on me this decade, enough of an impact to direct the course of my life, however small.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert
The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, John McWhorter
Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, Lynne Truss
Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser
The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin
Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix, JK Rowling

10) The World Without Us, Alan Wiseman [I didn't really understand the environmentally necessary ways our culture needed to change until I read this fascinating "thought experiment." The idea: what would happen to the world if mankind suddenly disappeared? The conclusions are mind-bendingly not what I expected.]
9) What Is The What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng (A Novel), Dave Eggers [Valentino is a real guy. He was one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan. He wanted to tell his story. Dave Eggers helped him. By writing it as a novel. Heartbreaking and intense, this is a pretty good glimpse into the differences between the African and American cultures.]
8) Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris / The Areas of My Expertise, John Hodgman [Both of these gentlemen are very, very funny, and both of these books exposed me to new ways to write hilariously.]
7) The Road, Cormac Mccarthy [Always a favorite at parties.]
6) Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, NT Wright [I think about heaven very differently now that I've read this book. It's both challenging and liberating, and would be the best God book of the decade were it not for...]
5) Red Moon Rising / God on Mute, Pete Greig [Both of these books hit me right where it hurts, while simultaneously giving me comfort in all my doubts and weaknesses. Odd.]
4) The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, Gregg Easterbrook [I can think of nothing to say other than this: read it and be astounded]
3) The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay / The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon [Chabon (pronounced shay-bahn) is a bit of a show-off sometimes, but he's so good he gets away with it. I am constantly floored by this man's ability to tell a story in a way that is very uniquely his own.]
2) The Complete Calvin & Hobbes, Bill Watterson [My first official cheat of this list, but a worthy one. Yes, Calvin & Hobbes ended its run in 1995, but Andrews McMeel did the right thing in 2005 and released this complete collection of every strip. The strips are all presented in the original aspect ratio that Watterson drew them in, making it all the easier to savor his art, wit, and humanity. Calvin & Hobbes was a gift to us, a gift that I treasured in my childhood and that I'm passing down to my kids.]
1) Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Susanna Clarke [Rival magicians come to the aid of the British Empire to defeat Napoleon. Yes, it's that, but it's so much more. Even though it's a daunting 782 pages, I promise you that every character counts, every plot thread is there for a reason, and it will all come together, deliciously, satisfyingly, in the end. Absolutely astounding.]

WORST (RUNNER UP):
The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown [I'm a little "meh" on all the theological controversy--I was just over-awed by the truly bad writing. You know that Seinfeld episode where Tim Whatley converts to Judaism so he can tell Jewish jokes? And then Jerry goes to a priest to talk about it? The priest says to Jerry, "This offends you as a Jewish person?" To which Jerry replies: "No, it offends me as a comedian." The Da Vinci Code offends me not as a Christian but as a writer. (And a very wealth-challenged one at that.)]

ABSOLUTE WORST:
The Shack, William P. Young [This book offends me as both a Christian AND a writer. I don't even know where to begin. The serial killer element is manipulative and off-putting; the main character is a murderer, plain and simple, and it's never brought up or dealt with through the whole story; the theology is sketchy at best; the so-called "insights" are trite and shallow; and by the end of it all, Young has forgotten the very lesson he was trying to teach us all along. It saddens me that so many people are finding inspiration in this. I sure didn't.]

|| Music ||
Like everything else, this list is a snapshot of my tastes, likes, and emotional state today and would likely change tomorrow. I can say without reservation, though, that all these albums are golden from start to finish; I didn't allow an album that I liked only a few songs from and instead saved those for the "Honorable Mentions" below.

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
A Rush of Blood to the Head, Coldplay
Kid A, Radiohead
In Your Honor, Foo Fighters
The Invisible Band, Travis
Veni Vidi Vicious, The Hives
The Beautiful Letdown, Switchfoot
Give Up, The Postal Service
O, Damien Rice
The Photo Album, Death Cab for Cutie
Sea Change, Beck
Turn on the Bright Lights, Interpol

10) Birds of My Neighborhood / Christ Is My Hope, The Innocence Mission [Its beauty is its simplicity. The Innocence Mission released 7 records this decade, and three of them (maybe four--their lullaby album Now The Day Is Over is compulsively listenable) vied in my mind for inclusion on this list. But in the end, I decided to go with these two, which had the most profound impact on me personally in the aughties.]
9) Divine Discontent, Sixpence None the Richer [A brilliant piece of pop art from start to finish.]
8) The Beginning Stages Of... / Together We're Heavy / The Fragile Army, The Polyphonic Spree [I don't consider these to be three separate albums; instead, I think of The Polyphonic Spree as creating, and continuing to create, a work of art that has now spanned over three separate sections. I will be heavily invested in anything this band does in the future.]
7) Vrioon / Insen / Revep, Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto [Once again, an ongoing musical work of art, this time between a German "electronic artist" and a Japanese composer. Noto makes all his sounds from scratch, and Sakamoto elegantly seasons them with simple piano. Whenever I need to focus on getting some writing done, these are my go-to guys for background music.]
6) Time (The Revelator), Gillian Welch [Technically, her music is considered bluegrass, but in my world, I just consider it awesome. Mellow, slow-burning, and about as close to country as Antarctica.]
5) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco [A towering artistic achievement, this is the album that introduced me to the excellence that is Wilco. Goes great with its companion documentary film, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart: A Film About Wilco (available on DVD from the Tulsa City-County Library)]
4) All That You Can't Leave Behind, U2 ["Beautiful Day." "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of." "Elevation." "Walk On." And that's just the first four tracks. If I throw out my nostalgia for The Joshua Tree and look at it as objectively as I can, I can see this being the best of U2's many excellent albums.]
3) The Last Broadcast, Doves [Just absolutely blew my mind, and the more I listened to it, the more of my mind it blew. And the hardest-to-believe thing about it? This band is a three-piece.]
2) ( ), Sigur Ros [Lead singer Jonsi Birgisson was once asked why their music was so hard to dissect. My paraphrase of his response: "In order to dissect something, it has to be dead first."]
1) Drunkard's Prayer, Over the Rhine [When I began to compile this list, I knew I was in for a tough task. Except for this slot. I knew #1 immediately. OtR is a husband-wife duo, and this album, chronicling the intersection of their marriage and their artistry and the conflict therein, came out at the exact same time my own wife and I, a husband-wife duo, were chronicling the intersection of our marriage and our artistry and the conflict therein. It speaks to me on a personal level that no other album will probably ever achieve, but beyond that, it is, in every sense of the word, perfect.]

ABSOLUTE WORST:
Anything affiliated with American Idol [More commentary on this abomination of a television show below...]

|| Television ||
I know, I know: I should watch House. And The Wire. And Dexter and The Sopranos and Mad Men and Curb Your Enthusiasm and all those other shows that everyone says are so great. I'll just let you in on a little secret: I don't care. Television is like those marshmallow Peeps that come out around Easter time. I see those, and I usually think, "Oh, yeah. I like those." And then I eat one, maybe two, and then I'm good until next Easter. I have no inclination to gorge myself silly on them, and I don't crave them year-round. So, in the same respect, a little television goes a long way for me. Hence, out of this entire decade, I only have eight shows to list. And they are...

8) Flight of the Conchords [The natural progression from Arrested Development, which itself was a natural progression from Seinfeld. I've only seen season one on DVD, but I've watched it so much I can sing almost all the songs verbatim.]
7) 24 [Yeah, they ran out of ideas pretty quickly, but seasons one through three were, you have to admit, pretty awesome. And let's bear in mind that, when this show debuted, pretty much all television, save soap operas, was episodic. Sure, you'd have your cliffhangers every now and then, but mostly everything was wrapped up in the hour. The big to-do about 24 when it debuted was whether people would tune in every week to see the story continue, and this show's success made it the progenitor for other long-form shows, from LOST and even to The Office and 30 Rock. Mock it if you must, but 24 was a pioneer.]
6) The Office [I know nothing about this current season, but what I've seen indicates this show is now treading water. But at least it's good water to tread, I suppose. I had my doubts, because the British version was a thing of beauty, but doggone it if Steve Carell didn't manage to top Ricky Gervais in making his take on the dumb boss less of a caricature and more like a human being. A wayward, immature, hilariously clueless human being.]
5) 30 Rock [Remarkably consistent and still funny, this show merges absurdity and sophistication almost as well as Arrested Development did. Alec Baldwin belongs in comedy, and I can now no longer watch him in serious roles (especially The Departed and Glengarry Glen Ross) without thinking he's hilarious.]
4) Seinfeld on DVD [I know just about every line of every episode from memory, and this show still makes me laugh. It very well could be the best comedy ever put on television. Anyway, Sony did the right thing this decade and made it available on DVD, which was great while we were in Uganda, because we could still enjoy our nightly Seinfeld fix.]
3) The Daily Show with Jon Stewart / The Colbert Report [My disgust for 24-hour news channels is thinly veiled, so I all the more appreciate the way these gentlemen turn the media establishment on its ear.]
2) Arrested Development [In some ways, it's good this show only lasted three seasons, because I fear it might have run out of steam and become either stupid or offensively bawdy or both. As it is, it's 53 rip-roaring episodes--that's an approximate 1,166 minutes of running time--and maybe five or ten of those minutes are unfunny. My wife rolls her eyes and finds something else to do whenever I begin quoting this show with a friend, because she knows I'll be there for hours.]
1) LOST [In a word, ambitious. It just keeps getting better and better, and I can't wait to see how it wraps up its final season (beginning in just a month!). If this thing goes out like I think it will, I will hold LOST in high regard for being not just the greatest show ever to air on television but also for being one of the greatest pieces of popular art ever created.]

ABSOLUTE WORST:
American Idol [Here's an idea: let's invent this huge behemoth of a show that holds mentally challenged people up to ridicule while simultaneously celebrating so-called "artistry" by making it into a competition. And the winner of that competition? The person who can appeal to the broadest section of our audience. Yes, we will give the crown to the person who can be, by definition, the most average. America, you voted... and created a terrifying phenomenon.]

|| Motion Pictures ||
Such a tough time narrowing these down, but I'd say this part of the list was the most fun to compile. And here they are, complete with geeky year-of-release notations:

HONORABLE MENTIONS:
The Departed (2006)
Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Finding Nemo (2003)
Grizzly Man (2005)
Children of Men (2006)
The Bourne Supremacy (2002)
United 93 (2006)
WALL-E (2008)

10) Downfall (2004) [A German true-story movie about the last days of Hitler, told from the point-of-view of one of Hitler's secretaries. I grew up thinking that all Nazis were evil people, and many of them were, but this movie helped me to understand that most of them were humans, following orders, sometimes against their will, doing the best they could to live a clean and upstanding life. It may sound cliche, but this movie honestly went a long way in showing me that God really does love everyone. But Hitler was still a bastard.]
9) Memento (2000) [I watched it at a late showing at the AMC (I think it started at 10:30 or 11:00), then came home so wound up from it that I had to watch another movie (I think it was The Princess Bride) just so I could get some sleep for the rest of the night. It's the only movie on this list I haven't revisited recently, but I feel confident it would hold up over time (unlike, say, The Matrix and its sequels, which are noticeably absent).]
8) O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000) [I'm pretty sure every line in this epic undertaking is quotable, and every time I watch it, I come away with a new favorite (currently: "Mister? Some o' yer foldin' money's comin' unstole."]
7) The Fountain (2006) [A treatise on life and death that asks a lot of questions and answers almost none of them. Naturally, this ambiguity made it box-office poison. I've watched it several times since and every time it still leaves me pondering the mysteries of life for days. Probably the most thought-provoking movie of the decade. Well, one of them (see also: #3)]
6) X-Men (2000) / Batman Begins (2005) [Okay, we can all agree that X2 was better than the first X-Men, and yet it isn't listed here. Why? Because, if you'll recall, the last major superhero movie we had before X-Men was the deplorable Batman & Robin, and just a year previously, superhero movies had been written off as comedy in the satire Mystery Men. And then along comes Bryan Singer to not only make the genre profitable, but to ground it in a sense of reality apart from the comics. Storm had normal hair. Their outfits were matching leather ("What were you expecting? Blue and yellow spandex?"). Actual actors with gravitas were in major roles (except for Halle Berry). This movie changed superhero movies forever, and all the Iron Mans and Batmans and Spider-Mans would not be here without it. Now, Batman Begins took that reality grounding and ran with it into legitimate character development and the darker sides of the superhero personality. And honestly, though it pains me to say it, it's a better overall film than The Dark Knight. There. It's out now.]
5) The Harry Potter movies (2001-2009) [Totally cheating on this one, but these have gotten so progressively good that there's no way to separate them. Plus, the idea of making this franchise into something so consistently good (and profitable--all six pictures are in the top 60 moneymakers of all time) is truly a remarkable feat of production. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd split between #3 and #5, but really the films build so well on each other that I have to include them as a bunch.]
4) The Incredibles (2004) [The best superhero movie of all time. I cannot watch this without being emotionally affected, and I've seen it dozens of times (including New Year's Eve, when my kids picked it for our final movie of 2009). Such a humdinger of a script, real honest-to-God character development, and so very, very many laughs. Pixar movies are always a triumph (well, maybe not Cars), but this one tops them all.]
3) No Country for Old Men (2007) [Typically quotable dialogue from the Coen brothers, but the line that always gets me comes from a minor character, Ed Tom's cousin (I think) Ellis: "What you got ain't nothin' new. It ain't all dependin' on you. That's vanity." Oh, and it has the perfect ending. The Academy got it right when they gave it Best Picture (those of you with long memories will recall I listed it as my second-favorite movie of 2007, after Once. I have since re-watched both pictures and have reversed their order).]
2) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) [I think film historians will look back several years from now and realize that Wes Anderson is my generation's defining director. Even when he has an off day, like The Life Aquatic, the movie is still good. Yet this film hits all the right notes and no wrong ones, with perfect performances all around, notably from Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. Combine it with a double feature of The Darjeeling Limited, which is almost a Tenenbaums sequel, and you have a quirk-filled night of films that are about something. "I'm talkin' about putting a brick through the other guy's windshield. I'm talkin' about... takin' it out. And choppin' it up."]
1) The Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) [Was there any doubt?]

WORST (RUNNER UP):
Crash (2004) [There were many, many bad and mediocre films made in this decade, but none so warmly and openly embraced by the public as being worthy of artistic merit. Don't get me started on this contrived, cliche claptrap masquerading as something sensitive and insightful. This film creates a series of stereotypes who interact solely on the basis of the stereotype standing in front of them, and then pats itself on the back for being so smug and condescending. Whoop-de-freakin'-doo. I shall end with the words of film critic Walter Chaw, excerpting his review of the movie: "[Don] Cheadle... opens the film by saying that the people in the City of Angels are so disconnected that they crash into one another 'just so we can feel something.' I wrote something like that in a journal as a fifteen-year-old. Pathetic then, pathetic now... [It's easy] in a fiction to reduce the great unsolvable, immutable complexities of the world to a series of meticulously manufactured dialogues spoken by machine-tooled automatons in a gunmetal universe as slick and un-mysterious as a snake-oil salesman's huck-and-jive." Agreed.]

ABSOLUTE WORST (AND BY A LONG SHOT, TOO):
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) [It's not just poorly written, poorly acted, and poorly directed (though it is all that). It's also vulgar, revolting, disgusting, misogynistic, racist, incoherent, contemptible, illiterate, insipid, masturbatory, vile, self-indulgent, tone-deaf, obnoxious, immature, soul-deadening, a travesty of cinema, and a sign of the coming Apocalypse. It actively hates its audience. If you liked it, please tell me why so I know how to pray for you.]

New Sort-Of Book.

2009-10-10T01:41:00.002-06:00

Just got word that some devotional-y type things I wrote way back in 2006 have finally been compiled with some other authors' devotional-y type things and been released as a book entitled Set Apart: Devotions of God's Steadfast Pursuit of You. Honestly, I'd forgotten I'd even done the project, but now it's here, and if you want to check it out, I'd be happy with that.

See You In Health.

2009-09-07T12:04:00.004-06:00

Just read a fascinating (but lengthy) article about one man's investigation into the American healthcare/health insurance system after his father died from an infection he contracted while in the hospital. It's by David Goldhill and it has the low-key and subtle title "How American Health Care Killed My Father." Not sure I agree with all his solutions in the end (the last thing Americans need is more credit), but he brought up several points I haven't heard in the whole healthcare debate. Of course, I'm listening to the debate from the other side of the world, so I'm not as immersed as my American readers.

Anyway, let me whet your appetite with this:

The average insured American and the average uninsured American spend very similar amounts of their own money on health care each year—$654 and $583, respectively. But they spend wildly different amounts of other people’s money—$3,809 and $1,103, respectively. Sometimes the uninsured do not get highly beneficial treatments because they cannot afford them at today’s prices—something any reform must address. But likewise, insured patients often get only marginally beneficial (or even outright unnecessary) care at mind-boggling cost. If it’s true that the insurance system leads us to focus on only our direct share of costs—rather than the total cost to society—it’s not surprising that insured families and uninsured ones would make similar decisions as to how much of their own money to spend on care, but very different decisions on the total amount to consume.

The unfortunate fact is, health-care demand has no natural limit. Our society will always keep creating new treatments to cure previously incurable problems. Some of these will save lives or add productive years to them; many will simply make us more comfortable. That’s all to the good. But the cost of this comfort, and whether it’s really worthwhile, is never calculated—by anyone. For almost all our health-care needs, the current system allows us as consumers to ask providers, “What’s my share?” instead of “How much does this cost?”—a question we ask before buying any other good or service. And the subtle difference between those two questions is costing us all a fortune.

Click here to read the whole thing.

Put Your Hand Inside The Puppet Head.

2009-08-18T05:47:00.002-06:00

Did you know my wife Michelle possesses a hidden talent? In addition to her amazing gifts as a mother and wife, as well as her God-given proclivities for music, she is also, quite secretly, living a double life as a puppet!

It's true.

Take, for example, the cover of this new DVD, from the extremely creative and fun kids' show Pahappahooey Island. No, Michelle does not live a double life as Joyce Meyer. But she does look astonishingly like that little girl puppet, who goes by the name of Ali Merryweather. That's because Michelle provides Ali's voice on the show. Isn't that fun? [Note: Any coincidence between the look of the puppet and Michelle's actual features are purely coincidental, as the puppet was created well before Michelle was ever cast as her voice. End note.]

Why are we telling you this? Why are we suddenly spilling the beans and exposing Michelle's puppet secret? Because the latest DVD of Pahappahooey Island was just released in stores all over the United States, and we want you to buy it.

For starters, this DVD is currently available in Wal-Mart stores, which is a huge deal for the producers of the show. Landing your stuff in Wal-Mart with primo positioning is always a major coup. But it's a coup that comes with caveats, and this one is no different. Basically, they have to move 10% of the stock in the first week or Wal-Mart will yank the remaining stock and send it all back.

That would not be good.

Anyway, if you're so inclined, we would sure appreciate it if you made your way to a local retailer and purchased "What About Me?" the newest episode of Pahappahooey Island. Yes, we helped make it, but that's not the only reason you should get it. It's actually a fun, exciting, and memorable story your kids will love. Honest. And they'll learn a little something about the nature of selflessness along the way. What's not to like?

If you would like to purchase this fine DVD presentation online, you can do so via:
Walmart.com
Amazon.com

If you want to know more about the show, visit the following:
the official Pahappahooey Island website
A nifty video review of the show
A nifty written review of the show

[Extra note: I may or may not provide the voice for a character or two. You'll never know. Personally, I am not yet ready to give up my double life.]

Update On My Adoption.

2009-04-11T12:34:00.004-06:00

Since I started talking about my adoption a long, long time ago here on this site, I thought you'd appreciate an update, which is now available over at One Roof | Africa.

If you want to track back over all the adoptive past, please read my old Dregs posts about it or read my family's story over at One Roof.

Nerd Humor.

2009-04-01T03:29:00.007-06:00

Does it make me a dork that I laughed at this April Fool's joke, borrowed from the folks at NASA? It's the last sentence that did me in.

First, a new truss was added. Then, new solar panels were installed. Now, as part of the planned upgrade of the International Space Station, an Expedition 18 astronaut has upgraded her own head. The Human Extended Analog Device 9000 was attached with only minor delays, making the astronaut's remaining spacewalks over 40 percent more efficient. With the HEAD 9000 attached, an astronaut can now directly access 4 Gigabytes of computer flash memory with their own brain, perform complex mathematics by "directed thinking", and play a pre-installed game of Tetris at no additional charge. Happy April Fools' Day from the folks at APOD. In reality, the space shuttle Discovery's mission to upgrade the International Space Station ended Saturday after upgrading only the space station. The above image of astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper handling the box-like Nitrogen Tank Assembly was actually taken last November. For some reason, however, Astronaut Stefanyshyn-Piper can now factor 11 digit prime numbers in her head.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell For The Second Time.

2009-03-08T13:16:00.004-06:00

Since I now live in Africa, I have a lot of time for reading. Since I knew I'd have a lot of time for reading before I moved here, I brought a lot of really good books I'm hoping to revisit. Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, for example. And my good translation of The Brothers Karamazov. And a couple of Michael Chabon books (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and The Yiddish Policemen's Union, if you must know).

But the one I've been itching to get back to is the best piece of modern fiction I've read in the last decade, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I'm halfway through, and finding it to be even better than the first time I read it. It's one of those books that benefits immensely from the reader having previous knowledge of how it will turn out, like when you go back and watch old episodes of "Lost." Susanna Clarke is dazzling in her use of foreshadowing and in the way she uses scenes way in advance to set up critical plot points.

All that to say, I know many people who started to read the book and then gave up on it. I don't blame them. It's daunting in its size (my first US edition hardcover is 782 pages), its scope (so many characters to keep track of), and its style (feels old-school Jane Austen-ish, complete with footnotes [which are critical to the story]). But with no risk, there is no reward, and I think if you're on this blog, you're the type of person who would enjoy reading a thorough, well-thought-out, enriching piece of fiction.

You can thank me later.

2008 Media Review: Top TV

2009-01-28T21:53:00.003-06:00

[Breaking down the media I know the least about: television. My #1 and #5 shows are the only ones I watch with any sort of regularity--everything else is more based on a few episodes I've seen and reputation alone.]

TOP FIVE TELEVISION PROGRAMS
1) "Lost" [The jury's out, because there are still two seasons to go and it could suddenly suck, but this will likely go down as my favorite TV show ever. Episode 5, "The Constant," was the finest hour of scripted television in 2008.]
2) "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart"/"The Colbert Report" [All the news you need to know. Insightful, intelligent, and featuring guests who actually know what they're talking about.]
3) "30 Rock" [Manages to strike the fine balance between smart and dumb like no other show. Watch the episode where Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin go to her high school reunion and see what I mean.]
4) 2008 Summer Olympics [Loved the actual events; hated all the talk of Michael Phelps's crazy diet and the underage Chinese gymnasts.]
5) "Lost" [I don't have cable, and network TV is a cesspool of bad. It was either list "Lost" again or go with my other standby, "Seinfeld" reruns.]

HONORABLE MENTION
The "Mark Wahlberg Talks to Animals" sketch on Saturday Night Live. This is even funnier if you mentally insert, say, "Hey, chicken. A lot of people wanna eat you, but I just wanna talk to you!" into the dialogue as you watch The Happening.

WORST
2008 Election coverage. The 24-hour cable news cycle is killing America, as evidenced by the dumber-than-dumb "stories" that came out of this election [many of which were brilliantly eviscerated by Stewart, Colbert, and their collective writing staffs].

SECOND-WORST
"American Idol." [I have no words, only disdain. I lasted an entire season of this show without watching even a nanosecond of it, and I still can't stand it.]

2008 Media Review: Top Music

2009-01-28T00:08:00.006-06:00

[The media review rambles on into the all-digital musical fray.]

BEST ALBUM OF THE YEAR (AND BY "ALBUM" I MEAN "COLLECTION OF WORK" AND NOT "LONG-PLAYING VINYL RECORD." THOSE ARE CALLED "LPs")
5) Between Here & There, Brad Kahler [He took the old hymn "I Need Thee" and rearranged it perfectly. This is good singer/songwriter stuff, along the lines of Damien Rice, Vigilantes of Love/Bill Mallonee, or Elliott Smith.]
4) Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust, Sigur Ros [They managed to take the elfin mumble in a new direction. Way to go, you crazy Icelanders. Not so crazy about the cover.]
3) All I Intended to Be, Emmylou Harris [Contains the song of the year for me, "Gold," featuring, of all people, Dolly Parton. I hate country, but I love this. Emmylou's fragile voice is medicinal.]
2) Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes [The best music ever created by homeless loggers. Okay, maybe "Blue Ridge Mountains" is my song of the year.]
1) Revep, Alva Noto & Ryuichi Sakamoto [I should admit: I'm incredibly tired of regular ol' music. I'm seeing everyone else's top picks, and none of them excite me. Instead, I'm inexplicably hitting 'repeat' on my iTunes over this three-song EP by a couple of Japanese guys. One's a classical minimal pianist; one's an electronic genius. Sounds like a '50s sitcom setup, but instead, they create the most spacious, delicious music. It's only three bucks on iTunes. Buy it and thank me later.]

OTHER GOOD STUFF
Snow Angels, Over the Rhine [Typically great. I discovered it the day after Christmas, and, though it's a Christmas album, it's been in heavy rotation ever since. I can't wait to play it next Christmas.]
Volume One, She & Him [Zooey Deschanel's voice gets annoying after prolonged exposure, but it's fun for an occasional listen.]
'There Will Be Blood' Soundtrack, Jonny Greenwood [Some of the best orchestral stuff I've heard in years. Hands down. The movie is great already, but the soundtrack stands on its own strength as great music.]
'Slumdog Millionaire' Soundtrack, A.R. Rahman and a crapload of other people [I think I might like music from India. It's blatantly cheesy at times, but there's something about it that draws me in.]

BEST SINGLE
"Wild International," One Day As A Lion [This band is best enjoyed in single form. I loved this song, but the novelty wears thin on the other songs.]

BEST VIDEO I SAW
"Pork & Beans," Weezer [Great video, great message in the song, great melody, and Rivers hugging the "leave Britney alone" guy. Hilarity.]

WORST
I have no time to discover terrible music. I heard plenty of it, but have no idea who it was. Didn't Britney Spears put out some crummy single this year?

2008 Media Review: Top Movies

2009-01-26T21:31:00.004-06:00

[The Media Review continues with the celluloid arts. If you haven't seen the movie mentioned, the link will take you to a trailer for it. How fun!]

MY TOP FIVE MOTION PICTURES OF 2008
5) The Dark Knight [The script has far too many problems to make this a great, great movie, but it was still a fine and entertaining motion picture nonetheless. It certainly lived up to my expectations.]
4) Slumdog Millionaire [The coincidences tilted it into the realm of fable, but this movie has so many wonderful moments. I cannot stop imitating the host. "Who Wants to Be... a Millunaire."]
3) WALL-E [There's something about act three that gets on my nerves. I can't put my finger on it, but it's too small a thing to make me forget the sheer poetry of the first two acts. I can't believe Disney and Pixar put this much money behind an art film.]
2) Doubt [An incredible script, actors who know when to be subtle and when to chew scenery, and a director who didn't get in the way of his genius DP. Michelle and I are still arguing over what really happened. I love that type of ambiguity.]
1) The Fall [Visually stunning, complex and heartbreaking characters, cleverly and imaginatively written, and I'm the only person I know who's seen it, thanks to the studio's complete inability to market this movie. Someone please see this movie so I can discuss it!]

MIGHT'VE MADE THE LIST IF I'D SEEN IT
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Gran Torino
Frost/Nixon

GOOD ENOUGH FOR TOP FIVE CONSIDERATION; WOULD'VE MADE THE LIST IF IT WAS A TOP TEN; PRESENTED IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER
The Band's Visit [A marvelous fable from Israel. I wish I understood the simmering conflict between Israelis and Egyptians better, but I still thoroughly enjoyed the picture.]
Chop Shop [Kids like Alejandro are the reason Michelle and I are adopting. This may have the best opening sequence from any film in 2008.]
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days [Heartbreaking. Absolutely heartbreaking. Though this movie's subject matter would suggest otherwise, I find it to be strongly pro-life. But it is a difficult, difficult film to watch.]
Cloverfield [No, really. It's really good.]
Transsiberian [Hitchcock is alive and well, and casting Woody Harrelson in roles where he doesn't get on my nerves.]

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
5) Young at Heart [Old people singing rock songs. What's not to love? Will make you rethink the way you listen to "Fix You." I dare you to watch the trailer and not immediately want to see this.]
4) Standard Operating Procedure [It's not about the Abu-Ghraib scandal--it's about the photographs of the Abu-Ghraib scandal. Errol Morris knows what he's doing, people. Can't believe this didn't get nominated for an Oscar. Not for kids.]
3) Encounters at the End of the World [Werner Herzog's documentary about the personalities that inhabit Antarctica is like a jazz musician riffing. Kind of pointless, kind of hard to follow, but still genius.]
2) War|Dance [Very much not the typical pity-the-poor-African-orphan documentary.]
1) Man on Wire [Exhilarating storytelling, even though you know how it's all going to pan out.]

BEST MOVIE FROM A PREVIOUS YEAR
Citizen Kane (1941) [Finally watched this for the first time, and now I understand what all the hype is about.]

BEST MOVIE WITH THE WORST TITLE
In Bruges [I watched this on a plane flying from London to Chicago, and it blew my socks off. Completely profane and entirely too bloody, but smack-you-on-the-head good in the plot/character department.]

FAR, FAR BETTER THAN THEY HAD ANY RIGHT TO BE
Kung Fu Panda
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
City of Ember

WORST
I thought about leaving Transformers on here, because it was bad enough to cover two years (certainly worse than Speed Racer or Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), but then I remembered I watched The Happening, which really is as bad as they say. Especially when they get to that farmhouse with the old lady. "Why you eyein' my lemon drink?" will go down as one of the greatest bad lines ever written, spoken, or to have a spooky music cue afterward.

2008 Media Review: Top Books

2009-01-25T22:10:00.004-06:00

[As you may have remembered from last year, some friends and I run down our personal favorites in media every year around this time. Last year's favorites can be found here, here, here, and here. And now, on to 2008's best, starting with my dearest love, the printed word:]

TOP 5 BOOKS OF 2008
5) Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, Steven Waldman [Finally, an objective look at what the "founding fathers" really believed. Their religious beliefs often get tossed around as this unanimous thing, but, as you may have expected, it isn't quite that easy. For some reason, this book is now reissued as a paperback with a different subtitle: How Our Founding Fathers Forged a Radical New Approach to Religious Liberty.]
4) Obsessive Branding Disorder: The Illusion of Business and the Business of Illusion, Lucas Conley [Fascinating and easy-to-digest treatise on the long and sticky fingers of modern advertising. Those in marketing would do well to check it out.]
3) Maps & Legends, Michael Chabon [Our generation's most lyrical writer tackles the non-fiction essay. The first paragraph of the first essay, "Trickster in a Suit of Lights" should be required reading for all aspiring authors.]
2) More Information Than You Require, John Hodgman [The delightfully bizarre follow-up to The Areas of My Expertise, a book which I also read in 2008. I will forever be indebted to Hodgman (aka "PC" on the Get A Mac commercials) for his extensive histories on hoboes, molemen, and the short essay, "When Writing, Avoid These Failed Palindromes."]
1) Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, N.T. Wright [This book completely changed the way I look at my faith. Probably the most influential thing I've read since The Ragamuffin Gospel. I cannot recommend this book enough--it is by far my #1 book of the year; maybe this decade.]

BEST BOOK FROM A PREVIOUS YEAR
Gates of Fire, Steven Pressfield (1998) [Forget the slick crapfest that was 300 (both the book and movie versions) and read this instead for a more visceral, more accurate account of the Battle of Thermopylae.]

EXTRA BONUS PICKS THAT WERE REALLY GOOD, BUT NOT GREAT
When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris [He's still funny, but since he's famous, he's just not as insightful as he used to be. Still, there are some very interesting thoughts in here on mortality.]
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life, Steve Martin [The rise and planned fall of Steve Martin's innovative stand-up routine. Hard to believe the star of the forthcoming The Pink Panther 2 is this good of a writer.]
Half-Life/Die Already: How I Died and Lived to Tell About It, Mark Steele [I'm not just saying this because he's my friend--it really is a good book.]
Secrets of the 2008 Campaign, The editors of Newsweek magazine [Not technically a book, but their extensive behind-the-scenes breakdown of the campaigns after-the-fact was exponentially more insightful than any of the "news" stories we saw during the actual campaign.]

MIGHT'VE MADE THE LIST IF I'D BEEN ABLE TO FINISH IT BEFORE IT WAS DUE AT THE LIBRARY
Jesus for President, Shane Claiborne
Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China, Philip Pan
The Carbon Age: How Life's Core Element Has Become Civilization's Greatest Threat, Eric Roston
The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran, Hooman Majd
The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell

BOOK THAT SHOULD'VE BEEN ON EVERYONE ELSE'S LIST
The High School Survival Guide: Making the Most of the Best Time of Your Life (So Far), Adam Palmer [Unless something crazy happens, I won't have a book to put in this category next year. Sniffle.]

WORST
Me of Little Faith, Lewis Black and Why We Suck, Denis Leary [Both of these chaps purport to be "funny" and "observant," but neither of their books is either. Shallow, trite, and stupid, both of these guys beat comedic horses that died long, long ago. I swear I heard some of these jokes around the time Jay Leno took over for Johnny Carson. I gladly put both of these books down the library's return chute very early on, but at the rate the authors were going, I knew it would only be a matter of time before they cracked wise about John Wayne Bobbitt.]

SECOND-WORST
The Shack, William P. Young [Throw aside the theological controversy: this thing is terribly written and is in major need of an editor. I read the third edition and caught typographical errors. In the third printing. But beyond that, the story is thin, manipulative, narcissistic, and indicative of the modern church's focus on self-help and utter disregard for historical perspective on faith.]

44.

2009-01-20T12:07:00.000-06:00

"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

Full text here.

Words Have Actual Meanings.

2009-01-13T13:31:00.005-06:00

I found a piece in my favorite weekly column that addresses two of my big button-pushing cultural issues: excessive hyperbole and general government buffoonery. We all know the gummint do take a bite, but when we talk about it, can we please use perspective and context? Otherwise, we run the risk of running useful words into the ground, and then there will be no more words to take their places.
Barack Obama... said last week the recession may last "years and years" unless Congress votes him fantastic new spending power. The recession is unlikely to last "years and years" even if Congress does nothing: The late-1970s and early-1990s recessions ended on their own without dramatic legislation. But presidents love crises -- famously, Bill Clinton lamented that he never got to preside over a war. The economic situation is "a crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime," Obama declared at George Mason University. Really! Unlike Sept. 11, unlike the 1980s crime wave, unlike the 1960s civil-rights riots and murders? To me the current recession resembles the early 1990s recession, which was also triggered partly by mortgage-based financial fraud (in that case the S&L meltdown), which also caused credit and investment markets across the United States and European Union to seize up, which also was accompanied by a stock swoon (about 30 percent, only somewhat worse than the current swoon) and which also brought about deflation in the housing market. But who remembers 1991? That's ancient history. Wasn't Augustus the Emperor in 1991?

Presidents love to proclaim things are worse than they seem, because this can be used to justify the awarding of extra presidential power. Just after George W. Bush took office, in the winter of 2001, he proclaimed an "energy crisis" and demanded sweeping new powers from Congress. Petroleum and electricity-generating capacity should have run out by now based on Dick Cheney's 2001 statements. In the spring of 2001, a U.S. military plane collided with a Chinese jet and crash-landed in China; this was declared a crisis and said to justify new White House powers. Sadly, on 9/11, an actual crisis occurred. Next, Bush declared a crisis of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and asked Congress for extraordinary powers to invade a nation that did not appear to pose any threat to the United States. Then terrorists within the country were said to be a crisis, said to justify board expansion of presidential powers including warrantless wiretapping of American citizens and the holding of prisoners without charges. When gas pump prices hit $4 a gallon in the winter of 2008, Bush called that a crisis and asked for additional powers. When financial markets froze in the autumn of 2008, Bush immediately asked for $700 billion to spend without congressional oversight. Presidents love to cry crisis and then ask for extra power and extra money outside normal channels of accountability.

Obama hasn't even been sworn in, and already seems susceptible to the desire to proclaim a crisis. "A bad situation could become dramatically worse," the president-elect said of the economy last week. This seems exactly what a president-elect should not be saying -- there's a lot of self-fulfilling prophecy in business. But such comments sync with the practice of presidents describing situations as much worse than they actually are, in order to justify more presidential authority. The moment the economy resumes ticking upward, expect President Obama to tell us there is a shocking super-ultra global warming crisis that justifies expanded presidential powers and extraordinary spending programs. (Climate change is a genuine problem, but no crisis.)

The news media like the sense of crisis, because it keeps viewers glued to TV news and nervously scanning newspapers. Part of the downward psychology of the recession is that journalists are using the most negative language possible -- "SALES PLUMMETED 2.2%" is an actual headline from last week's New York Times economic coverage -- while demonstrating no sense of history or proportion. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show 7.2 percent unemployment. That is a serious concern, yet was presented by the media as an unprecedented calamity -- in 1991, unemployment was 11 percent. Even with 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008, obviously a disturbing number, there are more people employed right now than five years ago, since overall, employment grew in that period. The civilian labor force did not even decline in December -- read the fine print. Unemployment rose because jobs did not keep pace with population growth. This kind of perspective is utterly missing from media coverage, since news organizations perceive a self-interest in making the situation sound worse.

Members of Congress of both parties like the sense of crisis, whether real or imagined: it gives them excuses to take money away from average people and hand bags of gold to favorites and interest groups, who repay the representatives and senators with campaign donations. The extent to which members of Congress have a financial incentive to tax the average and confer money on political favorites would I think shock the Framers, who did not anticipate the corrupting impact of campaign donations, because campaigning in their time entailed giving speeches in town halls.

You might think: Washington is full of somber experts and urbane talking heads, why don't they warn presidents not to declare crises? Institutional Washington loves the sense of crisis, because this makes institutional Washington feel important. Lobbyists, think tank fellows, news-channel figures, government officials and Washington pundits all become more significant when there is a sense of national peril -- plus, they get to strut around projecting gravitas. If things are basically fine, why give extra attention, to say nothing of extra money, to institutional Washington?

Look Up.

2009-01-01T20:45:00.008-06:00

One of the many, many side benefits that comes from moving your entire family to Uganda to adopt a child (which I'm doing, if you didn't already know), is that Jinja's lack of light pollution (the entire town pretty much goes dark when the sun goes down) means I will be able to be free to pursue one of my favorite pastimes: stargazing.

I love space. In fact, I'm such a dork, I have NASA's "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website bookmarked, and I check it every day (Yes, my gmail account, CNN.com, and the APOD are my three daily stops on the internet). I don't understand a lot of the technical stuff about space, and I'm having difficulty reconciling scientific estimates of the age of the universe with my evangelical Christian upbringing, but there's just something about looking upward that causes me to look inward.

It's comforting, oddly enough, to think that all this crazy stuff is going on out there, far away from my travails and triumphs, and simultaneously realize that I'm both very, very small and very, very loved.

2009 is the International Year of Astronomy. Take some time over the next 365 nights to look up and wonder.

Black Friday Indeed.

2008-11-29T09:57:00.004-06:00

You may have already heard of this story, about a temporary worker who died after being trampled at a Wal-Mart on so-called "Black Friday." But here's what leapt out to me:

The employee was "stepped on by hundreds of people" as other workers attempted to fight their way through the crowd, said Nassau County police Detective Lt. Michael Fleming.

"Several minutes" passed before others were able to clear space around the man and attempt to render aid. Police arrived, and "as they were giving first aid, those police officers were also jostled and pushed," he said.

"Shoppers ... were on a full-out run into the store," he said.

Yes. As they attempted to administer aid, the police were "jostled and pushed." In light of this, I recommend we all just take a deep breath, step back, collect ourselves, and read what I'm currently reading, Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--And How It Can Renew America by Thomas Friedman. But before that, crack open Matthew 6:19-24.

Radio Time.

2008-11-13T21:04:00.005-06:00

I did some radio interviews today to promote The High School Survival Guide, and while it's always fun to go on the radio to talk about my books, I always find it nerve-wracking. Or perhaps I should say, NERVE-WRACKING!

I always find myself rambling and rambling to make a point, and I start pacing back and forth, and the whole time my mouth is talking, my brain is thinking, Why did you say it like that, Dumbo, when you could've said it much more clearly this way? And when are you going to stop talking? Because now you're rambling, and you're getting farther away from the point you're trying to make, and you just need to go ahead and shut up now.

Except my brain isn't nearly as nice.

Anyway, when all was said and done, I feel like I represented myself and the book fairly well. And I probably walked off a good 500 calories.

The Big News.

2008-10-30T13:05:00.004-06:00

The familia is moving to Uganda, Africa, so that we can finally get our son to become part of the family. You can get the full story on our very new website: One Roof | Africa.

Economic Perspective (It's Long, But Worth It).

2008-10-14T12:46:00.007-06:00

The following is reprinted from a weekly football column I enjoy, written by the ever-intelligent Gregg Easterbrook. Yes, he writes about the NFL, but he's also a scholar at the Brookings Institute and wrote the influential-on-me book The Progress Paradox, which, if you haven't read, I encourage you to obtain immediately. Also, for the purpose of fairness, this guy is of the "(D)" political persuasion, near as I can tell.

"Financial chaos is sweeping the world," a New York Times lead story said last week. I didn't notice any chaos in my part of the world -- every business was open, ATMs were working, goods and services were plentiful. There are economic problems to be sure. But chaos? Collapse? Next Depression? Please, media and political worlds, let's stop hyperventilating and show some perspective.

What is going on is a financial panic, not an economic collapse. Financial panics are no fun, especially for anyone who needs to cash out an asset right now for retirement, college and so on. But financial panics occur cyclically and are not necessarily devastating. The most recent financial panic was 1987, when the stock market fell 23 percent in a single day. Pundits and politicians instantly began talking about another Depression, about the "end of Wall Street." The 1987 panic had zero lasting economic consequences -- no recession began, and in less than two years, stocks had recouped all losses. (See John Gordon's excellent 2004 book on the history of financial panics, "An Empire of Wealth.") Perhaps a recession will be triggered by the current financial panic, but it may not necessarily be severe.

Politicians and pundits are competing to see who can act most panicked and use the most exaggerated claims about economic crisis -- yet the fundamentals of the U.S. economy are, in fact, strong. Productivity is high; innovation is high; the workforce is robust and well-educated; unemployment is troubling at 6.1 percent, but nothing compared to the recent past, such as 11.8 percent unemployment in 1992; there are no shortages of resources, energy or goods. Here, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan shows that return on capital is historically high; high returns on capital are associated with strong economies. Some Americans have significant problems with mortgages, and credit availability for business could become an issue if the multiple bank-stabilizing plans in progress don't work. But the likelihood is they will work. When the 1987 panic hit, people were afraid the economy would collapse; it didn't. This panic is global, enlarging the risks. But there's a good chance things will turn out fine.

Why has a credit-market problem expanded into a panic? One reason is the media and political systems are now programmed for panic mode. Everything's a crisis! Crises, after all, keep people's eyes glued to cable news shows, so the media have an interest in proclaiming crises. Crises make Washington seem more important, and can be used to justify giveaways to favored constituent groups, so Washington influence-peddlers have an interest in proclaiming crises.

An example of the exaggerated crisis claim is the assertion that Americans "lost" $2 trillion from their pension savings in the past month, while equities "lost" $8 trillion in value. "Investors Lose $8.4 Trillion of Wealth" read a Wall Street Journal headline last week. This confuses a loss with a decline. Unless you cashed out stocks or a 401(k) in the past month, you haven't "lost" anything. Nor have most investors "lost" money, let alone $8.4 trillion -- crisis-mongering is now so deeply ingrained in the media that even Wall Street Journal headline writers have forgotten basic economics. People who because of financial need have no choice but to cash out stocks right now are really harmed. Anyone who simply holds his or her ground with stocks takes no loss and is likely, although of course not certain, to come out ahead in the end. During the housing price bubble of 2003 to 2006, many Americans became much better off on paper, but never actually sold their homes, so it was all paper gains. Right now many Americans holdings stocks or retirement plans are much worse off on paper, but will be fine so long as they don't panic and sell. One of the distressing things about last week's media cries of doomsday is that they surely caused some average people to sell stocks or 401(k)'s in panic, taking losses they might have avoided by simply doing nothing. The financial shout-shows on cable tend to advise people to buy when the market is rising, sell when the market is falling -- the worst possible advice, and last week it was amplified by panic.

We've also fallen into panic because we pay way too much attention to stock prices. Ronald Reagan said, "Never confuse the stock market with the economy." Almost everyone is now making exactly that mistake. The stock market is not a barometer of the economy; it is a barometer of what people think stocks are worth. These are entirely separate things. What people think stocks are worth now depends on their guess about what stocks will be worth in the future, which is unknowable. You can only guess, and thus optimism feeds optimism while pessimism feeds pessimism.

There is no way the American economy became 8 percent less valuable between breakfast and morning coffee break Friday, then became 3 percent more valuable at lunchtime (that is, improved by 11 percent), then became 3 percent less valuable by afternoon teatime (that is, declined by 6 percent) -- to cite the actual Dow Jones Industrials swings from Friday. And the economy sure did not become 11 percent more valuable Monday. Such swings reflect panic or herd psychology, not the underlying economy, which changes over months and years, not single days. For the past few weeks pundits and Washington and London policy-makers have been staring at stock tickers as if they provided minute-by-minute readouts of economic health, which they do not. It's embarrassing to see White House and administration officials seemingly so poorly schooled in economic theory they are obsessing over stock-price movements, which they cannot control and in the short term should not even care about.

Consider this. On Black Monday in 1987, the market fell 23 percent. If you had invested $100 in a Dow Jones Index fund the following day, it would be $460 now, a 275 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the big slide of the past month, and still excellent. So don't panic, just hold your stocks. And if you'd invested $100 in real estate in 1987, it would be $240 today, a 30 percent increase adjusting for inflation. That's after the housing price bubble burst. A 30 percent real gain in 20 years isn't a great investment -- until you consider that you lived in the house or condo during this time. To purchase and live in a dwelling, then come out ahead when you sell, is everyone's dream. Not only do stocks remain a good buy, America on average is still coming out ahead on the housing dream. (This example uses the Case Shiller Index for the whole country; because housing markets are local, some homeowners have lost substantial ground while others enjoyed significant appreciation.)

Economic problems are likely to be with us for awhile, but also likely to be resolved -- the 1987 panic and the 1997 Asian currency collapse both were repaired more quickly than predicted, with much less harm than forecast. Want to worry? Worry about the fact that the United States is borrowing, mainly from foreign investors and China, the money being used to fix our banks. The worse the national debt becomes -- $11 trillion now, and increasing owing to Washington giveaways -- the more the economy will soften over the long term. It's long-term borrowing, not short-term Wall Street mood swings, that ought to worry us, because the point may be reached where we can no longer solve problems by borrowing our way out. My former Brookings Institution colleague Peter Orszag, now director of the Congressional Budget Office, was on "Newshour" last week talking about the panic. Orszag is a wicked-smart economist -- for instance, he is careful to say pension holdings have declined, not been lost like most pundits are saying, as if there were no difference between decline and loss! The below exchange occurred with host Jeffrey Brown. Remember these words:

PETER ORSZAG: One thing we need to remember is we're lucky that we have the maneuvering room now to issue lots of additional Treasury securities and intervene aggressively to address this crisis.

JEFFREY BROWN: Wait a minute. Explain that. Lucky in what sense?

PETER ORSZAG: That people are still willing to lend to us. If in 20 or 30 years we continue on the same path, with rising health-care costs and rising budget deficits, we would reach a point where we wouldn't have that ability.

Some Political Help.

2008-09-05T15:05:00.011-06:00

[NOTE: This post has been updated considerably since I first put it up.]

God help us all if I start to write about politics on this blog, but I did feel the need to share something with you.

So much of what bothers me about our current political system is that so much of so-called "news" is really just preaching to the choir. Punditry and analysis reign on all four (FOUR!) 24-hour news networks, and rarely are we given straight-up facts to help us make up our minds. Then we have the slew of books from said pundits and analysts clogging up bookshelves. Add to that all the rhetoric from both the Ds and the Rs (and don't even get me started on talk radio) that consists primarily of saying "The other guys are bums! Vote for us!" and I'm downright disillusioned with the whole shooting match.

No one is willing to admit that anyone on their side has ever made a mistake, or that anyone from the other side has ever done anything worthwhile. It's nonstop preaching to the choir in concerted efforts to keep the contributions going, and it's turned me into a hardened, follow-the-money-on-both-sides cynic.

And then, in the midst of this, someone shared these little nuggets with me (see the links below). Basically, they are factual breakdowns of the promises made in both Barack Obama's and John McCain's acceptance speeches at their respective party conventions. People, one of these guys is going to be your President for the next four years, and whether you wholeheartedly endorse one of them or, like me, have a tough time believing either of them, you owe it to yourself and to the country you call home (if you live in the USA, that is) to at least hear them out.

My recommendation: read them both, then please--please--make up your own mind about which candidate's vision of America most closely aligns with your own. Don't let anyone else tell you how to vote, and don't turn this election into a one-issue circus. Don't say to yourself, "Well, I really love everything about that guy, except for that one pet issue I have where we don't agree, so I'm going to vote for the other guy." Please. Don't.

Let's all put aside the rhetoric and punditry and take a clear-eyed look at what the two sides are proposing, then vote according to our own senses and values.

Vote responsibly.

Obama's Promises || McCain's Promises

Note: Since whomever gets in office will be there for a solid four years, it would behoove us all to take a little extra time--an hour, maybe?--to read the full text of each of their speeches. So, with that:
Complete Obama Speech || Complete McCain Speech

And, since the VP candidates are often trotted out to say the things that the Presidential candidates want to say but can't for fear of looking bad:
Complete Biden Speech || Complete Palin Speech

[One last note: The thought dawned on me as I whacked some weeds in the backyard the other day--this is the first time in twenty-eight years that the ticket does not include the names "Bush" or "Clinton." I consider this to be a positive sign.]

The Best Book Of 2008 (That I Didn't Write).

2008-08-31T21:35:00.012-06:00

I'm not too familiar with the works of N.T. Wright, but I read an article about him on Time.com, in which he discussed his newest book. I thought I'd snag it from the library and give it a once-over. I thought it sounded intriguing, but I didn't expect it to completely revolutionize the way I see my faith. This is the book that I was told The Shack would be. I couldn't resist sharing a few snippets with my vast, vast internet audience:

The power of the gospel lies not in the offer of a new spirituality or religious experience, not in the threat of hellfire (certainly not in the threat of being "left behind"), which can be removed if only the hearer checks this box, says this prayer, raises a hand, or whatever, but in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun. This announcement, stated as fact about the way the world is rather than as an appeal about the way you might like your life, your emotions, or your bank balance to be, is the foundation of everything else. Of course, once the gospel announcement is made, in whatever way, it means instantly that all people everywhere are gladly invited to come in, to join the party, to discover forgiveness for the past, an astonishing destiny in God's future, and a vocation in the present.

I don't know about you guys, but that gets me excited. Or check out:

...What we can and must do in the present, if we are obedient to the gospel, if we are following Jesus, and if we are indwelt, energized, and directed by the Spirit, is to build for the kingdom. This brings us back to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more: what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are--strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself--accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings and for that matter one's fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of Jesus honored in the world--all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make. That is the logic of the mission of God. God's recreation of his wonderful world, which began with the resurrection of Jesus and continues mysteriously as God's people live in the risen Christ and in the power of his Spirit, means that what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God's new world. In fact, it will be enhanced there.

I have no idea what precisely this will mean in practice. I am putting up a signpost, not offering a photograph of what we will find once we get to where the signpost is pointing. I don't know what musical instruments we shall have to play Bach in God's new world, though I'm sure Bach's music will be there. I don't know how my planting a tree today will relate to the wonderful trees that there will be in God's recreated world, though I do remember Martin Luther's words about the proper reaction to knowing the kingdom was coming the next day being to go out and plant a tree. I do not know how the painting an artist paints today in prayer and wisdom will find a place in God's new world. I don't know how our work for justice for the poor, for remission of global debts, will reappear in that new world. But I know that God's new world of justice and joy, of hope for the whole earth, was launched when Jesus came out of the tomb on Easter morning, and I know that he calls his followers to live in him and by the power of his Spirit and so to be new-creation people here and now, bringing signs and symbols of the kingdom to birth on earth as in heaven.

Am I wrong for finding myself fascinated with this? I'll close with one more, this one about the responsibility of the Christian artist. Sound off with your thoughts below:

When we read Romans 8, we find Paul affirming that the whole of creation is groaning in travail as it longs for its redemption. Creation is good, but it is not God. It is beautiful, but its beauty is at present transient. It is in pain, but that pain is taken into the very heart of God and becomes part of the pain of new birth. The beauty of creation, to which art responds and which it tries to express, imitate, and highlight, is not simply the beauty it possesses in itself but the beauty it possesses in view of what is promised to it: ...the chalice, the violin, the engagement ring. We are committed to describing the world not just as it should be, not just as it is, but as---by God's grace alone!--one day it will be. And we should never forget that when Jesus rose from the dead, as the paradigm, first example, and generating power of the whole new creation, the marks of the nails were not just visible on his hands and his feet. They were the way he was to be identified. When art comes to terms with both the wounds of the world and the promise of the resurrection and learns how to express and respond to both at once, we will be on the way to a fresh vision, a fresh mission.

The Government Is Afraid Of The Truth!

2008-08-25T08:50:00.002-06:00

Don't you dare attempt to correct the government's typographical errors.

Here's the lead paragraph to tantalize you into reading the story:

A man from Somerville, Mass., and his friend who went around the country this year removing typographical errors from public signs have been banned from national parks after vandalizing a historic marker at the Grand Canyon.

All The More Significant.

2008-08-15T22:19:00.001-06:00

In light of all that's going on over in Beijing right about now, this video takes on even greater significance.

A Costa Rica Story.

2008-08-11T10:09:00.005-06:00

[NOTE: People have been asking me to tell a story about our trip to Costa Rica. Instead of doing that, I'm going to take a shortcut and reprint here a piece I wrote for a devotional put together by my church. Enjoy.]

I love kids. Perhaps this is why I have so many of them. I love seeing the world through their eyes, or hearing them invent new ways of using language, like when my four-year-old daughter Dorothy decided that “beautiful” just wouldn’t cut it while describing a rainbow, and coined the more accurate “cute-iful.”

So yeah, I love kids a lot, especially my own. So, when we decided to go on a family missions trip to Costa Rica with Believers World Outreach this past summer, I felt great anticipation at the thought of spending time in a foreign country with my kids. This anticipation was tempered, however, by a feeling sheer panic at the thought of spending time in a foreign country with my kids.

Maybe not the “spending time” part so much as the getting there, getting around, getting all our basic needs met, and getting home parts.

Nevertheless, time marched on, and, after many generous donations from many friends, family members, and straight-up strangers, we raised the full amount we needed to get there. Before we knew it, we were in Costa Rica, all of us astounded by the natural beauty of the country.

We discovered that our children are natural travelers, and they’re very good at going with the flow. They generally ate whatever was put before them, went wherever we told them, showed up whenever they needed to be somewhere.

But the real revelation came toward the end of the trip, when we went to minister to a group of people living in an area of Jaco that everyone calls “The Riverbed.” It is a place of extreme poverty, a shanty-town erected on either side of a small river fed by the Pacific Ocean. Families live here, in ramshackle homes constructed of found materials like random doors or wooden pallets or rusted pieces of corrugated tin.

The river itself serves many purposes for this community. It is their source of water for drinking and cooking, it is their bathtub, it is their laundry room, it is their toilet. Oftentimes, it is their trash can.

We’d heard quite a bit about the Riverbed before we went, and we did our best to prepare the kids. We told them, in terms they could understand, about the poverty there, and what the kids there would look like, and generally tried to prepare them for the heart-rending images they were likely to see.

And then the strangest thing happened. We went there, and while Michelle and I were devastated by the living conditions of those in the Riverbed, our kids didn’t seem to notice. And while we were busy pitying the shabbily dressed, smudge-faced, hungry-looking children in the Riverbed, of which there are many, our kids simply approached them, smiled, waved, and began to play with them.

Simple as that.

While we adults—supposed examples to our children—were busy focusing on the differences between us and those who lived in the Riverbed, the kids looked right past that (I’m not sure if they even saw the differences in the first place) and focused on the truth of the situation:

I’m a kid. You’re a kid. Let’s play.

In faith today, especially in America, and extra-especially in this part of America, we tend to focus on the differences. We like to compare different churches, different preaching styles, different worship leaders, different song selections, different locations… we notice what makes each church different. And if we don’t like something, we can always go somewhere else.

But what if Jesus, when he told us we needed to “receive the kingdom of God like a little child” (Mark 10:15), meant that we needed to act like my kids acted in the Riverbed. What if he’s saying that, since “both Gentiles and Jews who believe the Good News share equally in the riches inherited by God’s children, (Ephesians 3:6)” then we need to stop looking at the differences between us and start looking at faith—and church—like this:

I believe in Jesus. You believe in Jesus.

Let’s play.

Been Reading.

2008-08-07T13:10:00.015-06:00

It's been a madhouse here at Dregs, with all kinds of behind-the-scenes monetary sizzle keeping me from my appointed rounds as a blogger. But in my spare time, I've been reading some fascinating books. To wit:

Steven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America: What a fascinating read. Steven Waldman is the editor-in-chief of Beliefnet.com, so he's able to split the lines of demagoguery you would expect a book like this to fall along, and he's cranked out something that, I would hope, would be refreshing to people of any faith or political stripe.

Instead of starting with a viewpoint, then using the writings of the Founding Fathers to back it up, Waldman goes the other way around. He investigates history, along with the written records of Washington, Adams, Franklin, Jefferson, and Madison, to determine what these guys believed, why, and how it fit with the prevailing religiosity of the times. I tend to not read political books because they're usually all about preaching to the choir, but this one doesn't preach at all--just lays out the facts. Should be recommended reading for all schoolchildren. Perhaps I should contact Waldman and/or Random House about doing a Student Edition? It worked out so well for me in the past.

Christine Kenneally, The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language: I may not agree with all of author Christine Kenneally's assumptions (she actually says, toward the end of the book, that "evidence of design in the human body is not evidence of a Designer, but of evolution"), but this is an undeniably immersive look into the history of the spoken word. We know about the history of the written word, but when did we start speaking? What was it like? Was it a gift from On High, or did it evolve? And what about the different languages; where did they come from?

Kenneally is pretty dead-set on none of these things pointing to God at all, and she offers no concrete examples, but ultimately, I liked the book because of that. Essentially, she tracked down a bunch of scientists working in the field and posed all these types of questions to them. The answers vary, but that's part of the charm of the book--it just shows how little we actually know about our brains--and ourselves. It isn't anti-God, but you'll have to navigate past a lot of evolutionary jabber to make it through this one. If you can do that without foaming at the mouth, I recommend it.

(For the record, I've been rehashing a lot of my thoughts/beliefs about the way the world came into being. I still believe God is the designer of this world, but I have no concrete opinions on how he designed it. At this point, I'm closest to C.S. Lewis's viewpoint, presented in chapter six or so of The Problem of Pain. End of side note.)

David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames: David Sedaris is, to be blunt, a genius. The man knows how to tell a story and simultaneously wring humor, pathos, and keen observations on the human condition from a single sentence.

I first heard his literary brilliance when he made an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman to promote his book Me Talk Pretty One Day, and he read an essay so side-splittingly hilarious that I immediately retrieved said book from the library the following day. And I was hooked.

Then I read his stuff out of order, as it was available from the library. Naked was pretty good. Holidays on Ice, with the exception of "The Santaland Diaries," was a letdown. Soon he had another collection: Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim, which followed in the wacky-family/crazy-childhood vein of Me Talk Pretty One Day. Hilarious stuff, but much of it shockingly vulgar.

I didn't know what to expect from this new one, but I dove in with glee. And, while the man still knows how to be funny, he's growing up. I think he's approaching fifty now, and he seems to be contemplating the inevitable conclusion that he now has less life left in the tank than he's already used. Unlike me, who's staring at the tender age of 32, Sedaris seems to be aware that the time for telling funny stories with no point is coming to an end, and the time for passing on some wisdom has arrived.

But it's still funny. For real.

Michael Chabon, Maps & Legends: Oh my. Regular Dregs readers will know I'm a sucker for Michael Chabon, but I didn't know what to expect from this, his first collection of non-fiction essays, mostly about the art of writing or just plain art. I shall cease to offer my opinions and now quote liberally from the book, starting with the first two paragraphs:

Entertainment has a bad name. Serious people learn to mistrust and even to revile it. The word wears spandex, pasties, a leisure suit studded with blinking lights. It gives off a whiff of Coppertone and dripping Creamsicle, the fake-butter miasma of movie-house lobby, of karaoke and Jagermeister, Jerry Bruckheimer movies, a Street Fighter machine grunting solipsistically in a corner of an ice-rink arcade. Entertainment trades in cliche and product placement. It engages in regions of the brain far from the centers of discernment, critical thinking, ontological speculation. It skirts the black heart of life and drowns life's lambency in a halogen glare. Intelligent people must keep a certain distance from its productions. They must handle the things that entertain them with gloves of irony and postmodern tongs. Entertainment, in short, means junk, and too much junk is bad for you--bad for your heart, your arteries, your mind, your soul.

But maybe these intelligent and serious people, my faithful straw men, are wrong. Maybe the reason for the junkiness of so much of what pretends to entertain us is that we have accepted--indeed, we have helped to articulate--such a narrow, debased concept of entertainment, sensitive at any depth, and over a wide spectrum. But we have learned to mistrust and despise our human aptitude for being entertained, and in that sense, we get the entertainment we deserve.

Wait, wait. Don't go on yet. Go back and read it again, for it is important. It is a brilliant summation of our current culture, and one with which I cannot agree more. Have you read it again, because, seriously, you should.

Okay, moving on, some thoughts about pop culture/entertainment:

The pop artisan operates within the received formulas--gangster movie, radio-ready A-side, space opera--and then incorporates into the style, manner, and mood of the work bits and pieces derived from all the aesthetic moments he or she has ever fallen in love with in other movies or songs or novels, whether hackwork or genius (without regard for and sometimes without consciousness of any difference between the two)... When it works, what you get is not a collection of references, quotes, allusions, and cribs but a whole, seamless thing, both familiar and new: a record of the consciousness that was busy falling in love with those moments in the first place. It's that filtering consciousness, coupled with the physical ability (or whatever it is) to flat-out play or song or write or draw, that transforms the fragments and jetsam and familiar pieces into something fresh and unheard of. If that sounds a lot like what flaming genius gods are supposed to be up to, then here's a distinction: the pop artisan is always hoping that, in the end, the thing is going to kill. He is haunted by a vision of pop perfection: heartbreaking beauty that moves units.

See what I mean? I need to offer no commentary; the man is a writing savant who understands his craft well. In fact, I would say that, though this book strives for greater ambition, it is the best book about writing I've read since (shockingly) Stephen King's.

The latter portions of the book are more for Chabon fans who've read his works and who would therefore be interested in learning the germs that became the ideas that became books like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay or The Yiddish Policemen's Union. If you haven't read his work, you might be lost toward the end, but then, with gems like these, you might just find yourself entertained and inspired. I know I was:

...There is a degree to which... all literature highbrow or low, from the Aeneid onward, is fan fiction... Through parody and pastiche, allusion and homage, retelling and reimagining the stories that we were told before us and that we have come of age loving--amateurs---we proceed, seeking out the blank places in the map that our favorite writers, in their greatness and negligence, have left for us, hoping to pass on to our own readers--should we be lucky enough to find any--some of the pleasure that we ourselves have taken in the stuff we love: to get in on the game. All novels are sequels; influence is bliss.

No Child Left Behind.

2008-07-12T21:39:00.013-06:00

Well, we all made it, as this official photo, taken on our next-to-last day there, proves:
We are back from Costa Rica, and, after a quick scan of all our available beds, I find that everyone made it back and is now asleep.

As for the trip, I have to say, it was a delightful time. Here are a few things I learned while abroad:

1) My kids are great travelers. They are very good at standing in long lines at airports that move very slowly*, and on the way there, they did a relatively whine-free job of toting all their clothes, crammed into their individual backpacks, due to our highly rational fear that the airline would lose our luggage (it happened to someone else on our team!).
2) San Jose, capital city of Costa Rica, is much bigger than I thought. And much more cosmopolitan. Being a dumb American, I was expecting ramshackle huts constructed of mud and straw. They have supermarkets!
3) Buying avocadoes the size of your head from some guy on the street? Genius.
4) I never got tired of gallo pinto for breakfast.
5) It's possible to have too much fresh pineapple. Just barely, but it's possible.
6) The people of Costa Rica are absolutely beautiful, inside and out. They are also, by and large, incredibly earnest, and my American sarcasm was lost on them. Fortunately, I know how to be funny without it.
7) The correct way to say "you're welcome" there is not "de nada," but rather "gusto."
8) Even when brewed in mass quantities with subpar water and so-so filters, Costa Rican coffee is incredible.
9) Short-term missions trips are as much about changing yourself as they are about changing the country you visit.
10) The USA is incredibly foolish for sweetening Coca-Cola with high fructose corn syrup instead of cane sugar.
11) I understand more Spanish than I thought I did. Speaking it is still a problem, though.
12) Everyone has a story to tell, and everyone has something to contribute to the cause of Christ. Even kids.
13) Charlotte's personality is her ministry.
14) Dorothy can be best friends with just about anyone, at any age.
15) Noah was born to play in the ocean. It's like every breaker is his long-lost twin.
16) Emma has the most willing missionary heart of anyone I know. The girl yearns for the lost (even though she gets humanly cranky at times).
17) Marley is great with kids who don't speak the same language as her.
18) Outside of Jesus, Michelle is the greatest thing ever to happen to me.
19) I can take a two-week break from my computer and not only not die, I can not even miss it.
20) "Por favor, depositar el papel en el basurero" is a wicked, wicked phrase, even if they do say please.
21) Americans, myself included, are far too concerned with trifles, to a troubling extent.
22) Guanabana is quite possibly the best tropical fruit you've never had.
23) Franz and Francisco are incredible bus drivers, and, should bus driving ever become an Olympic sport, will take home the gold and silver for Costa Rica. Regardless of where said Olympics are held, these two men will drive their medals back to Costa Rica on their buses. In reverse.
24) You can have some of your loudest congregational worship with just an acoustic guitar and someone playing a pulpit like a djembe.
25) Surfing is simultaneously fun, peaceful, and awe-inspiring.
26) People in Costa Rica actually say "Pura Vida" and mean it. It isn't just a tourist thing.
27) The iPod Touch costs about $550. But there is an authorized Apple Store in the mall in San Jose.
28) If you speak Spanish and aren't afraid of the walk-out, you can negotiate a super-cheap price on just about anything.
29) All kids love VBS.
30) Fly on Wednesday afternoon. There was literally no waiting at the Miami International Airport security checkpoint.
31) When in Jaco, eat at either Soda Rustico or Pachi's Pan. The former is authentic Costa Rican food for cheap, and the latter is a bakery that blows the mind. At Pachi's, order the chicken empanada (only a buck) and marvel.
32) The world needs Jesus, and the United States is not his favorite place in the whole entire earth.

That's all I can think of now. I'm sure there'll be more to come.

Thanks to all who supported us. It was truly an educational, enriching experience for every member of the Palmer Tribe, and now that we all have our passports, I tremble at the thought of where God might send us next...

*(I mean that the lines move slowly, not the airports.)

We're Going!

2008-06-22T07:24:00.004-06:00

Thanks to an incredibly generous public, many of our friends and family, and possibly divine intervention, we have raised enough money to pay for our Costa Rica missions trip.

We leave in three days.

I didn't realize how massive this undertaking would be until Michelle started packing for it. There are clothes upon clothes all over the place--who knew it would take so much planning and effort to shuttle two weeks' worth of clothes for seven people?

Anyway, we're all very excited (and slightly nervous) about the whole endeavor. We look forward to seeing the ways God stretches us on this trip (though I'm secretly hoping that he only stretches me in ways that are comfortable--which probably means he won't).

If I can, I'll offer some updates while abroad. I'm taking a two-week vacation from the ol' laptop, but I think there'll be a computer somewhere along the way.

New Discovery: We Don't Know As Much As We Think.

2008-06-03T12:56:00.016-06:00

We have a confluence of new discoveries made recently that are really making me ponder my existence. I'm sure this coincides with my recent purchase of The Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Classics, which in turn coincided with me checking out the official audio version of said collection from my local library.

Up first, this story about a tribe of people in Brazil/Peru that has absolutely no idea that we, this internet-connected, GMO-consuming, gas-price-worrying society, exists. Here they are, obviously feeling threatened by the noisy, enormous bird flying over them:

Follow this link for more photos and the complete story, which contains this intriguing bit:

In our overcrowded world their very future hangs in the balance. Almost all of these tribes are threatened by powerful outsiders who want their land. These outsiders - loggers, miners, cattle ranchers - are often willing to kill the tribespeople to get what they want.

Even where there is no violence, the tribes can be wiped out by diseases like the common cold to which they have no resistance.

According to Miriam Ross of Survival International, which campaigns to protect the world's remaining indigenous peoples, "These tribes represent the incredible diversity of humankind. Unless we want to condemn yet more of the earth's peoples to extinction, we must respect their choice. Any contact they have with outsiders must happen in their own time and on their own terms."

Secondly, we have this bulletin from NASA, which shows, apparently, a patch of ice uncovered by the Phoenix Mars Lander's thrusters last week:

And, from the story:

"We were expecting to find ice within two to six inches of the surface," said Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, principal investigator for Phoenix. "The thrusters have excavated two to six inches and, sure enough, we see something that looks like ice. It's not impossible that it's something else, but our leading interpretation is ice."

(Please note that the researchers are from the University of Arizona and that this whole Mars Lander thing was not orchestrated nor sponsored by the University of Phoenix. Presumably, if there is extraterrestrial life, the boosters at U of A are hoping to make them Wildcat fans before any of the other schools can get to them.)

Jocularity aside, read these stories (and while you're at it, The World Without Us isn't a bad idea, either) and then consider this: if we didn't know about either of these things, what else do we not know, and what should that teach us about our own humility?

A Must-Read.

2008-04-17T09:22:00.014-06:00

My wife doesn't update her blog often, but when she does, it's always worth reading. I encourage everyone to check out this post. Heartbreaking as it might be, it is a transcription of the letter she had to write to the attorney in Africa explaining why we had to forsake our adoption process.

The letter itself is written in a very African style, in Michelle's attempt to speak to the adoption attorneys in their own Ugandan variation of the English language. But the introduction she wrote is very much her own:

I never thought it would end this way. I woke up at 4 am with the grace to write the following letter out.

I am dedicating this post to birth mothers, who loved their children so much they chose to place them with families that could care for them better than they could. Who love so deeply they are willing to hurt the rest of their lives so that their children don't. I honor you women.

Goodbye, my sweet boy. I love you this much.

I admire her bravery in acknowledging and tending the emotional wounds she's sustained in the past few months. I admire her grace and poise in the grieving process. And I admire her willingness to share our story with the rest of the world.

To paraphrase an earlier post: Life goes on. God is good.

Blessings, Brave One.

Writing Is Easy: Clarity Is For Champions!

2008-04-10T20:34:00.007-06:00

This is possibly my favorite Calvin & Hobbes strip ever, as it deals with not one but two of my writing pet peeves in one strip! One (the unnecessary proliferation of verbs in our culture--it's like a nuclear arms race in here) I've written about before; the other is the topic of today's entry in the fabulously successful "Writing Is Easy" entries.

Clarity.

It's something we all want, unless we're writing egghead essays to impress college professors (and even then, sometimes dense language foliage isn't welcome). And yet, so many people are downright incoherent in their written communication.

Should you strive for clarity, the solution is, I think, simple: write whatever you want, then take a step back, and edit. This, I fear, is the achilles heel of most writing today, this lack of edit. We've become accustomed to vomiting our thoughts into the internet, or into an email, or onto a Microsoft Word document, and then clicking "Send."

Stop. Wait. Look at what you've written. Read it from your audience's point of view. Does the punctuation make sense? Does it speak the same language your audience speaks? Are you shooting over their heads? Under them? Can you adjust it to be more clear? Combine sentences, perhaps? Or correct run-on sentences? Perhaps you're asking too many questions at once?

You get the point. Step back. Edit. Don't end up like this...

"Life Is Like A Toilet."

2008-04-09T14:24:00.003-06:00

So said my six-year-old son yesterday. He has dreams of becoming a writer when he grows up, and he's pretty good at ferreting out spiritual truths from everyday things.

For example, on Easter Sunday, he informed us that Easter eggs are a reminder of Easter because you open up the egg and take out the candy, which makes it empty inside, just like the tomb was when Jesus rose from the dead.

However, he uncorked a couple of beauts last night. As we drove home from an outing, he said that "Life is like a toilet. When you get all dirty and yucky, you flush the toilet and it all comes back clean. So if you are feeling meanness, you have to flush the toilet and get rid of the meanness and then it will come back as kindness."

I think he meant something about prayer in the middle of that there.

Number two (pardon the pun): My eight-year-old daughter had a compass last night, and she asked me how it worked. So I showed the kids, and then Noah pulls out: "God is like a compass. He shows you the right way you should go."

"Yeah," I said, "you're right. If you ever feel anger or meanness, you can ask God how you should act and he'll show you which way to go."

"Yeah," he said. "But what if someone keeps hitting you in the face with a dodge ball?"

I stifled a smile. "I guess you should just pray and ask God what direction you should go."

"I just walked away," he said.

Uh oh. So he wasn't being silly with the question. I asked him what was up, and he told me that a couple of kids at a birthday party he'd attended earlier had decided to pick on him during a dodge ball game. When he walked away (a move for which I heaped hearty praise on him), they followed him out of the dodge ball pavilion and kept trying to peg him with the balls (for which they were chastised by adults present).

"Why do you think those guys were picking on you, Noah?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said, flicking his hair out of his face with a quick jerk of his head. "Probably because of my smooth moves."

Costa Rica, Here We Come.

2008-03-26T20:30:00.007-06:00

See all these people? This is me with my family, and we're attempting something this summer we've never attempted before:

We're going to Costa Rica on a missions trip.

Are we nuts? Maybe.

But, we are planning to go, and we're planning to go as a family. We're excited about the possibilities this brings forth, especially for the kiddos, most especially for Emma (the pony-tailed one in the back row whose head is next to mine), who felt God call her to be a missionary when she was only five years old and who has already had some deep theological profundity well up from within. We believe God's going to do some crazy stuff in our kids' hearts while on this trip, while simultaneously bonding us as a family and (maybe?) launching us into a new means of ministry. We can't put our fingers on it, but something grand is going to happen to one or more (or all) of us. So we're going.

However: we can't go for free. So we're in the midst of a giant fundraising campaign to try to earn enough money to get there. That's where you, dear Dregs reader, come in.

Please visit the link to our super-awesome fundraising page, hosted at www.firstgiving.com/palmertribe. If you'd like to donate, you can do so there. If you want to get behind our efforts and mention us on your blog, well, that'd be swell. Leave me a link in the comments section and I'll give you a mention on here.

Thanks for your help! Sorry for the shameless plug; I'm planning on posting another Writing Is Easy entry soon (as soon as I write it -- it's so hard!).

Spider-Man: Now With Soul.

2008-03-19T19:03:00.005-06:00

Today I typed the last words of my newest to-be-published endeavor, The Soul of Spider-Man, a sequel of sorts to Taming a Liger, except this time, instead of one movie (i.e. Napoleon Dynamite), my illustrious co-author and I are tackling three movies (i.e. the Spider-Man trilogy). It feels good to have the first draft finished, though it won't be hitting bookstore shelves or Amazon warehouses for at least another year. Such is life in the publishing world.

In the meantime, I'm going to sit back, relax, and watch a movie--any movie--that isn't Spider-Man.

Who Cares That They Haven't Built One Yet?

2008-03-04T15:42:00.008-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present what could be considered the world's first green sports car.

Here's a rundown from the linked article (which has a ton of photos):

...four in-wheel motors generate 553 lb-ft of torque -- that's about as much as the tire-shredding Dodge Viper SRT produces -- and 120 kilowatts apiece (for a combined total of about 643 horsepower, putting it in the same ballpark as the Corvette ZR1). Lightning [the company who designed it] claims the car will do 0 to 60 in 4.0 seconds and hit a top speed of 130 mph. Range is 250 miles.

The car features an aluminum honeycomb chassis, carbon-kevlar bodywork, regenerative braking and 36 kilowatt nano lithium titanate battery the company says will charge in just 10 minutes and maintain 85 percent capacity after 15,000 charges. Look for a full slate of features, from anti-lock braking and traction control to air conditioning and leather.

Pretty awesome idea; here's hoping they can make it work.

Also, they're saying it'll cost $300,000. You could make this Oscar-winning movie three times with that amount of money.

I Think She Liked It.

2008-02-25T14:34:00.006-06:00

Darcie Gudger, from TitleTrakk.com, on Knuckle Sandwich:

I love how Adam Palmer isn’t afraid to Go There – into the dark alleyways of life Christian YA [young adult] books of yesteryear either ignored, or only alluded to. Harsh reality creates emotional ties between readers and characters. Teens no longer need feel alienated by fake Christian utopias. They will see that no matter how intense the desire to “Make some noise for JESUS”, they are not immune to common temptations.

...and...

My sides ached for days because Palmer’s unparalleled humor had me gasping for air. Cradle Christians (saved at an early age) will garner the most guffaws. Palmer pokes fun at the churchy institution and its stuffy culture. His innuendoes are brilliant!

...and...

Authors such as Adam Palmer and colleagues, don’t just tell compelling stories, they change lives.

Read the whole review here, and then buy the book here, if the mood should strike you.

Oh My.

2008-02-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

From Variety.com:

Coens speak 'Yiddish' for Columbia
Rudin producing adaptation of Chabon's 'Union'
By MICHAEL FLEMING

For their next collaboration, the "No Country for Old Men" team of Joel and Ethan Coen and producer Scott Rudin will transfer another Pulitzer Prize-winning author's work into a film.

Columbia Pictures has acquired screen rights to the bestselling Michael Chabon novel "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," with the Coens writing, directing and producing with Rudin.

Chabon sets up a contemporary scenario where Jewish settlers are about to be displaced by U.S. government's plans to turn the frozen locale of Sitka, Alaska, over to Alaskan natives. Against this backdrop is a noir-style murder mystery in which a rogue cop investigates the killing of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who might be the messiah.

The Coens will turn their attention to the book after they shoot "A Serious Man" for Working Title and Focus.

"No Country" has become the highest-grossing film for the brothers, and the pic is nominated for eight Oscars. The Coens are up for four of them, and their trophy haul so far includes WGA, SAG, DGA, PGA and BAFTA awards.

"Yiddish" is the third Chabon novel that Rudin is translating to the screen. The first was "Wonder Boys," and Rudin is developing a Paramount-based adaptation of Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which Chabon scripted.

The anticipatory saliva has already begun to pool in my mouth.

2007 Media Review: Amendments.

2008-02-11T13:39:00.001-06:00

My top five needs to be reworked, because as great as The Bourne Ultimatum and Rescue Dawn were, I'll have to bump them down to "Honorable Mention" status and replace them with a pair of movies I saw this weekend: There Will Be Blood and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

What triumphs. And interesting, in that those two pictures, along with No Country for Old Men, share similar themes, in that they are elaborate character examinations of bad guys. Anton Chigurh, Daniel Plainview, Jesse James, and Robert Ford are all men with a certain amount of disdain for regular human life, though their reasons are all varied among them (click here for Entertainment Weekly's very good comparison/contrast piece on No Country and Blood).

It is a fascinating reflection of the times in which we live. And, refreshingly, all three movies are fairly free of profanity, completely free of innuendo, and relatively tame in their depictions of violence. All three pictures have shockingly violent moments, and I wouldn't recommend any of them for the under-17 crowd, but the violence is far from the sensational, buckets-of-blood variety we see in today's current glut of "horror" pictures.

These films are all an examination of deeply flawed men, and all of them, in their own way, point to a simple truth of life, namely: "Be careful what you wish for; you just may get it."

Thoughts Turn To Space.

2008-02-06T14:37:00.000-06:00

I recently took in the movie Sunshine, which, as I noted previously, promised to be a thinking-man's sci-fi picture that devolved in the last half-hour to a disappointing monster flick. However, because of the thinking-man's aspects of the film, I decided to revisit a couple of thinking-man's science fiction classics: 2001: A Space Odyssey, the 1972 Tarkovsky version of Solaris, widely considered a masterpiece, and Steven Soderbergh's 2002 update of the same picture.

It's interesting to me to consider the effect Star Wars had on the science fiction industry. When it was released, 2001 predated not just the Star Wars pictures, but also the moon landing. It was contemplative, in love with imagery, and eerily prescient (Roger Ebert notes that the moon in the film looks pretty much like the actual moon landing would a year later). In the same way, the '72 Solaris is contemplative (bordering on dull), in love with imagery, and full of unresolved ideas about the nature of humanity. Suddenly, along comes Star Wars five years later, and now all the space stuff is just a backdrop for a lot of swashbuckling and cool effects.

Soderbergh's Solaris was an attempt to revive that contemplative sort of sci-fi. It has no action sequences, no overwhelming mythology, no bludgeoning of the viewer's senses with ornate setpieces that feature thousands of extras (or computer-simulated extras). It's a wonderful character piece that grapples with the same themes as the original Solaris, and, unsurprisingly, it was a box office dud. Teenagers don't pay money on Friday night to see thought-provoking character pieces that, unfortunately, cost a fortune ($47 million) to produce.

All this to say, I'm starting to think more and more about the cosmos, and the human's role in it. Consider this little bit of information, lifted from, of all things, a column that appears weekly on ESPN.com:

Recently, astronomers from Middlebury College discovered one of the fastest-moving large objects ever observed, a neutron star, designated RX J0822-4300, which appears to have been hurled away from a supernova that exploded about 3,700 years ago. Using the Chandra X-ray telescope in orbit around Earth, the astronomers calculated that the neutron star is moving about 3 million miles per hour and will, over the course of time, exit the Milky Way, hurtling into the intergalactic void. The incredible speed of RX J0822-4300 offers an opportunity to put cosmic velocity and distance into perspective. Since light moves at about 671 million miles per hour, the star is traveling at slightly under one-half of 1 percent of light speed. That means the star has traversed about 20 light-years since Hammurabi was king of Babylonia. It would take the star 20 million years to cross our galaxy from one end to the other, another 350 million years to reach the next-closest galaxy to ours.

Observation of this star tells us it is physically possible to accelerate a very heavy object to a measurable fraction of light speed; some physicists had contended that might always be impossible. Now that we know it can be done, we should assume humanity someday will accomplish this artificially. So let's suppose humanity someday builds a spaceship capable of one-half of 1 percent of light speed. (The fastest manmade object so far, the New Horizons space probe currently bound for Pluto, had a peak velocity of .007 percent of light speed, meaning the neutron star is moving about 75 times faster.) If humanity someday builds a spaceship capable of moving as fast as the neutron star, such technology would open up the solar system to every conceivable shenanigan. A ship moving at half of 1 percent of the speed of light could reach Mars in about 10 hours and be at Saturn in about a day. But a spaceship moving at half of 1 percent of light speed would still be a rowboat compared with cosmic distances -- requiring 800 years to reach the nearest star to our sun and 6 million years to reach the galactic center.

This thing is big, y'all. Much bigger than our limited vision, of science fiction genre films, of humanity.

Broken.

2008-02-06T14:35:00.000-06:00

It's High School, But It Ain't Musical.

2008-02-05T21:20:00.000-06:00

So I got an actual-factual copy of The High School Survival Guide in the mail yesterday, and I gotta say: Bravo, NavPress. It looks great, you guys. Nice trim size, great cover, with the art theme cleverly worked in throughout the pages. It definitely is a smashing package that goes well with graduations, football/basketball/wrestling/baseball/competitive speech championship celebrations, gift-giving occasions (Presidents' Day is just around the corner!), or just because.

I've seen many iterations of this book, from the Microsoft Word document I shipped off to the publisher electronically, to the copy-edited and printed Microsoft Word document I received from them, to the print-out stack-o'-paper version I got back from them after it had made the rounds through the design team. But there's something about seeing it in actual book form that makes it feel so real.

Also, there's something about seeing it in book form that causes me to palpitate immensely and find a myriad of things I wish I'd done differently. Most humorously, this time around, is the acknowledgment I gave Evan Taylor at the front, thanking him for snapping the author photo that graces the back pages of my books (and the upper left-hand corner of this websites). Then I flip it over to look at the back cover and find... no photo. NavPress left it off for some reason.

Okay, that's the only thing I'll tell you. You'll have to find all my other palpitation-inducing nitpicks on your own.

(P.S. As I write, this the book is the 2,969,830th best-seller over there at that one website.)

Will I Break The Three Million Barrier?

2008-02-04T15:39:00.001-06:00

Only 100,000 spots to go...

Thanks, Internet!

2008-01-28T23:20:00.000-06:00

Before I put up this post, this was the Amazon.com sales rank for The High School Survival Guide:

After the post, my Amazon.com sales rank shot to the astonishing new level of:

Thank you! I couldn't have done it without you, internet!

Survive Now!

2008-01-23T15:27:00.001-06:00

Adam Palmer's hilariously poignant and helpful book is available for pre-order now! Surely a great gift for that special high school student in your life! Beat the graduation rush and buy one today! Better yet, buy ten today! It releases in only a couple of weeks, and by then, they could all be sold out! Okay, that probably won't happen, but it's a possibility! A very rare possibility, but a possibility nonetheless! There's a chance, is all I'm saying! Don't be on the wrong end of that chance! Instead, click anywhere in this entire paragraph to place your order at Amazon.com!

Click here for an exciting history on the exclamation mark!

2007 Media Review: Bold Predictions For 2008.

2008-01-17T10:04:00.000-06:00

[Concluding the media review with a look into the upcoming year...]

BOLD PREDICTIONS FOR 2008
1) Fox Searchlight will unearth another breakout indie hit/awards favorite featuring a talented and as-of-yet unheard-of young lead actress in the title role who people will sort of recognize from a supporting part in a previous summer blockbuster. It will be packed with Quirky characters, and people will tell me how great "the writing" is, when, in actuality, they mean "the dialogue has words you don't hear every day." The success of the movie will be primarily spurred on by positive word-of-mouth, and a print/web marketing campaign that bludgeons the consumer with a singular bright color that plays an insignificant role in the actual movie.

2) The Dark Knight will surpass Titanic for overall awesomeness in box-office receipts. Christian Bale will then be swept into office of President by a groundswell of write-in votes, which will also overturn the Constitution to allow a Welshman to govern our fine nation.

3) No summer blockbuster for the next ten years will be able to achieve a crummier, more anticipation-deflating title than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Thanks for wresting this one away from Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, George Lucas. At least you kept it in the family.

4) The writers' strike will end the same day the rapture occurs. I have 2008 reasons this will happen in 2008.

2007 Media Review: Top Concerts/Sporting Events.

2008-01-16T12:50:00.000-06:00

[The last of the media review entries. Tomorrow will see my bold predictions for 2008. And now, to continue the running theme, I'm closing this sentence with an ellipsis...]

TOP 5 CONCERTS AND/OR SPORTING EVENTS
1) Boston Red Sox vs. Colorado Rockies, in Fenway Park, in June. Michelle and I enjoyed a World Series preview without knowing it would be a World Series preview. The Sox got creamed, by the way, but it was cool to see Curt Schilling on the actual mound, and to cheer every time former Tulsa Driller Troy Tulowitzki got on base. Also: the official team store across the street from the park is a sight to behold.

Um, that's only one:
Yep. I don't have time to take in concerts and/or sporting events; I'm assuming the stage productions of Annie and The Nutcracker that my daughter was in don't count.

Worst concert and/or sporting event:
See previous response.

2007 Media Review: Top TV.

2008-01-15T09:23:00.000-06:00

[The shortest post yet in my media review; I mainly divide my time 'twixt motion pictures, the written word, and my familia (and that's in reverse order)--not a lot of time left over for the television (and sports don't count). We'll cover concerts/sporting events tomorrow, and then my bold predictions for 2008 on Thursday. But now, let's go over 2007's...]

TOP 5 TELEVISED SPECTACLES
1) Lost [I thought about the season finale for days.]
2) The Office
3) 30 Rock
4) Planet Earth [I don't have cable, so we watched the DVDs, which feature the original British tones of BBC narrator David Attenborough. Me like.]
5) Did I mention Lost?

I don't watch much TV, so I don't have any other categories, so let's skip to the worst TV of 2007:
24. After such a great setup, it turned into a disappointment... again. I won't be watching in '08.

2007 Media Review: Top Music.

2008-01-14T09:46:00.000-06:00

[Get those toes a-tappin' as the media review continues...]

TOP 5 MUSICAL ENDEAVORS
1) Once: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova [In case you couldn't tell, I liked this movie.]
2) The Reminder, Feist [So many people put this on their review, and it almost made me not list it--but I have to be honest and say I probably have listened to no album in 2007 more than this one.]
3) Sky Blue Sky, Wilco [The best Eagles album released in '07. Ahem.]
4) The Trumpet Child, Over the Rhine [Cabaret is not dead; it just moved to Cincinnati.]
5) The Black and White Album, The Hives [No one does high-energy hubris rock better than them. I quote from the liner notes of this record: "W. Churchill says: 'Never before have The Hives done so much for so many.'"]

Let's just go ahead and make it a top 10:
In Rainbows, Radiohead
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, Foo Fighters
We Walked in Song, The Innocence Mission
Volta, Bjork [on the strength of "Earth Intruders" and "Declare Independence" alone.]
Give Yourself Away, Robbie Seay Band

Coolest musical invention of 2007:
The Reactable. Watch the Basic Demos and be amazed.
(Demo #1) (Demo #2)

2007's catchiest song:
"1 2 3 4", Feist

2007's catchiest song about terrorism:
"Tick Tick Boom", The Hives

Worst music of 2007:
I don't have time to listen to crap, so this would have to be pretty much any of the "performances" by "artists" (who the heck is Akon? and why was he on twice?) on the Wednesday night episodes of American Idol I was forced, much against my will, to endure.

2007 Media Review: Top Movies.

2008-01-13T21:15:00.000-06:00

[The madness continues, movie-style. Tomorrow: music. Until then, enjoy...]

TOP 5 MOVIES
1) Once [I have nothing but love in my heart for a movie that does absolutely nothing wrong and everything right. All musicians should watch this film, and be amazed, and then depressed that no song you ever write will be as good as "Falling Slowly."]
2) No Country for Old Men [This time, all the critics were right. The comments section below is waiting for you if you didn't "get" the ending.]
3) Ratatouille [Brad Bird is turning into one of my favorite directors. No movie in '07 delighted me more.]
4) The Bourne Ultimatum [Literally everyone put this movie on their very diverse list. If Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon keep making these, I'll keep seeing them.]
5) Rescue Dawn [Whew. I'm tired. And suddenly hungry.]

Almost there, but not quite:
Zodiac [It was actually a toss-up between this and Rescue Dawn for the #5 slot.]
Breach
A Mighty Heart
The TV Set
No End in Sight
Spider-Man 3
The Simpsons Movie
Sunshine
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
The Kingdom

Movies that might've made the top 5, if I'd seen them:
There Will Be Blood [Hurry up and come to Tulsa, movie! This is the only film here that I yearn--yearn!--to see on opening weekend. Everything else will do on DVD.]
Into the Wild
I'm Not There
Michael Clayton
Across the Universe
The Darjeeling Limited
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
In the Shadow of the Moon
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters
Persepolis
Into Great Silence [A 3-hour-long documentary on silent monks. What's not to like?]

Movies that threatened to be brilliant, then shot themselves in the foot in the last act:
Sunshine [contemplative and stunning, it cheesed out by becoming, essentially, a monster movie. This is hands-down the most frustrating cop-out of '07, even though it almost redeemed itself in the last five minutes. What a waste.]
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (IMAX 3-D version) [never again will I take in a movie not meant to be 3-D in the first place. It ceased being about the story and became about the very jarring spectacle.]

Movies that received much critical acclaim and that all my friends told me were great but that I cannot muster any enthusiasm for:
Juno [The only one on this list I've seen. It tried way too hard to be Quirky(TM). Wes Anderson should sue for copyright infringement.]
Atonement [Epic + Romance + Period Piece = I won't see it anytime soon.]
The Kite Runner [I know, I know: I'm a horrible human being.]
Away from Her
Lars and the Real Girl
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best fight scene featuring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner:
The Kingdom

Worst fight scene featuring Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner:
Juno

Worst movie of the year by a mile (and possibly of the decade), which is quite a feat, because this year gave us Evan Almighty and Bratz:
Transformers [I was expecting big, dumb fun; it gave me two out of three.]

2007 Media Review: Top Books.

2008-01-12T10:49:00.000-06:00

[Note: Some friends of mine and I have an ongoing annual ritual. Every year, we email each other lists of our top five entries in five different media: books, movies, television, music, and concerts/sporting events (we also include the "worst" entry of the year). This year, I'm sharing my list with the internet! I'll post the lists daily over the next four days (I hope), starting with the...]

TOP 5 BOOKS OF 2007
1) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling [This is less for the book itself ("Ron said sycophantically." Really? Fire your editor, J.K.) and more for all it stood for. I loved the way she wrapped up the series, character- and plotwise. Writingwise, not so much.]
2) God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer, Pete Greig [The best Jesus book I read this year]
3) The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon [He makes my writing sound like Pat the Bunny, though he needs to retire the words "acrid" and "tang" for the next couple of books.]
4)I Am America (And So Can You!), Stephen Colbert [Hilarious from start to finish; definitely a deserving winner of the Stephen T. Colbert Award For Literary Excellence. The audiobook is awesome as well, and available from the Tulsa City-County Library. (A note, however: it does contain some mildly coarse language and subject matter.)]
5) Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America, Cullen Murphy [Semi-political book thrown in for flavor. Fascinating read.]

Honorable Mentions:
Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light
Bambi vs. Godzilla, David Mamet
From Bad to Worse, Todd & Jedd Hafer
Save Me From Myself, Brian "Head" Welch

Books from past years that would've been on this list if I'd read them in that year instead of 2007:
What is the What? The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, Dave Eggers (2006) [You owe it to yourself to read this heart-rending account of one of the Lost Boys of the Sudan.]
The Areas of my Expertise, John Hodgman (2005) [smartly funny writing from the guy who plays "PC" in the Apple commercials. It had me with its half-page essay: "When Writing, Please Avoid These Failed Palindromes."]
The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006) [I don't know how this was an Oprah book club selection, but I thank the person who fooled her into backing one of the most brilliant--but bleak--character studies I've possibly ever read. Makes Children of Men look like The Wizard of Oz.]
Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard (1843) [I don't even remember my top books from 1843.]

Book that should've been on everyone else's top 5 list:
Knuckle Sandwich, Adam Palmer

Worst book of 2007:
The Almost Moon, Alice Sebold. [I actually didn't read any severely horrible books, but out of all the best-sellers and whatnot that get premium placement at big-box retailers, this is surely a letdown. I didn't jump on The Lovely Bones bandwagon, so I didn't expect much from this one, and it failed even to meet those low expectations. Skip it.]

Humility On Sale: 49 Cents.

2008-01-07T13:32:00.002-06:00

So, the family and I were at Mardel, our local Christian bookstore, when I decided to see if I could find any of my books there. I uncovered Mooch and Knuckle Sandwich in the "Teen Fiction" section (though they aren't, technically written to or about teenagers), but they were both faced out, with their very appealing covers prominent, so I couldn't make too much of a stink.

Feeling good, I headed toward the register and was brought low when I noticed Cracking Da Vinci's Code: Student Edition on a clearance rack. For 90% off. Total price? 49 cents.

The life of the published author...

Greatest T-Shirt Ever.

2008-01-07T11:34:00.000-06:00

The geniuses at Glarkware have done it again. First there was Good Grammar Costs Nothing, and now this. If only they didn't cost so much.

[Note: there is a bit of PG-13 language on the Glarkware site. Browse at your own risk.]

Closing The Door.

2008-01-04T17:15:00.001-06:00

(This is the full text of an email I sent most of my family and friends earlier today. If you didn't receive it, it's probably because I didn't think of you as I hurriedly assigned email addresses to it. Apologies. It wasn't an intentional slight.)

It is with a heavy heart and a devastated spirit that I write to you today. After months of prayer, counsel, soul-searching, and flat-out arguments with God, Michelle and I have decided to withdraw our adoption case and end that particular part of our lives. The longer we hold on to him, the more it becomes obvious that nothing's going to change in our case, and the more we endanger his chance of being adopted by someone else.

In the African system, once a child becomes five years old, he is pretty much destined to be an orphan for the rest of his life. Sterling is just about a year and a half away from that, and we don’t want to hold on to him at the expense of seeing him go to another family. We love him too much to keep him an orphan.

This has been a long time coming. The writing has been on the wall for months now, but we've refused to admit it or acknowledge it. In retrospect, that refusal has come out of fear rather than faith--we've been too emotionally tied to Sterling for too long, and were thus blinded to the truth and deaf to the voice of God. The reflexive action is to say, "But, but, but..." We've said that a million times. But we know we've done all that we can feasibly do, and the obstacles and roadblocks are still in place. There really is no more we can do at this point, and there hasn't been for some time, so at long last, we've finally come to a place of bewildered, shell-shocked peace and made the difficult decision we knew had to be made.

Still, there's an exhaustive relief to it. This has been a door in our lives that has been open for a long time, so it's painfully nice to be able to close that door and move on in whatever direction God would have us. No, it is not the conclusion we've been hoping for the last two and a half years, but it's a conclusion, and that is sufficient.

And in the end, we remain God's. We don't know why things shook out the way they did, we don't know why God called us to this task only to have it fall apart time and again. We don't know what we're going to tell our children, who have grown up for the last two and a half years talking about their brother Sterling. All we know is that God is faithful, that he is good, that he loves us, and that he loves Sterling more than we do. That boy is too, too precious to remain an orphan, and he's been watching all his friends at the orphanage get adopted out from underneath him. Now he is free to find a family; it just won't be ours.

Thank you so much for walking down this road with us in whatever capacity you did. Thank you for prayers, words of encouragement, financial blessings, and the countless other ways you supported the Palmer Tribe in the midst of our time as Sterling's family. It's going to take some time, grieving this loss, but we're confident that we'll come through the other side of it more in love with Jesus and more in love with each other. It's just the way God works.

May God extend his grace and peace to you in a tangible way today,

--Adam (and Michelle)

Manufactured Hand-Holding.

2007-11-04T21:03:00.001-06:00

As I mentioned previously, I am enamored of the fine motion picture Once, and as such I've been intermittently visiting a particular online retailer to determine when this musical masterpiece will be available on DVD, or, as we say in the business, "DVD."

It's been awhile, but I finally discovered that the movie is scheduled to release on December 18, just four days after my birthday (but still in plenty of time for Christmas!). So I got all this information off my local online retailer's website, which, coincidentally, featured a still image of the DVD's cover, which caused me to simultaneously chuckle and sigh (or "chigh," if you will [which is not the same as this]).

I chuckled because studios are never subtle in their DVD packaging and have been known to misrepresent the content of a movie with a cover that told a different story than the one told in the actual picture. But I sighed because this cover (spoiler!) ruins part of the mystique of Once, suggesting romance when there was none...that we know of.

Compare the DVD cover (the first image) with the original movie poster (the second image) and you'll (hopefully) see what I mean.

In the DVD cover, we have the man and the woman in the same image from the poster, but lightened considerably. The dingy background of downtown Dublin now shines like a Hollywoodized Paris, France. Even Glen Hansard's jeans have been made bluer and fresher, as if he just pulled them out of the dryer after a rinse with Tide with Bleach. Notice also that Glen's gig bag has been replaced with something smaller, as if he's toting around a banjo in that thing.

But these things are minor quibbles. In the DVD image, Glen and co-star Marketa Irglova have been moved together and slightly jostled to suddenly appear as if they're holding hands. Ye gods! The (spoiler) whole point of the movie is that these two characters collide in a way where they might be in love, but never say it or act on it in any visible way! This is what makes Once such a treat to begin with, this complete denial of the formulaic story we expected.

Still, pointless Photoshop work aside, it is a fine film that I cannot recommend enough. Do yourself a favor and check it out, though I feel obligated to warn you that, since it takes place in Ireland, with Irish characters portrayed by Irish people, it does have copious amounts of swearing. They use the F-word like we say "extra cheese" in the States.

Boy, this post really fizzled out toward the end there, didn't it? Sorry--it's been awhile since I picked this "blog" thing back up.

It's A Bean!

2007-10-27T08:45:00.000-06:00

“Salutations!” said the voice.

Wilbur jumped to his feet. “Salu-what?” he cried.

“Salutations!” repeated the voice.

“What are they, and where are you?” screamed Wilbur. “Please, please, tell me where you are. And what are salutations?”

“Salutations are greetings,” said the voice. “When I say ‘salutations,’ it’s just my fancy way of saying hello or good morning. Actually, it’s a silly expression, and I am surprised that I used it at all. As for my whereabouts, that’s easy. Look up here in the corner of the doorway! Here I am. Look, I’m waving!”

At last Wilbur saw the creature that had spoken to him in such a kindly way. Stretched across the upper part of the doorway was a big spiderweb, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a large grey spider. She was about the size of a gumdrop. She had eight legs, and she was waving one of them at Wilbur in friendly greeting. “See me now?” she asked.

“Oh, yes indeed,” said Wilbur. “Yes indeed! How are you? Good morning. Salutations! Very pleased to meet you. What is your name, please? May I have your name?”

“My name,” said the spider, “is Charlotte.”

“Charlotte what?” asked Wilbur, eagerly.

“Charlotte A. Cavatica. But just call me Charlotte.”

“I think you’re beautiful,” said Wilbur.

--E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

Wilbur is, of course, right.

Charlotte Anne Palmer (aka "The Bean") was born September 19, 2007. She's healthy, awesome, and all kinds of delightful. She also no longer resembles a bean.

Takin' A Blog Break.

2007-09-14T10:09:00.000-06:00

I have a very good problem: I am crazy-busy. I'm finishing a book, then jumping right into work on another book, as well as a pair of proposals that my agent will be shopping.

Thus, I'm officially taking a break from the blog, and indeed from many of my internet-type pursuits for the next few weeks. In the meantime, peruse the links to the side.

See you in a little while...

An Author's Lament.

2007-09-08T20:59:00.000-06:00

Time.com recently ran a feature story entitled "Mother Teresa's Crisis of Faith." The article was the cover feature on the magazine's newsstand edition and carried the hilariously alarmist words The Secret Life of Mother Teresa with a dutifully mournful photograph of her craggy visage staring straight into the camera.

Content aside, the article concerned a new book to be released a couple of weeks later about some letters Mother Teresa had written. Apparently, she doubted her faith from time to time, thus creating the "secret life" brandished on the magazine (but, honestly, this just lets me know she was the real deal--only phonies never question their faith). It sounded like an intriguing book so, two days after the release date of September 4, I paid a visit to a nearby Big Box Retailer to thumb through the volume and see if it was worth purchasing.

I wasn't met with an enormous display of them, which I'd expected. Instead, I was walloped over the head by works from a former president and a former not-doctor-but-played-one-on-TV. Mother Teresa was nowhere to be found. I visited the customer service desk, inquired about the book, and was told that this particular Big Box Retailer was not carrying it--all the copies they were getting were special ordered.

My lament? If this woman, who is an actual historical figure, well on her way to legitimate sainthood, who was featured on the cover of Time magazine, and who has plenty of other good-selling books to her name...if this woman can't get retail shelf space, what kind of chance do I have?

Writing Is Easy: Down With Stupid Verbs!

2007-08-18T07:47:00.000-06:00

I've decided to create a new regular installment here at Dregs that I like to call "Writing Is Easy." I think someone else has something with that same name somewhere on the internet, but I like it, so I'm going to use it as well.

Each episode of "Writing Is Easy" will provide tips and/or advice on writing. I figure, since I do it professionally, I might be able to share a thing or two with you, the reader, though I will most likely use "Writing Is Easy" as a thinly disguised platform to rant about the degradation of our language.

Take, for example, today's exciting episode: Down With Stupid Verbs!

Lately, as I've read various and sundry "entertainment" style websites in an effort to keep up with newly released motion pictures, I've noticed the insidious creep of the word "pen." As a verb. Where it shouldn't be.

"Pen" has long been used as a verb, but it's only recently begun to bother my somewhat literal mind. For example, two days ago I read the phrase "So-and-So penned the screenplay." Now, the likelihood that So-and-So used an actual pen seems pretty low, so, in the interest of accuracy, it seems to me that the phrase should be "So-and-So keyboarded the screenplay."

See? Doesn't make sense when you look at it that way.

What's wrong with plain ol' "write" and its variations? Why didn't So-and-So "write" the screenplay? Because people think "write" is boring and want to go with something they propose to be fresher and edgier. It is the sad state of our exclamation mark culture, where people no longer want to communicate--they want to outshout the competition.

But I digress.

Another stupid verb? "Google." I don't know why, but it annoys the heck out of me when I hear this used as a verb (and I hear it all the time). "Google" is a proper noun, not a verb. It can also be used as an adjective, which is how I use it: "I did a Google search on 'pomegranate juice,'" for example. I understand I'm kicking against the goads here, and that eventually I will be dragged kicking and screaming into Google-verb acceptability, but I'll fight it as long as I can. I shall not be a Google-verb Pod Person.

What about you, theoretical reader of my blog? Any verbs-that-aren't-really-verbs that stick in your craw? There's a whole comments section below just a-waitin' for your thoughts.

Fact: TV Makes Kids Stupider.

2007-08-10T15:03:00.000-06:00

Don't believe me? Check out this article from Time.com, tantalizingly titled "Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All." I have to admit, we've plunked the tots down in front of those videos before, though I often failed to see the appeal. Still, if it was supposed to be, as Homer Simpson might put it, smartening them up, why not?

Oh, but we were wrong, says journalist Alice Park, who tosses out such tasty, guilt-inducing morsels as:

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

...and...

Mounting evidence suggests that passive screen sucking not only doesn't help children learn, but could also set back their development. Last spring, Christakis and his colleagues found that by three months, 40% of babies are regular viewers of DVDs, videos or television; by the time they are two years old, almost 90% are spending two to three hours each day in front of a screen. Three studies have shown that watching television, even if it includes educational programming such as Sesame Street, delays language development.

...and, my favorite...

He and other experts worry that the proliferation of these products will continue to displace the one thing that babies need in the first months of life — face time with human beings. "Every interaction with your child is meaningful," says Christakis. "Time is precious in those early years, and the newborn is watching you, and learning from everything you do."

The only flaw I can find in the piece is that Park calls Sesame Street "educational," a claim I've found dubious ever since they introduced that stupid fairy character. She's cute, but I think she exists more to sell ancillary products than to teach my kids how to count to twenty. For a more incisive take on the whole business of that show, check out this flammably titled LA Times article: "Elmo Is An Evildoer."

Two Years And Counting.

2007-08-05T11:59:00.001-06:00

Today marks the second anniversary of our adoption process. Two years ago today we contacted Amani Baby Cottage for the first time to tell them we wanted to adopt from Uganda. Two years ago today we set out on this grand journey not knowing when it would be over. Two years.

We still didn't know who we were going to get; we told them we wanted a baby, and that we were pretty sure we wanted a boy (then-three-year-old Noah was certain, however--as we looked at their website gallery, he jumped up and down and said, "Let's buy a boy! Let's buy a boy!"). Little did we know that we would be saddled with a fifteen-month-old boy whom everyone said was the best kid in the orphanage, even though he didn't necessarily meet our parameters.

Two years. As I sit here thinking about it, writing about it, it seems almost like we've always been in the adoption process. We've had soaring highs, and crushing lows, and lots of median time in-between where we felt like we were simply treading water. And now, after two years, I go into Noah's room, and I see the extra bed we've had in there for 730 days or so, always ready to be filled at a moment's notice with his African brother, and I plead with God, "If you won't hear our prayers, please hear those of this little child who just wants his brother home. He just wants to buy a boy."

And in the meantime, we look forward to The Bean, and we carry on with our lives, and we contact our Congressmen and Senators and tug every possible governmental heartstring we can find, and we wait on God to move heaven and Earth and unite this family of ours.

How Many Colors Do You See?

2007-08-03T21:05:00.000-06:00

According to this website, you see 16,777,216 colors in the above image, assuming your computer monitor settings allow it. Depending on your computer, you could be seeing as many as 16 million-plus colors...or just sixteen.

Careful. Don't get too mesmerized. You'll put your eye out.

Up Next For Me: Survival.

2007-08-02T08:54:00.000-06:00

I just finished the final manuscript revision for The High School Survival Guide, coming in March 2008 from NavPress/TH1NK. The subtitle to the book is Making the Most of the Best Time of Your Life (So Far), and it's an all-encompassing compendium of advice for the high school student, touching on topics like studying, test-taking, dating, sex, dealing with family, the purpose of life, and various and sundry other issues the students of today face.

So far, everyone at the publisher is enthused about it and is rarin' to go on bringing it to press. I'm excited to be done with it, and now must endure that 6-9 month wait between the time I finish a book and the time it is released before I can get a bead on how it actually turned out.

You can bet I'll make the links available as soon as it's available for buyin'.

File Under: "You're Kidding, Right? This Is Some Kind Of Joke?"

2007-08-02T08:45:00.000-06:00

From those crazy compilers over at Rotten Tomatoes comes this movie news:

Disney's turning Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs into a live-action action drama, and they just got the guy who helmed Constantine to direct it. And no, today is not April First.

The long-gestating project is working under the title of Snow and the Seven, but The Hollywood Reporter indicates that this is only a temporary label. The project's been through a bunch of screenwriters, but Disney and new director Francis Lawrence seem ready to get production rolling early next year in China. (Yuen Woon-ping was hired to orchestrate the fight sequences!)

Our source provides a handy plot synopsis: "The story, a fantasy adventure, centers on a British girl being raised in 19th century Hong Kong. When she realizes her destiny is to conquer an evil force, she must prepare to fight by being trained by seven Shaolin monks."

So... yeah. My mind's so misshapen after those three paragraphs that I can't think of anything else to say. Am I alone in thinking this is a spectacularly bad idea? Sound off in the comments section.

One Last Harry Post Before I'm Pottered Out. --or-- Yay, America!

2007-07-28T10:57:00.000-06:00

Look at that cover. The image just to the right. Isn't it glorious? Mary Grand Pre has done a magnficent job with the covers to the Harry Potter novels, especially since she appropriately ditched the original goofy montage motif with the last three. Though Order of the Phoenix remains my favorite strict cover, I have to say that Deathly Hallows is my favorite complete jacket. The entire image that comprises the cover, spine, back cover, and front and back flaps is, in my humble opinion, masterful. Here it is, all by itself:

When it was released a few months ago, I and my friends debated what the image meant. Were Harry and Voldemort working together? They didn't seem to be fighting each other. What was coming at them out of the sky? How in the world were Harry and Voldemort working together to repel the unseen beast/person/object that was out of the frame of the picture? Who are those shadowy figures in the background--are they the Deathly Hallows? And did the curtains on either side mean anything? And finally: Why in the world did it look like Harry and Voldemort were working together? It whet our appetites for the final installment like nobody's business. Now that I've read the novel and understand that scene, I applaud it as a cover choice all the more; it's nothing short of brilliant artistry and marketing.

By contrast, thank heavens we didn't have to deal with these dreary, bland, boring, borderline offensive covers of the UK versions of the book (across the pond, they have separate children's and adult editions):

Seriously. Seriously? The children's edition looks less like Harry Potter and more like Archie, Veronica, Jughead and the Big Bank Bust-up!, while the adult edition retains a certain understated dimestore paperback Michener/Crichton/Collins vibe, no?

Way to go, America (and Scholastic in particular). You got this one right by a mile.

Setting The Record Straight.

2007-07-28T10:36:00.000-06:00

If you were to search the Amazon.com book section for my name, you would be faced with a list of imposters. Yes, my books are on there, thanks for buying, but there are a few other "Adam Palmers" that turn up with the search, most of whom aren't even really named "Adam Palmer." Anyway, all actual me-approved/-written books are listed in the topmost, left-hand column here at Dregs. Accept no substitutes!

Mainly, I just didn't want you guys thinking I'd written this compendium of sub-Letters from a Nut-style "hilarious" fake correspondence. I'm sure this gentleman is a nice guy, but he ain't me.

Harry Potter and the Spoiler-Free Blog Post + Go See Once.

2007-07-23T15:12:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was a landmark day for me. I finished reading one of the best books of the year and then promptly saw one of the best movies of the year.

The book: I was expecting big things from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and it most definitely did not disappoint when all was said and done. Even though it read like a greatest hits album at times, with J.K. Rowling pointing out various quotes and objects we’ve heard and seen along the way, she wrapped up the story magnificently and in such a satisfying manner.

Now, she isn’t going to win any style awards anytime soon, that’s for sure. As a writer, I couldn’t help but read it wearing my Editor Cap, and seeing things like “Ron said sycophantically” sure made me cringe. However, the Potter universe has never been about groundbreaking prose along the lines of Michael Chabon or Susanna Clarke—Rowling excels at character and story, and both can be found in full force in the final book.

I’ve read reviews from fans saying it’s “the greatest book ever,” which... not even close. Let’s not get carried away. Yes, it’s the best Harry Potter book, and in terms of wrapping up the series, it’s masterful, but it ain’t Hemingway or Dostoevsky. Come on.

Then there are fans who are mad that JKR didn’t answer every question they ever had (to wit: What were James and Lily Potter’s occupations? Really? You’re obsessed with that?). These are people who would never be pleased unless Rowling had chucked narrative momentum out the window and cranked out a 2000-page compendium of every possible factoid in the Potter universe. Rumor has it, she’s planning on compiling an “encyclopedia” of just that. After she takes a break.

So, what did you think of the book? Have you read it? Will you? Do you think Harry Potter is of the devil? There’s a comments section a-waitin’ below for you. However, please refrain from posting anything close to a spoiler.

And now, the movie: When I first saw the trailer for Once, I had no idea what to expect. My interest was piqued, to be sure, but I couldn’t quite get a read on the movie, what it would be like. I’d heard it was a rethinking of the movie musical, where the songs really flowed in the narrative, sort of like an Irish Dancer in the Dark, but without the flashy numbers. These songs aren't happening in anyone's imagination, so there's no choreography or jazz-hands; just quiet, acoustic guitar/piano songs that sound like hearts breaking.

The soundtrack is magnificent; the movie is breathtaking. Yes, it’s about music, but it’s about more than just that. It’s about that mystical bond that music makes between people. There’s about a ten-minute sequence early in the film when Glen Hansard (of Irish band The Frames) shows Marketa Irglova (some Czech pianist who was seventeen at the time of filming) a song he wrote, teaches it to her in a shop that sells musical instruments. So he fumbles through the song, laughing at the silliness of it, then asks if she wants to give it a try. And when they sing and play? There’s as much, if not more, magic on the screen than in the very magical Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, playing next door.

It moved me.

You remember how, when you saw That Thing You Do!, you wanted to rush out and tell every musician you knew, or every person who’d ever been in a band, to go see it? This movie, while completely different, has the same effect. It is a wonder to behold, and if you love music, you will love it.

Do yourself a favor and see it. [NOTE: The movie was made on a shoestring budget and therefore has a very “indie” feel, with choppy editing and some bad sound in places. Also, since it was made in Ireland, where the F-word is often a substitute for the word “the,” it contains copious amounts of swearing. Just thought I’d warn you.]

This Is A Giant Tire.

2007-07-20T14:51:00.001-06:00

This is not how large The Bean has become, but, to Michelle, it might as well be. The poor gal still has eight weeks of pregnancy left on the schedule, yet has untold number of people coming up to pat her belly and say, "Oh my. When are you due?" When she says, "Mid-September," they always give her that wincing look of pity people give when they feel bad for you. You know the one, like they're tasting spoiled tuna salad on the back of their tongue but are trying to be gracious to the five-year-old child who made the "snack" for them in the first place? That's the look.

I always tell Michelle, when asked "When are you due?," to look back at the person quizzically and say, "Due?" Alas, she has not, to date, done it.

Still, The Bean is on pace and doing well. Perhaps she'll roll right out of there when the time is right. And if she does, what with the other three biologicals, we'll have a complete matched set of tires, plus two spares!

And... perhaps I've carried the metaphor too far.

A Tall Order.

2007-07-18T12:33:00.001-06:00

(Sorry for the Entertainment Weekly/People Magazine-style headline there. I couldn't resist.)

So, I went to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix last night, and, as is my bent, I went to my moviegoing screen of choice, the fabulous IMAX theatre. Like the IMAX slogan, when it comes to movies, I like to "think big."

Actually, in addition to the bigger screen and the thumping sound system, the IMAX theatre costs a good two dollars more than the regular theatre, which tends to weed out text-messaging teenagers who are going to the movie strictly to kill time or hang out. They're going to save the extra couple of bucks to get something with ice and whipped cream at Starbucks afterward.

I saw the previous two Harry Potter pictures in the large IMAX format, and it was a treat both times, so I was really anticipating this release in the IMAX format. I diligently watched the teaser trailer months ago, then the full trailer a few weeks ago, and planned on checking out the film on opening weekend, if at all possible.

And then I heard the disastrous news: Warner Brothers was going to release the IMAX version of the movie with the last twenty minutes converted to 3D. They'd done the same thing with Superman Returns, and I heard from different sources that it was a mess. I wasn't thrilled that the studio had dampened my enthusiasm for the picture by forcing me to watch it in 3D if I wanted to watch it on my favorite screen.

Nevertheless, I decided that, if I was going to see 3D for myself, I might as well try it out now. I ventured to the theatre for the 7:45 showing, got there at 7:42, and saw it was sold out. On a Tuesday night. I decided to attend the 10:45 instead.

The movie, by the way, is fantastic. Many critics have said things like "the magic is gone," but that's far from the truth. It's still completely magical, and there's a sequence in this one that I feel is the most delightfully magical of the series. I absolutely loved it--they did a great job adapting the book for the screen and maintaining its deep feel.

But the last twenty minutes of the movie are in 3D, and it was, as I feared, a disaster. I can see the appeal of the 3D technology, because [SPOILER ALERT] seeing the kids riding thestrals, with the thestral head zooming out at the screen at me, was remarkably cool. However, in the picture, the camera does a slow pan past the thestral to rest on Harry, and in a normal setting, the thestral's head would dip out of frame, no big deal. Here, the thestral's head doesn't dip out of frame--it is quite suddenly lopped off, replaced by a thestral neck protruding out of the screen at me in glorious 3D.

Very disorienting.

Sadly, the format is apparently around to stay, as this movie had the highest-grossing opening weekend for an IMAX movie ever. And the climax of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince cries out for the same treatment, so I fear I may have to break my IMAX streak and see that movie in the regular theatre. What have we come to?

"It's Called An Illusion, Michael."

2007-07-18T12:19:00.000-06:00

Ran across this fascinating tidbit yesterday on NASA's very-good-in-a-kinda-nerdy-way Astronomy Picture of the Day website. Check out the image below:

Would you believe that the two squares labeled "A" and "B" are the exact same shade of grey? Because they are. If you're like me, you probably already looked ahead a little bit and saw this proof:

These images were created by some guy named Edward H. Adelson, and were used by some other guy, apparently for some project at MIT. At least, that's where I got this explanation from:

"The first trick is based on local contrast. In shadow or not, a check that is lighter than its neighboring checks is probably lighter than average, and vice versa. In the figure, the light check in shadow is surrounded by darker checks. Thus, even though the check is physically dark, it is light when compared to its neighbors. The dark checks outside the shadow, conversely, are surrounded by lighter checks, so they look dark by comparison.

"A second trick is based on the fact that shadows often have soft edges, while paint boundaries (like the checks) often have sharp edges. The visual system tends to ignore gradual changes in light level, so that it can determine the color of the surfaces without being misled by shadows. In this figure, the shadow looks like a shadow, both because it is fuzzy and because the shadow casting object is visible."

So, I guess that means our eyeballs and brain are just screwy, eh? Not so, says the MIT dude:

"As with many so-called illusions, this effect really demonstrates the success rather than the failure of the visual system. The visual system is not very good at being a physical light meter, but that is not its purpose. The important task is to break the image information down into meaningful components, and thereby perceive the nature of the objects in view."

Call me fascinated. If you'd like further proof that the squares are indeed the same shade of grey, click here.

Debuting At #20 On The New York Times Best-Seller List.

2007-07-17T09:20:00.000-06:00

Scraping into the top 20 for hardcover nonfiction. Way to go, Brian. I guess my sleepless nights really were worth it.

A Good Idea.

2007-07-15T18:31:00.000-06:00

If you're looking to kill some time this summer and you've already purchased/read Knuckle Sandwich, I highly recommend this here book pictured to the right, a little sequel from the very excellent Brothers Hafer called From Bad to Worse. Cleverly, this title ties in perfectly with the novel the preceded it, Bad Idea, also an excellent book in its own right.

I do hope I get some sort of title attribution for the sequel. When Bad Idea was released, I was handed a free copy by one of the Hafers at ICRS (boy, were we kindred spirits there, stranded among booths featuring Christian pirates and whatnot. Shudder.) and read almost the entire thing on the plane ride home. So entranced was I by it that I contributed an endorsement to the book that ended something along the lines of: "Here's hoping they have an even worse idea in the future."

Ahem.

Anyway, the Hafers are quality chaps (Jedd was kind enough to submit a delightful endorsement for Knuckle Sandwich that graces its inner pages) and both of their books are capital reads, especially for teenagers and young adults. You shan't go wrong!

But read my books first.

An Assignment: Compare And Contrast.

2007-07-14T07:42:00.000-06:00

I recently read two interviews on Entertainment Weekly's website with hyperkinetic director Michael Bay (most recent triumph: Transformers) and famously non-commercial German directer Werner Herzog (most soon-to-be-recent triumph: Rescue Dawn). Here's a sample from each:

Entertainment Weekly: I'm told [Executive Producer Steven Spielberg] worked a lot with the Transformers' screenwriters Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci to bring a certain innocent tone to the film. The motto seems to have been, ''It's about a boy and his car.''
Michael Bay: "Yeah. That was the hook to the movie. But I added a stronger military thing at the beginning to make...the stakes higher. But originally the tone was very suburbia. We kind of changed that and made it edgier. I like the idea of the suburbia. I specifically shot this a little bit more suburbia, meaning, like, I would never put actors at a Burger King, but it's what people do, you know what I mean? Or in [lead character Sam Witwicky's suburban] house. It's not a sexy house. But it's identifiable, and more accessible."

Entertainment Weekly: You did have some commercial success recently with the documentary Grizzly Man. But you were snubbed for an Oscar nomination for the movie, perhaps because you've alienated yourself from a lot of people in the documentary community for the liberties you take in your nonfiction films, like scripting lines for your subjects.
Werner Herzog: "That's okay. We need a new approach to reality. Cinéma vérité is basically the answer of the '60s and, in my opinion, just the accountant's truth. We are in a situation now where there is a huge onslaught on our notion of reality, from reality TV, virtual reality, the Internet, digital effects, Photoshop, WrestleMania — all these things pretending to be reality. Since the early '70s, I've been working towards a new form of dealing with reality, going for something that illuminates us, something that is like an ecstatic truth. Whatever departs from facts is wonderful. I'm not so much into facts."

Your assignment: Check out the complete interviews and find the similarities and (rather glaring) differences between these two very different directors. Post thoughts to the comments section. Links are as follows:
Michael Bay Note: this interview contains mild swearing.
Werner Herzog

The Latest On The Little Man.

2007-07-09T19:25:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned in another post, our adoption has stalled in the Ugandan court system because of something like six little words in our ruling that need to be removed. We've been given a favorable ruling, but it contained wording that said, essentially, that we had to come back to Uganda in three years to finalize our adoption, and the US doesn't allow such conditions for adoptions. Until those words are removed, we're stuck in a (very long) holding pattern.

Well, we have some tangential good news. Because our entire case has been so screwy, the orphanage started taking their adoptions to another court located in Jinja, which is where the orphanage is located, instead of Kampala, which is the capital city of Uganda. So they had some favorable rulings through the Jinja court, which was good, but those rulings had the same wording ours did, which was bad.

Now in our case, we asked the judges to remove those words from the ruling, and they got very upset with us. In Jinja, however, the lawyer asked for the words to be removed, and the judge was kind about it and actually did it. So there are now two (I think--maybe three) adoptions going through. The rulings have been modified, and the kids are on their way home.

So I think this bodes well for us, in that I can't foresee the high court, who holds our case, wanting to be outdone by a lower court. Of course, I'm thinking logically, which is a mistake when it comes to the Ugandan government. These people love their children, to be sure, but have a difficult time seeing that it would be better for the orphans to be united with their families.

Please keep praying for our adoption. Pray that God would change the hearts of these judges. And pray against child trafficking, which is suddenly very rampant in East Africa, which is causing a lot of these judges to take extra caution in their rulings. And if you think about it, pray for the plane ticket(s) we'll eventually need to purchase to go pick up the little man once our adoption has been granted.

Not Your Typical Beach Reads (But Worthy Of Your Time This Summer).

2007-07-05T10:09:00.001-06:00

Michael Chabon has long been one of my favorite authors, ever since I read his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. So it was with great anticipation that I looked forward to his latest alternate history tale, the genre-bending The Yiddish Policemen's Union.

Though the delicious plot speeds up to the point where it starts to run off the rails in the final pages, Chabon is still an immaculate writer who knows exactly how to use his copious grasp of the language both to dazzle readers with amazing passages and to deepen his characters. He's so good that we the readers don't even realize what he's doing. Consider the following, lifted from page 2:

"According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Landsman has only two moods: working and dead...When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down."

I mean, come on. It goes on like that page after page after page, with passages veritably screaming to be read aloud. My wife got so tired of me tugging on her sleeve and saying, "You gotta hear this."

If you can only read one book this summer, please make it Knuckle Sandwich, which is, in fact, your typical beach read. But if you want something that makes my book look like fiction along the lines of Danny and the Dinosaur, you'll do well to investigate Chabon's latest. (Note: This book is intended for adult readers only. There are no sex scenes, but there is some violence, and a few bouts of swearing. Also, the book is written in present tense, which originally felt a little off-putting to me, though I got used to it a few chapters in.)

Another book that doesn't really gel with beach reading but that is worth your time is Save Me From Myself by Brian "Head" Welch. I had the privilege of working on this spiritual memoir and found Brian to be truly, genuinely in love with Jesus. He isn't flaky like so many celebrity Christians are--he's legit, and he's very determined to stay that way. He was great to work with, and I think writing the book helped him exorcise a lot of demons from his past.

At first I thought it would be a pretty high-concept paycheck for me, but the more I worked with Brian, the more I developed a passion for telling his story. It can seriously change lives, and for that, I feel really proud for the work I did on the book. It's a definite recommendation for anyone who is or was a Korn fan, or for anyone who wants a sneak peek into the world of rock-and-roll stardom and all it isn't cracked up to be.

And I'd be lying if I didn't say working on this book was the perfect primer for Knuckle Sandwich. But I gathered you guys had already figured that out.