Gobblin.net

So I tried out this hearty new cereal from Whole Foods that boldly proclaims to be “50% fruit and nuts!” Two scoops of raisins? More like TEN scoops. I’ve never been a big fan of raisins, but as my taste buds have matured, my raisin-tolerance has increased to the point where I will not automatically reject cookies or cereal with them. That said, when eating cereal with raisins, I always try to clump them together into as few spoonfulls as possible, getting them out of the way so that I can enjoy more spoons of raisin-free grains. Sort of like my tastebuds are taking one for the team with those initial raisiny bites. Just so you know, this doesn’t really work when your cereal is 50% raisins, as then you spend half your breakfast eating nothing but soggy dried grapes, and chances are, you’ll still have missed a few, and in the process of being so methodical about fruit/grain segregation, you probably went and let your oats get soggy, at which point the whole delayed gratification is sort of moot. It’s enough to turn one back of raisins altogether. Next time, my limit is 30% fruits and nuts, and even that is pushing it.

So what if we’re nearing the end of March? I’m gonna make my resolutions now! With salaried employment in a creative position shaky, but my head bursting with ideas, this is no time for despair or desperation. Starting tomorrow, I will attack the writer’s life with new-found conviction and discipline.
In 2009, I resolve to:

• Finish Return to Labyrinth with a bang!
• Publish one short story with a reputable fiction outlet
• Complete at least two book length projects for pay
• Publish an original or for-hire comics story
• Post at least THRICE weekly on a secret blogging project
• Complete an original novel and find an agent and/or publisher
• Visit THREE countries
• Do all of the above while adding to my savings, not depleting them!

Is that too much to ask?

Any kid who grew up in San Luis Obispo in the 80s probably has memories of Don Wallace, the street-performing puppeteer who was a longtime staple of Farmers Markets and festivals. He was the man behind the curtain, his hands and giving life to the puppets he carved and dressed himself. A lot of people found his routines a bit disturbing, as his puppets were very much of the Punch and Judy school, and his takes on fairy tales decidedly non-Disney. Creepy or not, I always liked his shows. And for a time, I got a behind-the-scenes look at all his upcoming shows, as this local character was also my Dad’s roommate. By the time I was “too old” to attend puppet shows, Don Wallace had started cutting back on the free street shows and started doing anti-smoking routines at schools and John Muir nature hikes, where his unique voice was used for another form of storytelling. I only spoke to Don Wallace once or twice as an adult — I wish I had got a chance to know him better. In any case, he opened my eyes to puppets in their raw, un-felted form.

While browsing the New York Times this weekend, I saw a review for a current off-Broadway puppet show called Disfarmer. I know nothing about the semi-biographical subject, a real life Arkansian photographer, but the puppet work sure is amazing, especially with the music to which it is choreographed. Unfortunately I can’t embed the video here so you’ll have to follow the link.

On youtube, the creators posted a work-in-progress look at the show that reveals the inner workings of the puppet star. Even though the puppeteers are right there in plain sight, it’s amazing how much the puppet takes on a life of its own. Very effective work. The puppet reminds me of the sad junkyard robots of AI.  I hope you Henson fans will enjoy!

As of today, gobblin.net is officially one year old!

A few statistics:

• Number of posts: 70
• Number of visitors: 67,869
• Most Popular Post: Talking Heads: A Return to Labyrinth Vol. 3 Update
• Most Referrals: Wikipedia and mangablog.net

So what’s next? Well, for now, I’ll keep updating as often as I feel inspired or can spare the time and try to keep building on the moment of the last month (3-5 posts a week instead of 3-5 a month). Until I’ve finished writing and you can purchase volume 4, I’ll continue to post the occasional update on Return to Labyrinth. I’ve got a few top-secret web plans that I’m starting to develop – something a little more ambitious than what I’ve done so far – that I hope to move forward with in the new year. Stay tuned for more on these (hopefully) exciting developments.

Regular readers will know I can be quite verbose when talking about my past, but I don’t comment much on my personal life in the present (rabbit chat excepted). I don’t plan on changing that formula too much, but I’ll make an exception here, seeing as this is a post to celebrate milestones. I’m getting married! Exciting developments indeed.

There’s a new resident at the gobblin manor –Gatsby the bunny! Soak in his lupine lapine majesty! Imagine his satiny fur beneath your fingers! Hear his little huffs and grunts as he nibbles on raw veg!

So far, Gatsby’s favorite pastimes are snarfing and pooping. We’re giving him another day to get used to his new bunny abode before letting him hop around the house at large. Maybe then we’ll start balancing things on his head so as to jumpstart his career as an internet meme. Or maybe he can just live a quiet life of anonymity, munching on fresh cilantro and mustard greens with me.

Do you have an author who, when you read their words, makes you feel as if you were the only one they were writing for all along? Someone who reminds you that books, no matter how big the print run, are an incredibly intimate medium? Haruki Murakami is such an author for me.

I was introduced to Murakami at a very formative time under very swoony circumstances. Even if the book didn’t connect with me directly, I’d still remember it for that reason. But while the passions that accompanied Norwegian Wood on first reading will forever be confined to a time and a place, my love of Murakami endures. In fact, I would credit Murakami with rekindling my actual love of reading when a film degree and career in comics distracted me from novels.

When I read Murakami, I relish the honesty. Murakami’s characters, and his voice as narrator, are disarmingly frank. The way his characters talk is definitely reminiscent of Raymonds Carver and Chandler, Fitzgerald and Salinger—as well it should as he translates the lot of them into Japanese—but for me, the author I’m reminded most of is Lewis Carrol. Murakami makes the real and the surreal equally mundane—and frightening—while keeping the “adult world” distant. His stories tend to take place in a vacuum within our reality—they are modern characters (in a very nostalgic way) but they behave according to fairy tale logic. Even though Murakami’s works can be quite erotic, it always has an aura of childlike innocence about it.

When I read Murakami, I savor the minutiae. Perhaps no other author has spent as much time describing the process of scrounging up meals from whatever’s in the fridge, consuming that meal, then washing the dishes. Murakami’s meals are never extravagant—they’re comfort food. Reading his descriptions of simple food stirs the same sense of contentment as eating a bowl of mac and cheese on a chilly fall evening.

When I read Murakami, I lose myself in the puzzle and couldn’t care less about the solution. Murakami is a master of the literary mystery. His books are filled with clues and red herrings, and joining the protagonists on literal or psychological goose chases makes for an amazing experience. My boyish brain often falls into the trap of trying to rationalize what defies explanation, but Murakami has helped me to accept that sometimes the unexplained is okay.

A couple weeks ago I read Murakami’s latest release—What I Talk About when I Talk About Running. At a slim 190 pages, it’s one of his breeziest works in both word count and substance. Murakami—who am I fooling, after reading this book I feel like we’re on a first name basis!—Haruki goes into great detail about his running regime, with his usual frank and conversational tone. I don’t know if it’s the translation, or the informalness of the essays collected here, but something about the style feels a little…off. It’s still 100% Haruki, but it’s almost as if he’s picked up some of the false-modesty that his characters are so refreshingly oblivious too. (Haruki’s blithe dismissal of global warming, in particular, really irks).

Still, even mediocre Murakami is top-shelf reading for me. The fact that the subject matter serendipitously coincided with my own renewed pursuit of running made it a much more engaging read than it would have been at any other time. Murakami writes about how he first took to running, when he was 32 years old and at the very start of his writing career. I try not to fall into the writer’s trap of comparing my own professional timeline with those of others (Fitzgerald had already written Gatsby by the time he was my age!), but I confess to feeling some hope when reading that Murakami didn’t even consider writing (or running!) until he was the age I was now. So what if I’ve only written licensed tie-ins so far – that’s more than Haruki had! It’s a stupid reaction to have, but I’m sure Haruki would understand.

Now when I go out to run I can’t help but think about Haruki. I might not run a marathon a year like he does, but we’ve got a little something in common, and should we ever run into each other in a Tokyo jazz bar, maybe we could talk about it over a cold beer.

I don’t remember learning much from the two years I spent at community college. If I try hard enough, I can vaguely recall testing for mineral hardness, or learning that most archaeologists make a living by inspecting construction sites, not excavating jungle tombs (way to crush my Indiana Jones dreams, Mr. whateveryournamewas!) , but the truth is, I wasn’t that motivated by school anymore. Having sort of sabotaged my academic momentum by not bothering to really apply to universities, I found myself without any real goals or real hope for change.

I found inspiration in the summer of 1996, ironically enough, in astronomy, sociology, geology, anthropology, ecology (and plenty other -ologies)…just not in the classroom. Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars and its sequels, Green Mars and Blue Mars, opened my eyes to a new kind of optimism. His scientist heroes weren’t trying to take us to “The Future!”—they were trying to build a present that didn’t trip over the mistakes of the past. His books are packed with scientific detail, but they are never about science—they are about people who think scientifically. The Mars trilogy reawakened my pre-teen optimism for a glorious tomorrow, where men and women from around the world could put aside their differences and really change the world for the better! I still didn’t know what my place would be in this glorious utopian revolution, but at least I’d found hope again, and I’d discovered a damn good writer in the process.

Shortly thereafter, when I transferred to USC for film school, I read and enjoyed Robinson’s next novel, Antarctica (I even tried to persuade the development company I was interning with to option it!), but after that, fell out of touch with old KSR. By the time I checked up on him again, he was already 2 books in to his next trilogy, one about global warming. Blue Mars deals with the repercussions of global warming—does my erstwhile favorite writer really need to stoop to Roland Emmerich material now, I thought as I looked at the sensationalist covers that seemed far too Tom Clancy for my tastes. It wasn’t until last month that I finally caved.

Here we were, in the heat of election season, with my now officially confirmed guy talking about change, but I just wasn’t feeling it. Maybe it’s silly, but when I was struggling to get excited about our real world heroes, I looked again to Robinsons’ science heroes for inspiration.

Forty Signs of Rain, the first of the “Science in the Capital” trilogy starts off slowly to be sure, and chapters dedicated to daddy day care and grant endorsements weren’t exactly reigniting the old flames. It wasn’t until about half way through that you really even have a sense of what this series is really about. And it wasn’t until the second volume, 50 Degrees Below, that I realized how invested I was in the main character, Frank. The more I read, the more impressed I became with how Robinson weaves together threads of bio-engineering, politics, Buddhism, privacy, terraforming, Emerson, homelessness and neuropsychology—he forces you to question what it means to be responsible modern human. In his world, there are no pat answers, yet he isn’t afraid to take a stand. Robinson is, as always, an optimist and an idealist, and while that might at times come of as hokey, I am glad to share in it. Especially now. Welcome back into my heat, Kim Stanley Robinson. I’m sorry I ever took off your friendship bracelet.

When your parents are no longer together, and neither lives within a thousand miles of where you grew up, when your friends and family are scattered across the country, and when you haven’t spent more than a year or two in one place without moving during your adult life, what is the place you go home to? What place serves as the nucleus of your life, where, no matter how things change, you can always count on to keep you grounded? For me, that place has been Leon’s Bookstore. And as of next month, Leon’s – my home away from home – is shutting its doors forever. Read more…

Last May my friend Jason and I went on an amazing 3 week trip to Egypt. 9 months later, Jason has begun birthing a wonderfully detailed account of our journey. One of these days I need to transcribe my own observations, but for now, Jason does a better job than I ever could. Click here for the first part of his ongoing and entertaining travel log.

So a few months back, I visited my sister in Alabama and we went on a road trip. As we were packing our bags, I suddenly had an idea – let’s invite Jareth! And so I looked into the mirror and chanted, “Goblin King, Goblin King, wherever you may be, come to Alabama with a banjo on your knee!” And lo and behold, he came! It was one heck of a trip, I assure you. And thanks to Jareth, we never wanted for catchy tunes in the radio wasteland of the deep south. First stop: Space Camp!

In case you were wondering, Space Camp is just like the movie, in that hardly anything’s changed since the 80s, only there were no artificially intelligent robots to accidentally launch you into space for real. Or maybe those were in the off-limits, campers-only sections (we really just toured the museum and grounds). My sister and I played on the Mars-themed climbing wall, but Jareth said the tight fitting safety holsters looked a little too snug for comfort. (Yeah, I know – who’s he to talk about groinal snugness?). After that, we saw the lunar lander, went inside a MIR module and played with the shuttle simulator. And to top off our adventure – Dippin Dots! (Jareth had Cookies and Cream). On the way out, we stopped by the grave of Miss Baker, first monkey in space. Jareth saw the bananas lying there and took one. I tried to tell him those were left for Miss Baker, but he just shrugged and ate it anyway. I guess the Dippin’ Dots weren’t filling enough for the Goblin King.

Next stop: Nashville!