“That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change…”

Seems like a lot of PBS documentary films set in the Philippines are coming out of the woodwork lately.  A few months ago, I saw Left By the Ship on Independent Lens , and last week on POV, Give Up Tomorrow. That’s awesome!!  Okay, I might be a little biased. 
Give Up Tomorrow was more relatable to me.  Not because anything in my life resembles the predicament of the film’s primary subject, Paco Larrañaga… well, come to think of it, no one’s life could.  Back in the late 90s, well before the social media and just before the 24-hour news cycle, I remember catching the occasional word about the Philippines’ version of “The Trial of the Century.”  I never took the time to learn much about it, thinking it was just some Filipino hyperbole.

From the film’s website…

As a tropical storm beats down on the Philippine island of Cebu, two sisters leave work and never make it home…

GIVE UP TOMORROW exposes a Kafkaesque extravaganza populated by flamboyantly corrupt public officials, cops on the take, and a frenzied legal and media circus. It is also an intimate family drama focused on the near mythic struggle of two angry and sorrowful mothers who have dedicated more than a decade to executing or saving one young man, Paco Larrañaga.

So, no, unlike Paco, I’ve never been convicted and sentenced to death for rape and murder, even though 35 witnesses and at least one photograph place me 350 miles away from the crime scene.  But when I hear the stories of the things the victims’ family and Larrañaga’s family did to try and prove Paco’s guilt or innocence–things people in most civilized countries would call trading in influence, corruption, cronyism, and nepotism–I remembered how I grew up hearing that those sorts of methods were, regrettably, simply “the way things are done.”  Or, in the immortal words of Bruce Hornsby and the Range, “That’s just the way it is.”  In other words, you needed to do what you needed to do in order to get your due in what everyone knows is a broken system.

Because if you think your son is suffering through what you see is a gross miscarriage of justice, and you had the position and influence to take advantage of an international law to get him moved to another country, what might you do?

If you think someone is about to get away with the rape and murder of your children because you fear his family could use their position and influence to do just that, and you have relatives who are cops, or who literally work in the office of the President of the Philippines, or who actually happens to be The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the Philippines, what might you do?

The amazing thing about the film is it’s example of how virtually every person in it really does see her or himself as the hero of his or her own story.  From Paco, to the Larrañagas, to the Chiongs (the victims’ family), even down to the judge who gave these bizarre rulings and even fell asleep (yeah, you read that right) at different points during the trial.

Well, except for maybe one person.

Near the end of the film, Paco’s mother berates herself for not having allowed her son to flee the country to the US or Spain (where they have relatives) when the charges were announced, against the advice of virtually everyone around her.  That strategy isn’t so unusual, even for ostensibly innocent people: go on the lam for a bit, maybe to another province or another country, let the heat die down a bit, and let the evidence wind its way through.  But Paco’s mother refused to play that game.  She applied the reasoning that most others would apply: 35 witnesses + 1 photograph = This’ll get straightened out in a jiffy.  And because she made that bet, she continues to ask herself to this day if she was a bad mother.

When people can feel like a failure as a parent for trusting the system, it’s no wonder they think they live in a world where “some things will never change.”

“But behind the chalet, my holiday’s complete…”

Popping my head out of the woodwork (read: out of my ass) again, because it’s been too long.

Stuff going on that’s too personal to report, but what I’d like to do is at least get to the backlog of stuff that isn’t too personal.

Because, you all missed me, right?  Right?

Anywho, can totally relate to Hercules, here.  Suffice it to say that my current struggles are ultimately described perfectly in this picture.

“Kevin Sorbo ain’t got NOTHIN’ on me!”

But don’t worry.  My resolution is to start getting things back into place and, as appropriate, TOSS SHIT INTO SPACE, just Lou Ferrigno does…

“Funny how things come undone…”

As is typical, it’s been weeks since Readercon and I’ve yet to post anything on it.  I have those posts in the works–it’s just been an hard couple of weeks with Life, the Universe, and Everything.  I’ll be honest, I’ve been in my own personal funk.  Given that, posting my con wrapup has been the last thing on my mind. But I find myself so appalled and disgusted with the whole Readercon harassment debacle — I’m still a little too disgusted to rehash it, so here, just read it — that I realized that I’d never get my con posts up unless I talked about this first.

Readercon 23 was my third go-round. I’d been looking forward to it every year since my first because I felt I knew exactly what Huey Lewis was talking about in the song “Finally Found a Home.”  Now, that home is threatened because a Board of Directors couldn’t follow its own rules regarding an asshole who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, resulting in a community backlash of such everlasting gob-stopping proportions that I bet the Catholic Church looks at the backlash they got over their sex abuse scandals and says, “Got’damn, I think we got off kinda light….”

I support those who are willing, depending on the BoD’s willingness to follow certain remedies, to vow never to attend Readercon again.  I also understand that there’s a case — some, via the links above, say multiple cases — to be made for staying away from Readercon whatever the outcome.

I know things need to change.  And I want them to change.  Because I just found this place, goddammit.  I’d finally found a home.  I was learning Readercon’s groove, I was keeping an eye open for ways to become more involved.  Hell, one of my two favorite writers IN THE WHOLE ‘VERSE, a personal inspiration of mine — one of the few inspirations of mine I had not yet met at a Readercon (I’ve now damn near met all of them there) — planned to attend next year.

Or rather, had planned.  I know this because this writer signed the petition pledging not to return unless the BoD followed the remedies specified.  Again, good for that writer and everyone else who followed their conscience and signed!  I wish I shared that particular conviction as much as I share all the rage and disgust. 

And yet the idea of me, personally, taking the position of “You gotta get your shit together, or I walk” feels a little dishonest on my part.  So, what would be honest for me?  Where does that leave me? 

With the uneasy feeling that if I’ve ever had a “Man in the Mirror” moment in my life, this might be it…

The things you think about at 2 am.  

(Sorry, comments are off, and would be even if I wasn’t still in a funk.  ‘Cos this is all just too… yeah, I knew you’d understand.)

Chapter XXXIX

It’s my hope that by the time I hit Chapter XL, I’ll be able to look back on the time between now and then, and have at least as many good things to say as there was about the year 2261 in the Babylon 5 universe…

And because it’s a holiday weekend as well as my birthday, the peanut gallery is closed. 🙂

A One-Sentence Story

I woke up yesterday morning and found myself @-bombed on Twitter as I slept.  Once I had my coffee and figured out what it was all about, I saw that I was dared to come up with a one-sentence story (the longer, the better) before Wednesday.  I was going to wait until Tuesday night since I’m not the biggest taker of writing-challenges.  But then the idea struck, so I figured why not take my brain-dump now. 🙂

Thing was, I jumped the gun a little too fast and wrote a story that was just, IMO, too much the same as someone else’s.  Kinda really ticked myself off actually, but in the end, I did (despite how often I told myself not to) the only thing I could do.

So, Anatoly, Alex, Ken, Jake, Carrie, Damien, Tom, Amanda, and whoever else I might have forgotten — you have no one to blame for this but yourselves… 🙂

Mr. Fix-It
(With apologies to Mr. Carver)

After my wife (now my ex) and I took the Wisdom of Solomon to its logical conclusion, having fought hand to hand over custody of our child and managed to walk away with an arm, a leg, and half a torso each, I ran out the door over the smashed-up furniture of our broken home, which allowed us both to move on to new and separate lives with new spouses followed by new, relatively whole children, and it all pretty much went more or less as well as could be expected until our halves of our child decided they wanted to be knitted back together, which pretty much ended up being more or less as arduous a task as expected to the extent that the ex and I were forced to interact, what with all the parent/teacher conferences, therapists’ offices, and dates in family court which, I swear, the ex reveled in, not out of spite for me necessarily, but because having taken the first step to make all these things happen, she gave herself the enviable position of being the martyr on the cross up on the moral high ground at the tip top of her own personal Golgotha, which let her be the conduit for our child’s healing and allowed her in her mind to say to me during today’s latest go ’round in the family therapist’s office, “Here you are, dragging your feet,” harping, as always, that my problem was that I’m “too wrapped up in your own stuff to be fully present,” and “didn’t you learn anything from what happened to get us — and him — into all this trouble in the first place?” but what she doesn’t know is that I did, and that I came prepared with all the tubes of Krazy Glue my cargo pants pockets could hold, and if I could somehow distract her and time it just right (unlike all those years ago), I can grab both halves of the kid, do what I have to, and finally fucking be done with it all.

(350 words)

“Make a scene tonight, and read about it in the morning…”

The SF Signal Podcast (Episode 120) came out last Thursday.  I talked about the anthology Bibliotheca Fantastica for Dagan Books, and for which the edits are coming along very nicely.

I’m only getting around to putting this up now, since I’ve been busy with the edits, and with preparing for my first trumpet-playing gig in 8 years.  This is related, trust me…

And I don’t mean just getting my lip back in shape.  I had to get my ear back in shape too, since I was tasked with transcribing the horn line to Blondie’s “The Tide Is High.”  It’s been about 8 years since I’ve done anything like that, too.  But it was for a good cause — a fundraiser for the Cancer Resource Center of the Finger Lakes.

My performance was far from perfect, though.  It’s my own fault, especially since I had to pull a Chet Baker because of my travel schedule — in 1988, he’d blown off all the rehearsals for his Last Great Concert in Hannover, Germany but showed up the day of the gig and rocked it.  However, smack-addicted Chet Baker was still a better trumpet player than I ever was on my best day.  Still, I was pleasantly surprised at the results.  People asked me if I’m inspired to play again, considering the dearth of trumpet players in the music scene in this town.  I don’t know.  I am inspired, however, to watch The Commitments again, since I’d been quoting Joey “The Lips” Fagan all week: “The Lord blows my trumpet.”

Anyway, this sort of brings up a personal issue for me, in that I’m not as anonymous as I used to be.  Not as compartmentalized.  Not so long ago few people knew “Don the Co-Worker” was also once “Don the Martial Artist,” or ever “Don the Jazz Trumpeter Wannabe.”  Now, some of them are finding out about “Don the Writer” and “Don the Editor.”

But now it’s all coming together.  I’m not as carefully covering those track as I once was.  I’m even opening the doors a bit, and maybe that’s a good thing. Besides, it’s getting so I can’t cover those tracks as much, even if I wanted to.  I’ve now been on the Functional Nerds podcast, as well as SFSignal.  I’ve been filmed reading.  Nope, no hiding it now.  I might have mixed feelings about it, but I’d better get over them PDQ.

Anyway, since the gig was an 1980s musical revue, the theme song for this post works on every level…

I’m taking a day to recover.  It’s been a helluva couple of months, and I’m totally depleted.

“Psych one, psych two. What do you know? All your life is channel 13…”

I saw and read and watched on TV a lot of things as a kid that certainly my parents wouldn’t have wanted me to see.  On the down-low, of course.  Nowadays though, the ‘rents would be considered downright negligent.  Still, I relate to this, from Michael Sarko on Popdose…

I admit I’m nostalgic for the days of TV’s unbidden bizarreness, but I know each generation has its own thing. Indie theaters, cavernous book stores, random pamphlets, underground newspapers– They’re all sources of weird throughout the history of pop culture. One way or another, a kid needs to have that strange fruit to fuel creativity and open-mindedness.

Some of the weirdness to which I was exposed between the ages of 8 and 16: The Exorcist (the film and William Peter Blatty’s novel), The Young Ones, and thanks to unsupervised late-night cable-access TV-watching, my first therapist in The Asylum for Shut-Ins: Video Psychotherapy.

He tells it like it is…

But, he’s really not that stuffy. He’s kinda easy-going, really…

He’s really helped my creativity and open-mindedness. I’ve turned out all right, I think.

Right?

“I’ve been one poor correspondent…” (Again)

I was tempted to call this post “Don’t Call it a Comeback” and put up the video for the classic “Mama Said Knock You Out.”  But that’s not my style.  I do feel like I’m sort of coming home again.  That is to say, back to something closer to my normal self.

And besides that, you all know The Menahan Street Band is more my style anyway.  And, this is a bit of a homecoming, after all.

So, this is the portion of the entry where I make vague, cryptic statements about what’s kept me away for so long.  How I’ve been, what’s been going on, what unspeakable Lovecraftian horrors I’ve stared into which drove me temporarily insane, &c. In time, in time.  Maybe. 

Actually… probably not.  Not here, anyway. 

But the important part is, I’ve finally, after a few months, regained the ability to “fake it ’til I make it.” Until then, I’ll occasionally open up the peep hole, mutter a few things occasionally (lots going on to talk about soon!), and then close it.  Thus, comments are closed for now.

Oh, and I took the dynamic view off and put the old template back up, at least until I find something better.

@Inkpunks

From a cool t-shirt.

Galen, from the Inkpunks crew, invited me to do a guest post for them.  I did a little Sally Fields “You like me! You really like me!!” dance in my head.  Little did she know how hard I was banging said head into my desk trying to come up with a worthy post, before she mentioned, “Oh yeah, a bunch of folks are doing posts about workshops.”  The big ones.  The ones all of us genre writers want to go to–Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, Uncle Orson’s, &c. The ones that a lot of us can’t take six weeks away from life to attend.

At least, not directly…

Check out “Autodidactic Asphyxiation” at the Inkpunks blog.

“But here you are in the ninth, two men out and three men on…”

Photo from here, via here.

The rumors of my death have only been a teeny bit exaggerated.  My face has cycled through each of the faces of the eggs up there about five or six times.  Even the one in the pan.  If the past few weeks of my life had a theme song, it’s been Billy Joel’s “Pressure.”


It’ll probably be the theme song of the next few weeks.  But it’s okay.

Different kinds of therapy have helped me cope: talk therapy, alprazolam, not to mention retail therapy, thanks to sales at Weightless Books and Golden Gryphon Press.  Seriously, I got 50% off of two TPBs I should’ve had in my library years ago…

Add to that the latest collections from Geoff Ryman, Maureen McHugh, and Joan Aiken–not to mention the list I’m currently working through–and I should be set until the summer…

…except for some other reading, which I’ll be talking about tomorrow.