Entries from June 2008 ↓

Undoubtedly the web will be flooded with Wall-E reviews tonight, and those would be a good starting place for learning about the flick. If you haven’t seen it (do!), this has no spoilers.

One of the most notable things about Wall-E is that it’s a children’s story set in a post-apocalyptic world, with extremely heavy anti-corporate, anti-consumerism messaging (though artfully enough done that it doesn’t feel heavy handed), done by one of the largest corporate entities in the world (Disney). You spend the first 10 (brilliant) minutes of the movie watching a cute robot in an absolutely horrific landscape, with massive piles of trash and toxic storms, where the only living things are a cockroach and a single plant (that grows because it’s encased in a refrigerator? radiation?).

You often see children’s movies pander to the parents by squeaking in a political nod or some softball message, but at the very core of Wall-E is human fuckup on an utterly massive scale, and they do not spare you from it. There was a Matrix-like quality about what was left of humanity, except contrary to the Matrix, there was no purpose to their existence. They powered nothing, and they did not even dream they led meaningful lives.

This domain used to be the playground of cutting-edge political satirists and artists and so it is amazing (read: disconcerting) to see it come from something like Disney (some might argue that Pixar is a different ball of wax, but this surely is going out with Disney oversight).

The Walmart digs were overt and powerful, as was the commentary on our obese, fast-food culture. Either corporate America has so thoroughly adopted the language of their critics as a means of self-empowerment, or someone at Pixar is doing some very daring, very impressive work. I can only hope the latter.

Now, to follow-through on the superb messaging of the movie please, Disney, abstain from selling us this crap.  

I suppose I can take some hope in that they’re not yet selling plastic cubes of fake junk, junk in the shape that Wall-E crushes. That would really hurt my brain.

This is going to be Coen’s first real-live cinematic experience. We’ve taken him to a couple of other theater movies before The Curse of the Were Rabbit (he was too young to really stay tuned to the whole thing), Control Room (he was in a theater’s ‘crying room’ and was too small to pay attention to the movie — which is not exactly kid material) and a movie about polar bears (after the trailers for the movie were over and before the movie started, he asked if we were done and if we could go. We did leave about a third of the way in). But this is the first movie he’s been aware of and that we’ve been planning to go to. He’s watched the trailer for the movie about twenty times.

Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I was six years old, we didn’t have a TV, and I lived in the country with goats, geese and two back-to-the-land parents and holeeeeee sheeit my brain was never the same. I suspect this won’t  be as much of a jump for him, but still, at a little over 4 and a half, it’s going to be a big experience.

So Coen and I were daydreaming about what would make the perfect story — a story we wanted to be told right then — and we both came to the realization that there was one subject that a writer just couldn’t fail at, and that’s Cats Driving Cars. Whenever you’ve got cats driving cars you’ve got a successful foundation for a story.

So we went looking for examples and found this.

Hmm.. Now I love Richard Scarry as much as the next guy, but this isn’t doing it. 

It was then we realized the last essential piece of the success of a Cats Driving Cars story. It can’t be just any cat. This has got to be a cat who is at the very least aloof. More likely it’s pissed-off, mean, mischievous, has a nasty habit, or is just downright insane. Dr. Seuss understood this:

Here’s the pissed-off cat variation:

There are a number of variations that also work. Mice on motorcycles, if they’re badasses:

While there’s no vehicle involved, traveling dogs with suitcases and insatiable appetites work:

Mischievous cats on cross country skis also work:

Even Ducks on Bikes get there. In the last frame of this book below, duck ambitiously eyes a tractor with a touch of megalomania. 

I told my friends David and Lucie this about our theories and they pointed me to Bjork’s video in which she is married to a cat:

Although it gets a little weird for me at the 4:40 mark, I think it’s right on until then.

I’d love to fill out our library (childrens or otherwise) with the Cats Driving Cars genre and its sub categories, let me know if you have any suggestions.

Here’s a one minute video interview of me talking about libraries and Couch as interviewed by the most awesome Raya Kuzyk of Library Journal at BEA.

I loved this article by Paul Constant in the Stranger about the state of the publishing industry. While much of it focuses on the exorbitance of Book Expo America and big publishers, I especially liked the dichotomy  between the small presses rising up, embracing good lit, intelligent readers, The Long Tail and new communication methods (ie: SBP allowing free CC downloads of John Kessel’s book of short stories The Baum Plan for Financial Indenpence, for example), compared to the celebrity-and-wonder-hit-obsessed big publishing houses who, according to the writer, are not releasing any big hits this winter for fear that what they’ll release will turn out to be market-duds because national attention is turned toward the election.

(disclosure: Small Beer Press and I are mentioned mid-way through.)

I have to say - I put a lot of faith in the idea of The Long Tail. We moved through a hundred years of homogenizing behavior as a species as everyone tuned in to fewer and fewer sources of information, as cultures and traditions and languages were quashed because of the allure of modernity and capitalism. And so I hope that the new publishing mediums (blogs, the internet, etc) will encourage more and more niches to form to replace what was lost, if not necessarily by quality at least by quantity. 

So go! March yourself off to form your weird little club on teh internets! You’re helping to preserve the net cultural diversity of our species. 

I found this transcription on the kitchen counter when I got home last night. 

Later I asked Coen if his toes had names, too. He said most of them were named ‘Spandozia’ (sp?).

I snagged a few ARCs (Advance Reader Copy - or in this case, AUP - advance uncorrected proof) at BEA.

In the left corner, a manuscript with Laura’s marks on it. In the right corner, the same manuscript (more or less), dressed in its pre-show garb. Word has it this is not the final cover. 

Pretty exciting. 

I was about as green as they get going into BEA and so it was a sensory-overload experience for me - the good kind, the 4-year-old-at-the-chocolate-factory kind, with a little bit of rabbit hole thrown in. Pretty much the first thing I did, after meeting my publisher in person (Gavin Grant! Kelly Link! Jedediah Berry!) for the first time was go sign books. It turns out, that in the cattle-to-the-slaughter lineup thing they do for authors (30 authors signing at once with their queues going out like tentacles, in 30 minute increments) I was stationed in the immediate vicinity of Judy Blume, Neil Gaimon and Brooke Shields. Holeee crap. Who’s this Parzybok character? The good thing about that is that my much shorter queue tentacle got spillage from these more popular attractions.
It also helped that Publisher’s Weekly did an article on the game/scavenger hunt that the Black Magic Insurance Agency (BMIA Staff: um, just me this time) put together among the small presses for the event which had a cover shot of my book. And so I had a healthy signing and it was a blast meeting people and giving them a copy  of the galley.

The scavenger hunt? It was super fun to plan - with a text-messaging, satellite component. Watch this space for more on that in the future. However, it was pretty sparsely attended. I didn’t really take into account that people were already working pretty hard at the event - their feet were tired, their brains were overtaxed. I wracked up the largest walking day since I’ve owned a pedometer.  A lot of people pulled a clue, said what a great idea it was, and then slogged on with their 900 pounds of books in tow. Next year I’m going to hire myself out as a book caddy as an act of compassion. At any rate, I’m looking forward to getting back to BMIA’s roots -ie:  doing a walking game in Portland somewhere.

Among the many highlights of the show, one of them was getting books signed by other authors. I can vouch for John Scalzi’s claim that he stood in his own line (here’s a blurry cell-phone pic). I ran into Kelly Link in the lines and she introduced me to John and also to Sean Stewart. I am now the proud owner of one of the (relatively) few copies of Zoe’s Tale and Cathy’s Key out there… Awesome. I’m amazed at the publishing work that went into Cathy’s Key - with a pouch full of clues on the inside. So cool.

At any rate - BEA was awesome fun.