I am a pantser
in ginger, gray, black and white
I just see and do
Today’s Theme Music
I dreamed of pretzels. People, mostly women, were pushing around small forest green shopping carts crammed with food. Many had large pretzels in them. I wanted one of those pretzels. I tried asking, “Where did you get your pretzel?” But each turned away as though I wasn’t there. I took to a double-decker bus to find the answer, and returned to the same place where I began. I till didn’t have a pretzel.
Ah, pretzel logic. I always fail to grasp it. ‘Pretzel Logic’ was also the name of Steely Dan’s third album. But this is Fond Final Friday, so I elected to post ‘Black Friday’ from their fourth album, ‘Katy Lied’. Sue me if I got it wrong.
Sing along if you know the words. Fake it if you don’t.
Each
Each day brings a new requirement to re-balance priorities, needs, desires and the rest.
Each week brings an increasing gentle awareness of time.
Each month brings a new assessment of what’s been done, what needs to be done, what hasn’t been done, what you hope to do.
Each season brings new requirements for clothing, repairs, vacations, work and celebrations.
Each holiday brings a new influx of decorations – ghosts, Santas, elves and reindeer – and renewed promises to clean out the previous collection of decorations. Each effort bring renewed efforts.
Each departure brings thoughts and reflections. Each arrival brings anticipation.
Each year brings fresh nostalgia and growing awareness of mortality.
Each morning brings a new hope.
Each hour brings a new beginning.
And each thought brings a new perspective.
Each time, it’s not the same.
And each time, you wonder how has it changed?
Today’s Theme Music
We started with a conversation. “Kenny Rogers can still sing,” my wife said.
Beginning with Kenny Rogers and the First Edition and ‘Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town’ (written by Mel Tellis) in 1969, Kenny Rogers had been a singing star our entire adult lives. He’d recently announced he was retiring from singing and touring but here he was singing A Capella with a group on a recent video.
You always wonder who can really sing and who has a sound manufactured in the studio. We discussed that a while, which turned me to one of my favorite recent live performances, live being a relative term, since it was recorded for a television show.
The television show is ‘The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’. The Roots are the house band. Jimmy will sometimes sing with musical guests while The Roots provide the music, sometimes playing toy instruments, like in this video I’m sharing today. I love this exposure of humanity behind the music and how much fun they’re having.
Here is Idina Menzel and The Roots with Jimmy Fallon, singing and playing, ‘Let It Go’, a good remind that sometimes, we all need to let it go.
The Writing Cat’s Advice
Fighting with shadows!
Chasing winds and hunting lights!
Fantasy lives on!
A Momentary Lapse of Reason
You’re hungry and you’re in the middle of nowhere. The morning walk took you to places that you didn’t expect. But that was the plan: you wanted to surprise yourself.
Well, you have. Look east, south, north, west – baking hard cinnamon and sand toned ground. Far away to the north are low purple and blue mountains. Turning west, you see the sparkling Bay Dome, so you think yourself there, specifying, downtown Palo Alto. Your bioworks connect with your wetworks and even out here, five bars are experienced. Your thoughts are translated into digits, which become transmitted commands, and the Earth Teleport System takes you to the bay area. In effortless seconds, you’ve gone from one place to another.
It’s a beautiful day under the dome in Palo Alto, blue and sunny, a little chilly in the shadows with hints of burned off fog. Electric cars hum along University Avenue but most people are strolling. Designated as a California Historic City, it’s unchanged since the early twenty-first century. Finding a Peet’s, you think, I’ll have a latte and croissant. The order has been placed before you enter the cafe and the systems direct you to the table along the window where your beverage and pastry await. A cup of tea and a shot of espresso appear on the table’s round surface. As you realize friends are arriving, they’re asking via your friendnet, “Can we join you?” Laughing, you answer, “Your drinks are already here.”
They port in. Hugs are exchanged. Books and art are discussed. “There’s a new art gallery opening in Mars New York,” Silvie says. “Want to go?”
Yes, of course. You’ve never been to Mars so this will be a special treat. Enjoy the gallery, have a meal, maybe do some dancing. Should others be invited? They are via the friendnet.
Soon, you have a platoon of friends, destination, Mars. You all port to the Interplanetary Teleport System in Utah. Signs direct you to the various space station and planet plazas where you can port yourself off of Earth to these other places. There are also teleport stations for bigger domes – Paris, London, Moscow, Sao Paolo – where stricter controls are required to visit these city states. But you’ve been to all of them, and the Moon. You’ve never been to Mars. You’ve always had a fear of flying, and as you aged, you thought, I’ll never see Mars.
But, wow, technology is amazing. So here you are, one hundred years old and retired, the prime of your life, really, off to Mars for the first time, at last.
All for just twenty-five dollars.
The Writing Cat’s Advice
Rest where desired
You’re coaxing the muse to come
Not pleasing others
Today’s Theme Music
Oh, Yes! Like many rock bands, Yes’ membership has changed a few times. For me, in high school in the early seventies, they were part of the core music line up in art class, as our hip teacher was convinced we would be permitted to play cassette tapes on a portable player (we didn’t call them boom boxes or ghetto blasters in those days) as part of the creativity cycle. Yes was rotated in and out with BTO, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, ZZ Top, Eric Clapton, Deep Purple as we painted and drew.
But today’s song is from their comeback. Having disbanded, they re-formed in 1983. (You know, whenever I write words like that, I can’t help but think of Spinal Top, the fake rock group in the center of the mocumentary, ‘This Is Spinal Tap’. ) When ‘90125’ was released in 1983, it was added to the listening library on Okinawa alongside Boston, the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, Eric Clapton…hmmm….
Here is one of the most known songs from Yes, ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’. As they say, the owner of a lonely heart is much better than the owner of a broken heart. Rock lyrics…only the Kinks worked hard on language. Whatever: “You’ve to to want to succeed.”
Crank it.
My Problem
I’m naming names today: Jenn Moss and Alan Sorrentino.
Alan Sorrentino is in the news about his letter to the editor decrying women wearing yoga pants in public. I know what Alan is talking about. His yoga pants were my muffin tops.
A muffin top is the fleshy overspill above a waist band, developing and exposed when one is wearing a tight lower garment – pants, shorts, skirt – and a cropped top. They were most prevalent among girls and young women. Probably still are. I haven’t seen one for a while.
Muffin tops caused me problems. How could someone wear something so tight and not be appalled by the flesh spilling out? Do they know how they appear? That developed my second problem. I’ve always been irritated by America’s ideals of beauty and perfection, and how humans should look. And here I was, sucked right into it. Damn America.
So I wanted to praise these people for being indifferent about my problem and showing their body as it is, and without embarrassment. But, sigh, I was also disturbed, because these people looked obese and overweight. Shouldn’t they be taking better care of themselves? That led directly to self-confrontation: is that what you think about NFL players with their big bellies?
No, Michael, it usually isn’t. I was all about the player and what they brought to the table.
Alan, of course, was writing about his problem in what the yoga pants revealed to him about his opinion of female curves. Just like me and my muffin tops, the yoga pants were not about the people wearing them: the problem is him and his perceptions.
Now let’s move on to Jenn Moss. She’s a writer who posts on roughandreadyfiction.com. On Meta Monday, she posted about seeing Richard III at STNJ. Dwelling on Derek Wilson and his awesome guns, she wrote about how this buff actor compared to people’s usual perception of Richard III. In her final paragraphs, she wrote:
Meanwhile, this whole muscle thing got me thinking: what kind of assumptions do we bring to a play or book that we know well? Have you ever rejected a portrayal of a beloved character because it just didn’t match the vision you had in your head? Did a remake or reboot ever leave you cold? I love the Star Trek reboot, for example. But the 2005 film version of Pride & Prejudice just doesn’t do it for me.
I’m going to keep asking myself this question whenever I see a revival or any other remake: How open am I to a different look or fresh interpretation of a favorite character?
Why yes, Jenn, I have thought about these questions. I mutter and rant quite often about what so many – like you, Guy Ritchie – do to Sherlock Holmes. I grimaced at the treatment endured when the television show, ‘Wild, Wild West’ was made into a movie. And then someone did it – gasp – to the ‘Man From U.N.C.L.E.’. Look what’s going on in the Marvels Universe movies. And ‘Star Trek’…grrr…. “What is the world coming to?” I bitterly huffed in best BitterBen fashion.
Of course, I was always talking about my problem. I didn’t realize it until I grasped that I do the same thing to the fiction I write. I take original ideas and torture them into something else. In my science fiction, I discard the intelligent scientific foundations from the likes of Asimov and Clarke. The science and technology just are, a big leap from here and now. Sure, internal logic to the novels is solid, but I make no effort to explain how we made advances in space travel, FTL, teleporters, compilers, terraforming, and colonizing other planets: they just are as part of the setting, much like televisions, cars, cell phones, malls and aircraft travel just are as part of a modern setting.
Reluctantly I concluded, it’s a good thing when a television show, movie, novel, song or idea is re-interpreted and presented in a new light. It is how art, science technology, and government in all their forms have worked since just about the first time a story was done, a ruler proclaimed, a tool was created, or a drawing was made on a wall. Someone saw it and thought, “Wouldn’t it be better this way?” Then they offered their interpretation – thesis, antithesis, synthesis.
We’re always doing this, imagining, re-imagining and re-interpreting all the art, technology, history and events of time.
Now leave me alone. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. After all, that’s what all this is really about.
And that’s my problem.
A Writing Cat’s Advice
Original thoughts,
Ideas, dreams and visions,
may come while you sleep.
Michael Seidel, writer 