How to Add Layers into Your Writing

Reprinted with permission from thisblogblank.wordpress.com, 12/19/2018. After watching my wife work on a couple of her oil paintings, I’ve  come to realize that producing a work of fiction is very similar to creating a painting. Too many new writers have unrealistically low expectations about how good a first draft can be due to an overabundance…

You’re Not Alone

I’ve always held to the radical belief that writers should be able to write, painters to paint, and singers to sing. Now I’ve had the fortune of marrying a woman who can do all three things, and let me tell you, even for the talented, it’s damned hard to be discovered. Being remembered seems impossible.…

Photographic Clichés – Vol. 1

As a photographer and editor, I’ve recently become distressed by those few photographers who insist on taking photographs that don’t conform to common photographic practice. That is to say, these frondeurs ignore 180 years of tradition and insist on taking shots that are unique, having little or no banality to speak of. I don’t understand…

Angel Haze

I’m not going to tell you about Angel Haze. Instead, I will let her speak for herself. Down is a direction, not a destination. Don’t live there. If you don’t know Haze, here is one of her big hits, performed with Sia. Now, fuck that. Here’s Haze. Out.

Zbig’s “The Orchestra – Finale” and Other Things

As I was writing to my wife, telling her about the existence of Polish director Zbigniew Rybczyński’s musical live-action piece, “The Orchestra,” bemoaning the fact that I’ve not found a video copy more than 360 pixels, here I found one that puports to be 720p. It’s not, of course, merely the 360p video artificially enlarged…

Allegro Non Troppo

For your animation pleasure, here are segments from the 1977 Italian animated film, Allegro Non Troppo (Not so Fast!) a parody of Dismally’s Fantasia. Er, I meant Disney’s. Ravel’s Boléro sequence Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Debussy) Valse Triste Slovanské tance č. 7, op. 46 Epilog

Life Lesson #1: Don’t Try, Be.

Some things you can’t teach. If I have to tell you what they are, then you’ll never understand the rest of this post. Instead of trying, learning, and scrugglin’, scrugglin’, scrugglin’, you just have to be. Decide to be and be. No one teaches Hall of Famers to stand above the crowd. Rather, if anything,…

Bad Reporter, Good Reporter

Call me a sentimental old git, but I am of the opinion that when a man dies, people should remember basic things about him, like, his age. I’m astounded that my random survey of 20 news agencies found that 90% of those reporting Stephen Furst’s death got his age wrong. This might seem like a…