Saalon Muyo

I finished my first novel, Broken Magic, in 2007. Since then, it’s seen the inboxes of about a dozen publishers and agents.  When there was a response at all, it was what you’d expect: Sorry, but it’s not what we’re looking for.  There have been gaps where I just gave up, gaps which are the greatest cause of embarrassment for me. I mean, I got through the pain and suffering of finishing a novel, only to sit on a query letter for eight months?  One of those queries are out right now, and I’m coming up on the point at which I need to decide that I’m never going to see a response.  The Silent No. The only thing worse than the Form Letter No.

That leaves me with a choice. Do I continue to send out letters, or do I decide that this is not a novel that will be published?  Before the latest round went out, I’d been on the verge of self-publishing.  I’m sick of the thing sitting, mostly unread, on my hard drive.  I like it. I wouldn’t still be sending out rejection bait if I didn’t.  But it was finished so long ago that it’s getting to be a bit of a drag to have to talk about it in the abstract.

Today, I got dared.  I should have made them double dog dare me, but I fold like a 1,000 thread count bedsheet.  The dare? To post the first chapter of Broken Magic for all to see.  Or, to be more specific, for all ten of my readers to see.  Because I fold so easily, I agreed. And because I’ll talk myself out of it if I give it too much time, I decided I’d need to do it immediately.  I hope, in some way, posting this will force my mind to make a decision, and that next week I’ll be sending out another query letter, or formatting Broken Magic for publication on my own. Because the first two chapters form a more coherent mini-story than the first chapter alone, I’ll be posting chapter 2 – “Thanks, Babe” – on Monday.

Beyond that, without further ado, the first chapter of Broken Magic.

1. Small Blonde Thing

There is someone playing music in the back of the room, right hand making maddened up-and-down motions across guitar strings.  I can’t hear a note of it.  Instead, there is the screeching, bubbling nightmare-sound of hot steam forced through milk.  I’m paying more attention to a college student making cappuccino than the musician.  I can’t remember the guitarist’s name, but I’m pretty sure the girl making cappuccino is Ann.

I haven’t come alone.  There are ten other people with me, spread out across three tables.  All theater kids.  I guess I’m one, too, but I don’t feel like it.  Last week was the deadline to join tech crew.  I signed up on Friday.  Today is Saturday.

I’m out of place.  With the theater clique.  With everyone in this place, this coffee shop not meant for suburban high school posers.  At least I’ve learned enough about coffee to have ordered without sounding like an idiot.  I can only hope knowing the difference between a latte and cappuccino is enough to keep anyone here from realizing I don’t belong.

Ann, or whatever her name is, turns off the steam.  Musician-guy finishes a song.  Another one begins.  It is ten minutes before I fall very, very hard for someone I’ve never met.

For now, I’m here because of the girl to my left.  I’ve never done theater before.  The only theater I’ve seen? Musicals.  I’m not even sure if I like theater.  But she’s the best actress in school.  If you want to spend time with her, you’re going to have to be near a stage.  Her name is Laura, and I’ve been mooning over her for two months.  It took me all of that time to get the courage to sign up for tech crew.  Where I found the cojones to sit next to her, I’ll never know.

Laura knows I exist just long enough to say hello to me.  Then she’s talking to a friend, flirting with one of the fifteen other guys in the room who aren’t me, or just plain ignoring me.

At the moment, I think she’s perfect.

Most of the people with me are girls.  There’s Sally, a sophomore, who is either Laura’s protégé or rival, depending on what day it is.  Janet Haller, who I’ve never heard called by anything less than her full name.   Kevin, Greg and Karen, the trio of doom, the worst actors in the school whose only talent is bulldozing over other people’s good ideas.  Paula, who threw up on stage on opening night during last year’s musical.  She won’t be getting another lead.  Nina and Francie, the token lesbians of the theater program, who aren’t actually lesbians at all.  But being called dyke is the price you pay for dressing in black, doing theater and hanging out with another girl all the time.  Actually, being called dyke is the price you pay for going to high school, being female and not dressing in Tommy.  Nina and Francie are just easier targets.

And there’s Laura.  Queen of the theater.  Short red hair.  Dressed in the kind of almost-ratty, old-looking clothes that only a trendy actress could pull off.  I don’t think they even match.  Tall and thin, small busted but shapely.  She’s beautiful, she’s talented, and I’m pretty sure she isn’t wearing a bra.

Everyone female is enamored with the man playing music.  Laura set the tone as soon as we sat down.  “Damn,” she said, and that was enough.  No one has spoken since.  That half of every song was obscured by cappuccino-sound is irrelevant.  A hot man is playing music, and conversation can wait.

I have lots of time to think about how the music really isn’t all that good.  Simplistic.  Trite lyrics.  Lots of stupid crowd pleasing ad-libs, like inserting the name of the coffee shop into the song.  I think of voicing them, tearing the man apart to take some attention away from him.  But really I just want to talk to Laura, or listen to her talk, or imagine that she has something resembling attraction to me.  That last one is sort of hard, what with the need for a drool cup every time music-guy starts a new song.

Rebellion begins with the trio of doom.  Whether or not they’re enjoying the music, or find music-guy attractive, is not the point.  Fifteen minutes of silence because Laura wants to gawk is far too much.  Greg fires the first shot.  “You think he’d go out with me?”

Laura peels her attention off of music-guy.  Turns to Greg.  Her ability to switch moods on command is frightening.  Remember, she’s an actress. “Don’t be a tool.”

“He’s probably would.”  Everything Karen says has a lazy slur to it, like she’s barely got the energy to speak.  It irritates the hell out of me.  “Grunge isn’t your type, though.”

Greg shrugs.  “True.”

“But he’s definitely hot,” Kevin adds, making sure to keep an eye on Laura as he talks.

Laura knows what they’re doing.  Getting her angry is what they want, and Laura isn’t the alpha for nothing.  “You really think he’s gay?”  She says it like she’s disappointed.  Like she believes them.   For a second, I wonder if the trio has won this round.

“He’s a little bit feminine,” Greg says.

Karen nods in agreement, suddenly acting sympathetic.  “He’s got the aura, you know?”

Laura considers this for a moment.  Everyone at the table slides a little forward in their seats.  I want them to be right.  I want music-guy to be gay so she can stop staring at him.  But I don’t want to see her dropped a peg by these three.  Stupid conflicting emotions.  Why did I come here tonight, anyway?

A song reaches its banal conclusion.

“I think I’ll just go ask him out for you.  We’ll know for sure, then.”  Laura’s response comes out all happy and helpful.  It’s enough of a shock that no one moves to stop her in the second it takes her to get out of her seat and walk away from the table.  Greg’s mouth opens.  Closes.  Everyone but the trio holds back laughter.

The guitarist looks up as Laura approaches.  She smiles at him.  He smiles back.  The likelihood of his homosexuality seems slim.  Then Laura is whispering into his ear, and I – like everyone else – am wondering if this was a bluff by Laura, or an object lesson for anyone interested in staging a coup before this year’s musical.  Music-guy laughs.  Just a little.  Karen squeezes Greg’s hand.

“Uh, hey everyone.  I just got asked a question by uh…what’s your name?”  The music-guy asks the question like he’s about to ask her out.  I hate him and his generic music.

Laura answers quietly, so only music-man can hear him.

“Laura.  Nice to meet you, Laura.  I’m Ridley.”  He laughs a little and turns back to the crowd.  “Anyway it was a well timed question, because I’m about to take a break anyway and introduce you to someone special.  While I get some coffee, you get to be the first to hear the best new musician in the city.  Uh, Celeste?  Wanna stand up?”

At a table between me and Ridley, a small blonde thing stands.  All I see is the back of a white tank top, a calf-length, blue and green skirt and short hair.  She turns to look at the crowd, but shyly, so no one really gets a look at her at all.

“This is Celeste, and no, I’m not just lucky enough to have someone as talented as her to play while I’m on break.  I’m lucky enough to be dating someone as talented as her.”  Not gay, but not available.  Perfect.  He turns to our table.  “So, sorry Greg, I’m taken.  You seem like a nice guy, though.”

Rippling laughter moves across the crowd.  If the redness in Greg’s cheeks is embarrassment or anger I’m not sure.  Advantage, Laura.  She won’t be flirting with a hot guitarist tonight, but public humiliation will be enough to keep the trio from bringing that fact up.  Her work done, Laura gives a little wave to Ridley and walks back to the table.  If it had been me, I’d be still awkwardly standing there, making a fool out of myself.  Laura knows how and when to make an exit.  Ridley even waves back before continuing.

“Anyway, enjoy the show.  I’ll be back on for another set in a while.”  Celeste, the small blonde thing, walks up to the stage.  Ridley touches her hand,  kisses her cheek, and heads straight to the counter to order something trendy.

Laura returns to the table and gives the trio a look.  Remember your place, it says.  Then she looks at me.  At me.  Triumphantly.  I try to return the look, and fail miserably, I’m sure.  Before I feel awkward, I look away.

Celeste sits down, pulls out a guitar and gives the crowd a nervous smile.  I can see her face, and despite the close presence of Laura, I can barely take my eyes off her.  At the moment, I’m not even sure why.  “Just give me a second,” she says barely loud enough for me to understand.  Begins tuning her guitar.

My eyes are still on her when I get the guts to speak.  “I wonder if she’s any good.”

“Eh,” Laura says, and that’s all.  A good actress knows her competition, she told me one day in English class.

With the trio silenced, and Laura stewing over her hot musician target being taken, the others at the table realize they’re able to speak.   Francie, who’s been wanting to say something all night, makes her move.  “What do you think about the new director?”  Ms. Holtmeyer, the theater teacher, is no longer directing our productions.  An outsider has been brought in to direct, to give her more time to concentrate on her classes.  A subtle way of saying parents have been complaining.

Like she’s been prepped for this conversation before Francie spoke, Nina responds.  “It’s totally unfair to Ms. H.”

Paula answers as she always does.  Monosyllabically.  “Yeah.”

“Holt was a crap director.  Anyone would be better.”  Laura’s words are dismissive, almost  bitter.  I’d try to say something – anything – to support her, except somehow Celeste’s guitar tuning is the most entrancing thing I’ve ever seen.

I see Sally nod out of the corner of my eye.  Holtmeyer never cast her, but she doesn’t want to sound like Laura’s shadow.  A silent response is her most political choice.

Celeste is almost finished tuning, but it’s taking her too long.  She’s losing the crowd.  She offers everyone a placating smile.  I’m awed by how cute she is.  Not beautiful.  Cute.  That might sound like an insult, but note that I’m still staring at her.

“I guess he seems fine,” Janet Haller says from behind me.  She got a bigger role than she expected in the play.  “But I’ll miss Holt.”

Nina tries again.  “I just don’t think it was fair.”

“Well, that’s theater.  Get used to it if you want to have a career.”  If I was paying more attention I might find Laura’s cattiness a turn off.

Only Celeste is starting to play.  In ten minutes, the night has changed meaning for me entirely.  I know, somewhere in the back of my head, that I’ll be back to following Laura around tomorrow.  I know I’ll be building sets and moving lights just so I can get five minutes with her to say nothing at all.  That’s tomorrow.  Now, my eyes watch a pale hand caress the fret board of a guitar, readying itself.  Now, I’m smitten by someone small, blonde and even less available to me than Laura.

 ”You don’t have to be such a bitch about it, Laura,” Greg says in an attempt to regain the upper hand.  “It’s not like it matters who’s directing.  You’re the lead no matter what.”

Laura’s voice rises at the wrong moment.  Celeste’s right hand is raised just above the strings.  No pick.  Finger picking only.  I want to hear this more than anything, but instead I hear, “I’ve earned every role I’ve gotten.  That’s more than you three can say.”

The opening chord is delicate, and it’s ruined by the argument.  I hear the next three, and Celeste’s music just makes her more entrancing.  This is different than Ridley.  Not just because she looks good, I swear.  The argument continues, blasting away the song again.  “Can we not do this tonight?”  Sally’s attempt to be forceful fails.

“We audition the same as you,” Karen says, leaning across the table, “we just don’t suck up as well, apparently.”

I almost say that she’s gotten it all backwards, but arguing with actors is the last thing I want to do, even if it means sticking up for Laura.  Celeste’s mouth is opening, and all I want is to hear her voice.

I’d say my heart skipped a beat, or my breath caught in my throat, except that would sound really, incredibly stupid.  Everything does stop for a moment, though, when she sings.  Almost like the world around me just blinked.  I’m convinced the theater argument has continued and gotten worse, but I can no longer hear it.  I thought Celeste would be, at best, pretty good.  Cute girl singing songs, worth paying attention to, but not much more.  Instead, she’s incredible.  No microphone, but every word is clear and resonant.  Lyrics that aren’t just lyrics.  They’re poetry.  Really, freaking good poetry.

I only joined theater because of Laura.  I’m sitting in a coffee shop I don’t belong in so I might have the chance to say two or three things to her and stare at her the rest of the time.  So why can’t I even focus on what she’s shouting next to me?

Because of the small blonde girl singing on stage.

Apparently I’m the only one able to ignore the battle erupting around me.  Ridley, hot music guy, is standing at our table as soon as Celeste’s song ends.  He smiles, directly at Laura, and politely asks if we wouldn’t mind keeping it down while his girlfriend plays her set.  I’m barely aware of the seething quiet that descends on Laura, or of the smug satisfaction on the trio’s face in seeing Laura humiliated by Ridley.  After all, Celeste just started a new song.

Chapter 2, Thanks, Babe has been published here.

For my first developer position at TrueCommerce I was provided a standard issue whiteboard for my cubicle.  After a few weeks of providing developer support – your first developer job is light on the development and heavy on the sitting at people’s desks, waiting for an error – I wrote, “The doctor is IN,” on the top of the board.  When I went to lunch, I’d erase it, write OUT, and off I went.  When you’re debugging Windows COM errors, you try to make your own fun to get through the day.

After a while, that got old, so I started erasing everything after “The doctor” and putting in some kind of movie quote or song lyric.  You know: “The doctor’s life flashed before his eyes: cuppa tea, cuppa tea, almost got shagged, cuppa tea.” That sort of thing. People’d stop be to see what I’d written, to see if they caught the reference or not. It wasn’t long before people started calling me, “The Doctor.” Including the VP and CIO. “Doctor,” Russ would say, “we’ve got a problem and we need your help.”

At the time, I’d never seen an episode of Doctor Who, and thought he was called ”Doctor Who” and not “The Doctor.”  The whole thing started as a reference to Lucy from Peanuts. I walked around with the nickname for years and it never clicked.  Even after I started watching the show, it didn’t occur to me that I’d walked around an office for four years, getting called “The Doctor” for my notable ability to sort (technology) problems that had everyone else stumped. I stumbled into a nerderific and fantastic nickname and hadn’t the faintest clue what I’d done. Even after I’d watched Doctor Who and become *ahem* a bit of a fan, it didn’t click until I’d decided to dress as the character for Halloween. If there comes a nerdier moment in my life than when this all came together and didn’t stop me from choosing this costume, it’s probably time to call it a day.

Anyway, that was how The Doctor dressed up in a Doctor suit for Halloween, and his wife joined in on the fun.

A few months ago, I met Mere Smith on Twitter.

Last year, at a Jolie Holland concert, I very nearly spun directly into Ms. Holland herself. In doing so, I almost knocked a drink out of her hand. I stammered, realized who I’d almost run over, stammered even more, then walked away without a single, complete English word.  Faced with someone who I knew only through her work – work I really liked - my mental train hopped the rails, grew wings, and flew directly into the nearest mountain.

Then, a few months ago, I met Mere Smith on Twitter. It’s gone better than that. It helps that she doesn’t drink, because if she did, I’d find a way to knock it out of her hands through Twitter.  It also helps that she’s a hilarious, kind and insane person who spends her time on Twitter talking to a rowdy bunch of nerds like we’re just a bunch of mates down at the pub.  Only she calls it an Asylum, because, as I said: Insane.

I’m about to talk about something that I rarely discuss with her: writing. There are two reasons why I don’t.  The first is obvious: The last thing any writer, especially a professional writer, wants from new friends is for them to be up their butt with writing talk. “Oh, you’re a writer! You wrote for Angel!! Let me tell you about this awesome novel I wrote!”  That? That’s the last thing someone wants to hear.  The other, less important reason is because I’m avoiding it. If you can’t figure out why, you have a serve underestimation of my self-consciousness and anxiety reflex.  Either way, with the exception of a comment here and there, and a few chats about an episode of hers I re-watched, we talk about everything but. It’s not, in any way, a problem.

Today’s a fun day, because I get to talk a bit about her writing, and she asked for it.  Maybe you know her work primarily from Angel or Rome, but Mere’s actually got a talent for prose that, if you ask me (and you have, because you’re reading my blog, sucker), needs to get a lot more attention.  Today, she posted a bit of the opening of her novel, The Devil’s Gospel, and she’s hoping you’ll read it.  She’s also hoping you can give her a little nudge to keep writing, because writing a novel is a long and winding road.  So go and read. And nudge. And, if you like it, say nice things, because it’ll make her uncomfortable.

After all the abuse she’s given me, she deserves it.

I ran out of the house so quickly this morning that I forgot to vote.  Election Day is important in my clan. Being a member of this family means you’re either into politics, or you watch mutely as the dinnertime shouting match rages over you. Either way – whether you’ve voted or not – you’ll end up on a phone call, reenacting one of the family’s most over-told stories.

My great-grandfather, Tony Bologna (that’s Ba-low-nya, not the sandwich meat, chumps) was at work, and one of his coworkers was asking him if he’d voted yet. This works better told, not written, so do me a favor and imagine this in a nice, thick, stereotypical Italian accent. It’ll help.

Coworker: Hey, Tony! You wote?
Tony: Yeah, I wote.
(later)
Coworker: You wote today, Tony?
Tony: I wote! I wote!
(later)
Coworker: Tony, you wote, yet?
Tony: I wote every time-a you ask me, he win for sure.

Election Day, people. Rock the wote.

You need to see Paprika. In fact, you need to see everything by Satoshi Kon, because it will mess your mind up.  But you’re busy, I get it. You don’t have time. So let me bring you this one moment of awesome. The opening credits for Paprika. You can thank me with words or, preferably, beer.

We use Radiant CMS as the framework for the Cultural District website, so it made sense to use the same framework when the time came to rebuild the Trust’s. One requirement we have for the Trust’s site that we did not for the District was the use of Vanity URLs: you know, how if you want to make it easy for someone to get to some really long url, you can make up a nice short url with a memorable word that directs people on to the right place. saalonmuyo.com/awesome redirects to, say…well, let’s face it. Anywhere that goes is rickrolling someone. You get the point.

So, how did we do it?

Basically, whenever you go to a URL in Radiant, it falls through a few steps.  First, it checks if there are any defined routes you’ve set up in your *_app_extension.rb file.  Failing that, it falls into Radiant’s SiteController, which searches every single Page to see if the path the user entered matches any of the Pages’ slugs. If it finds something there, it processes and loads that page. If it fails, Page’s find_by_path method returns the FileNotFoundPage you have defined. (This is assuming you have a FileNotFoundPage defined, which you should. Here’s how.) The SiteController then processes the FileNotFound page and displays that.

In order to define a Vanity URL, we needed to get in the middle of that process.  We created a VanityUrlPage class – Radiant allows you to create custom page types – with two custom fields: Vanity URL and Target URL.  Then, we overrode Page’s find_by_path method so that, if it failed to find anything, before we returned that FileNotFoundPage, we tried to see if a VanityUrlPage existed that matched. Then, we interrupted the SiteController so that, before it processed the page, it checked to see if it had found a VanityUrlPage and, if it did, redirected the user appropriately. So, how about some code?

This is all assuming you have a Radiant extension you’re developing.  If not, you could create an extension just to do this. But let’s assume you already have an extension created.  Within vendor/extensions/<your_extension>/ directory is a lib directory. Within that, I created an extensions directory, and within that, I created two files: page_extension.rb and site_controller_extensions.rb.

Within page_extensions.rb, we needed to override find_by_path. (Note that my module is called SatelliteAppExtensions. Yours will be called, YourNameExtensions instead.)

module SatelliteAppExtensions
    module PageExtensions

    def self.included(base)
      base.class_eval do
        alias_method_chain :find_by_path, :vanity_urls
      end
    end
    def find_by_path_with_vanity_urls(path, live = true)
      raise MissingRootPageError unless root
      page = root.find_by_path_without_vanity_urls(path, live)
      if page.is_a?(FileNotFoundPage)
        vanity_url = VanityUrlPage.find_vanity_url_by_path(path, live)
      end
      vanity_url ? vanity_url : page
    end
 end
end

So, what’s that doing? Well, alias_method_chain is  - as Brennen would call it – some hot sticky ruby magic that lets you say that when someone calls find_by_page, they actually call find_by_page_with_vanity_url. From now on, the only way to get directly to find_by_page is to call find_by_page_without_vanity_url.  We use this so that we can implement some of our own logic around the find_by_page call.  Essentially, we immediately call find_by_page_without_vanity_url, and if we get that FileNotFoundPage back, we run a query on the VanityUrlPages to see if we get a match. That’s the find_vanity_url_by_path call. Let’s look at that.

VanityPage

class VanityUrlPage < Page

  def clean_target_url
    self.target_url.match('http://') ? self.target_url :
                       VanityUrlPage.clean_path(self.target_url)
  end

  class << self

    def find_vanity_url_by_path(path, live = true)
      vanity_pages = VanityUrlPage.find(:all, 
                  :conditions => "vanity_url like '%#{path}%'")
      vanity_pages.each do |vanity_page|
        return vanity_page if clean_path(path) == 
               clean_path(vanity_page.vanity_url)
      end
      nil
    end

    def clean_path(path)
      "/#{ path.to_s.strip }/".gsub(%r{//+}, '/')
    end

  end

end

In here, we do a search against all VanityUrlPages’ vanity_url field. If we get a match. Since we’re doing a SQL like query here, we might get a few false positives, so we then iterate through the results and see if any match exactly. The worry being that you have a /broadway Vanity URL and a /broadway/plays one and might get both back. If we get nothing back, we return nil. Oh, and clean_url just lets us whack any preceding or trailing slashes off the urls so they’re formatted the same.

Now, we’ve done what we need to find the Vanity URL page. But Radiant’s just going to assume it’s a normal page and render it, which we don’t want. We need it to redirect. Thus enters our site_controller_extensions.rb file.

module SatelliteAppExtensions
    module SiteControllerExtensions

    def self.included(base)
      base.class_eval do
        alias_method_chain :process_page, :vanity_page

      end
    end

    def process_page_with_vanity_page(page)
      if page.is_a?(VanityUrlPage)
        redirect_to page.clean_target_url
      else
        process_page_without_vanity_page(page)
      end

    end
 end
end

When Radiant finds a page, the SiteController runs it through a process_page call that essentially renders the thing for the user.  We need to not do that for a VanityUrlPage. So, if the returned page is a VanityUrlPage, we redirect_to the target_url for that page. (And, actually, we redirect to a clean_target_url, the method for which is found above, that normalizes what /’s are there for relative URLs).  If not, we pass the page along to the SiteController’s normal process_page method for normal handling.

Finally, we need to make sure Radiant knows to load your extensions to its core functionality.  There is a file named <your_extension>_extension.rb in your extension’s root directory.  For instance, for mine, it’s satellite_app_extension.rb.  Open that up, and you’ll see a method named “activate”.  Within that, you can define all kinds of things. In this case, we’re defining three things.  Two we’ve talked about (requiring those extension files), and one we haven’t (adding custom VanityURL Fields on the administration side). Give me a minute and we’ll get to the other thing. For now, just do something like this:

require 'lib/extensions/page_extensions'
require 'lib/extensions/site_controller_extensions'

admin.page.edit.add(:form, "vanity_url_fields",
    			:after => 'edit_page_parts')

SiteController.send :include,
    		SatelliteAppExtensions::SiteControllerExtensions
Page.send :include, SatelliteAppExtensions::PageExtensions

What’s going on here? First, we’re requiring the code files for our extensions. Second, we’re telling the SiteController and Page to include the modification we’ve made to them.

Now, about that vanity url stuff in the middle. One thing I’m not going over in detail is creating the Vanity URL page itself. The tutorial I linked is pretty comprehensive and I don’t want to rewrite a bunch of information that might go out of date anyway. But what you need to do to make this work comes in two parts.  You need to create the custom page fields for vanity_url and target_url,  and you need to make those fields available on the VanityUrl administration page. I’m going to copy you my migration file to add the fields and the partial code needed to show those fields. Use those in the appropriate steps in that tutorial. And ask if you have any questions.

Migration:

class CreateVanityUrlPages < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :pages, :vanity_url, :string
    add_column :pages, :target_url, :string
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :pages, :vanity_url
    remove_column :pages, :target_url
  end
end

Partial (_vanity_url_fields.html.haml):

- if @page.is_a?(VanityUrlPage)
  %br
  %hr
  .vanity_url
    = label :page, :vanity_url, "Vanity URL"
    = text_field :page, :vanity_url, :size => 100
  %br
  .target_url
    = label :page, :target_url, "Target URL"
    = text_field :page, :target_url, :size => 100
  %br
  %br

And that’s it. Have fun with your redirections! If you have any questions, comments or think this approach is bunk, let me know in the comments.

I was worried this was going to be a sad and weak month of Movie Education. Little did I know I’d have a short story to run from for the last week of October. Avoidance is motivation. Should have written the short story, though. Hrm. Anyway.

Rambo: First Blood

Interesting primarily for the fact that it spawned a franchise with which it shares almost nothing in common. It’s one of those slightly annoying action movies where everything hinges on closed-minded, mean-spirited small town folk doing closed-minded, mean-spirited things.  An unstable Vietnam War vet tries to walk through town, gets arrested, tormented and abused until he snaps, and then spends the rest of the movie killing people. It’s not terribly written or directed, but it never became more than an excuse for Stallone to look ripped and be tough. Viewed in context, it does touch interestingly upon the lingering trauma of Vietnam, but it’s not a good enough film to get that across out of its own time.

Hannah and her Sisters

If I let myself, I’d write an entire month of these things on nothing but Woody Allen movies. I’ve tried to hold onto a few of the movies viewed as his classics, and I fear I may have reached the end of them with Hannah and Her Sisters. What makes Allen such a wonderful director is the way his films work in aggregate.  One Woody Allen movie is good. Each successive film you see, though, is both a departure and an expansion upon his rhythms and themes.  Hannah itself is like his work in microcosm: a series of vignettes that add up to something more before you realize what the film is doing.  There’s a story near the end, involving a character’s attempted suicide, that’s a perfect encapsulation of Allen’s view of the world.  Also: Michael Caine is awesome in it.

Throne of Blood

How I purchased a Kurosawa adaptation of Macbeth and let it sit on my shelf, unwatched, for almost a year will forever remain a mystery to me. This is one of Kurosawa’s two takes on Shakespeare – the other being Ran, which is an amalgam of King Lear and a traditional Japanese work – and it’s as fantastic as I could have hoped. Toshiro Mifune is Washizu, a successful general who receives a prophecy from a forest spirit that leads first to his triumph, then his destruction.  If you know Macbeth, the story will be familiar, but what delights are the many ways Kurosawa integrates the story into its Feudal Japanese setting.  Kurosawa has so defined modern filmmaking that his style still feels fresh, but it never ceases to impress me just how polished his movies are. Throne of Blood (which is actually titled Spider Web Castle) isn’t his best film, but it’s very, very good.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Boy, this movie had to have created an awful lot of unrealistic fantasies for women. A very competently made films that was just not made for me. Holly Golightly is a terror to me; the perfect, Audrey Hepburn-clad apparition of a half-dozen women I pointlessly and foolishly coveted before learning my lesson. She’s selfish and vain, and if the movie didn’t force her to come around in the final minutes, she’d have been a realistic fantasy-girl monster. The girl throws a cat out into the rain mere minutes before the swooning final kiss! George Peppard is great, and Henry Mancini (native of my own home town) wrote a memorable and beautiful score.  I can see why people like this, but I was not its target audience. Also: Hoo boy, was that some racist caricature or what?

The Long Goodbye

Robert Altman’s adaptation and modernization of one of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe detective novels. It takes the post-war noir setting into the post-hippie 70′s. What’s amazing is the way the movie still feels sort-of authentically Chandler while feeling equally sort-of authentically Altman.  The film’s opening is worth the movie, as Marlowe wakes to find his hungry cat without its favorite brand of food and wanders into the night on behalf of his feline master.  The story was a touch thin, but Elliot Gould makes such a dry and witty Marlowe – and one very different than most other film adaptations – that the movie never stops being fun.  It’s hard to dislike an Altman film (says the guy who, just last month, crapped out a third of the way through Nashville), and this was definitely one of his good ones.

Closely Watched Trains

A Czechoslovakian film from the 60′s about the country’s Nazi occupation (ironically filmed during the subsequent Communist occupation), I chose this movie for one reason: It was assigned to me in a film class a decade ago, and I totally blew off watching it. I always felt badly about that. I liked my teacher and he picked good movies. Some movies I watch are definitely For Film Nerds Only, and this was one. There’s a roughness to the film, the kind you see in movies with a less developed film industry, and it’s mixed with the brand of melancholy you only find in post-WWII European cinema. This is not an era of filmmaking from which I take much enjoyment, but despite that, I found Trains to be an generally gentle and honest coming of age film, and am always fascinated by the art that slips through the cracks of an oppressive regime. Where else will you see the stamping of a woman’s butt with official Nazi rubber stamps used not only for sexual foreplay, but for a running subplot?

Two years ago, I shot a film for the 48 Hour Film Project. It was the last thing I shot, and the first time I’ve gone that long without shooting without the regret overpowering the relief of being free of it all.  My relationship with filmmaking has been troubled. I love writing the script, and I really love every single on-set moment. I love shooting, working with actors and the way everything is so unbelievably alive when a dozen people are bouncing off of each other and time and money are in far too limited supply.

Everything else sucks. Casting sucks. Scheduling sucks. Realizing you didn’t get the shot you thought was great because you shook the camera sucks. Listening to audio that got screwed up by an HVAC system, or realizing you forgot to hit the record button sucks.  Everything that isn’t writing and isn’t shooting is dealing with things you can’t control, and I hate things I can’t control.  Dealing with it over a handful of short films, only three of which are even worth watching at all, wore me out.

I’m starting to miss it again. We’ll see if missing it leads anywhere, but for now I’m thinking about what shooting again might feel like.  I’m watching movies and paying attention to editing and camera movement, I’m thinking about what I didn’t get right that I want to get right next time. And I’m apparently talking about it, because I got asked yesterday for a link to what I’ve shot and it was entirely because I was mouthing off.  You know I’ve been struggling with filmmaking when I’m not even mentioning it in front of people.

There are two (maybe three) films of mine online.  One I shot in 2005. “Tomorrow” is more interesting to me than good, and is possibly not much of either to anyone else.  I watched it for the first time in years last night, because I asked if I could qualify said films before showing them, and I needed to know what I was qualifying. I considered just sending Mels – who asked for the link – an e-mail, but thinking about the films made me contemplative. I thought that if I wrote about it, if I got into my troubles a bit more publicly, it would be better for me. I’m clearly a little fear-paralyzed by filmmaking, and if I’m ever going to do it again, I need to actually address those fears.

“Tomorrow” was an experiment; 12 minutes, shot in a continuous take in an apartment, dealing with a suicide and the moments prior to the arrival of emergency services.  About half of it I can still watch without cringing or just skimming past the awkward, too earnest writing. Amidst that half are some moments and stagings for which I still feel a bit proud.  It was a heck of a thing to shoot. My lead actress was deathly ill, and would power through each take, then collapse onto the floor while we reset.  In two days of rehearsal and a morning of shooting, we shot a not uncomplicated, single-take film.  It even got good (capsule) reviews from the Post Gazette and City Paper. But it was an experiment, and part of me wishes it wasn’t still out in the wild for people to see.

The other film was what I shot for the 48 Hour Film Project.  The way it works is pretty simple: You gather on Friday night, where everyone reaches into a hat and pulls a genre.  You then get a piece of paper that’s the same for everyone telling you a character name, a prop and a line of dialog that you have to use. 48 hours later, you have to turn the film you wrote, shot and edited within that time.  We pulled Surprise Ending as our genre, which is just an awful genre to pull when you didn’t even know it was a possibility.  (Actually we pulled Musical/Western, which is the Genre of Death, and handed it back in to take a wild card genre instead, because neither of those genres were an option for us).

Looking back on “co workers”, the film we produced, is not as hard.  If I had been able to sit on the script – or even the edit of the film – for a couple of days I’d have reduced and rewritten a lot of the first two minutes. It had been a while since I shot, so there’s an awkwardness to the opening I wish I could magic wand away.  After that, though? Well, unlike most things, I’ll let it speak for itself.  For something we wrote between 8PM and midnight, shot between 8AM and 6PM the next day and edited by that time the following evening, I’m still pleased.  Actually, I’m kind of pleased with it anyway.   The restrictions forced me to actually produce something, front to back, without being able to back out.  While I don’t have a lot positive to say about the 48 Hour Film Project competition itself, it was, I think, the experience I needed.

I don’t know where this will lead. Maybe I’m just flirting with this again but will shrink away from what’s an absolutely unpleasant set of challenges. I can always write without filming. Do I want to? Do I want fear and fatigue to be the reason I never film again? I don’t know. I’m still working through it.

I ask you this: Watch “co workers” first. If you think it’s crap, don’t go on to “Tomorrow”, because that film is – in most ways – a step back in quality. If you like “co workers” enough to want to watch the other, know that it is, to my eyes, a interesting experiment that serves as a troublesome artifact of an early writer-filmmaker Eric with whom I not entirely comfortable.  I considered not even posting it, but if I can’t look back at what I didn’t get right, I’ll never have the guts to go through with this again. I’d really like some of those guts back.

So, without further ado, I give you “co workers” and “Tomorrow”.

“co workers”

“Tomorrow”

I have three real posts in progress, and too much to do to focus on them, so in the meantime, listen to some really fantastic Josh Ritter music.

If it was math, it might have made sense.  Two negatives making a positive.

I hated seaQuest. My first review for my school’s newspaper was of the seaQuest pilot, and it was a fine example of youthful, hyperbolic vitriol. I tore the crap out of that pilot, and boy did I think I was funny as I did it.  Unlike Babylon 5, a show I came to truly love, I never warmed to seaQuest.  It had a stupid-voiced dolphin, an obnoxious Wesley Crusher wannabe and it looked like it took place in a jar of Welch’s Grape Jelly. Trash, people. Pure trash.

I never hated fan fiction like I did seaQuest, but I never had much interest in writing it. The problem is that wasn’t real. I never minded people writing it, I just couldn’t understand why they enjoyed it. For me to invest in what I’m writing, I have to buy into it. I have to believe it. These things, in this tiny bubble universe I’ve created in my mind, are actually happening and actually matter.  Without believing that real, irrevocable things are happening to the people under my control, I can’t possibly sell that lie to anyone else.  Fan fiction was a bridge too far.  These characters were on tv, doing other things and did not care what hell through which I was putting them.  Fiction is all about lying, but even lies about people fighting with monsters or flying deep spice freighters need to feel real. Fan fiction always felt like a facade with nothing underneath.

So there I am, writing seaQuest fanfic.

My life got tied up in seaQuest fandom almost as soon as I started hanging out on Scifi’s Icarus IRC server.  My wife? The one I met on IRC? Her username was LWQuestie. Lucas. Wolenczak. Questie. (Lucas being the aforementioned obnoxious – but apparently cute – Wesley Crusher ripoff.)  There were other Questies bouncing around on the server, so it was only a matter of time before I ended up in a chat room with one of the two head writers of a seaQuest fanfic “show” called seaQuest 2047.

Like most things, it started because I mouthed off.  Why I read any of 2047, I don’t know. A link someone sent to me, or perhaps out of pure trollery. Either way, I’d read some of 2047. I had things to say. Shockingly, I did not have nice things to say. More shockingly, Matt – the 2047 writer in that chat room – private messaged me, and not to tell me to please stop flaming the thing he was writing.

Instead, he asked, “What would you do to make it better?”

The fastest way to get me to do something against my better judgment is to appeal to my ego. I answered enthusiastically. What I said, I don’t remember, but it led inexorably to an offer to join the effort and write me some seaQuest fanfic.  Out of what I can only imagine was a desperate need to write something people would read, I accepted just as 2047‘s second season was ramping up.

This was just as I was graduating high school and heading into college. I was still sorting out whether or not I had any confidence in my writing. I was doing it, but it was just this thing that happened. I had no idea how it was supposed to fit into my life. Getting into 2047 was one of a couple things that cracked everything open. Sitting in chat rooms with the other writers, flaming back and forth on e-mail threads about future plot developments and obsessively reading reactions on message boards made the whole thing real to me.

The combination of not actually being a fan of seaQuest and the fact that the show featured primarily original characters – it was set 15 years after the end of the show proper – made it easier for me to buy into what I was doing. I dove into it enthusiastically; more so that I even remember, apparently, because I looked back at the episodes and my name is on more scripts than I’m ready to admit. For nearly two years, Eric Sipple was a seaQuest fanfiction writer, and he enjoyed it.

It ended badly, as these things do. People leaving, people you like less coming in.  It was a group effort and I wasn’t in charge, so when the person who’d taken over started getting flirty with someone with whom I did not get along, the writing was on the wall. We finished the second season and I went off on my own.  When I say “on my own” I mean, “I followed a friend to a spinoff of the fanfiction show I was writing,” but my shame level is getting a bit out of control, so let’s just pretend I rode into the sunset.  (To be fair, that spinoff fanfiction series was a great time, and I did a bit of not-embarrassing writing as a part of it, but please, dear God, let me stop talking about this.)

One of the two founders of 2047, Rachel, is still a close friend, and in retrospect it was the fact that she was a wonderful writer that made working on the show seem like a good idea.  There’s one particular script – the one I talked about co-writing – for which I have particular pride. The way that experience cemented my relationship with Rachel makes the fact that you can still find fan fiction bearing my name on the internet worth the embarrassment. I also met Adam, another friend and writer, and the one I spun off with before making my final exit from fanfic. You can’t argue with a year or two of your life that leaves you with two good friends.

It also gave me some perspective on fanfic, something I’m glad to have learned.  It confirmed the feeling that writing something that I can’t believe as real is a waste of time.  At the same time, it showed me another side of that coin.  In your early days of writing, you’re a geyser of crap.  Almost everything you write is trash, and the rest should have been incinerated on the spot.  There’s no way to get to being good at telling a story until you’ve seen every possible way you can do it badly.  Don’t underestimate how damaging those early days can be to your ego.  It sucks to suck, and it really sucks to be aware of how much suck you’re producing.  That feeling that you are simply a terrible writer is very, very difficult to overcome.

Fanfic, for me, worked as a set of training wheels. Or maybe a safety blanket. Safety wheels?  Anyway, it gave me an outlet to write an awful lot, to see my writing put in a public place and to react to it as finished work.  I learned a lot through those few years of writing fanfic. I produced a lot of terrible but finished stories that made me better, and did it under a structure that supported some of the burdon for me.  There’s something close to a dozen television length scripts I wrote or co-wrote in my time as a seaQuest fanfic writer, and whatever horror I feel in reading them now, they gave me a chance to write and to be read. Maybe I could have been spending that time on better pursuits, but it was what it was, and it came with more good than I expected when I got involved.

Sure, a lot of people use fanfic purely as fantasy fulfillment – sometimes as way kinky fantasy fulfillment – and many will write little else.  That’s fine, though I remain confused (but not dismissive) about what pleasure people take from it. Most people probably didn’t write fan fiction for a show they hated, either, so I’m not sure how useful an example my experience is.  The point, I think, is that there will come a time when you’ll need to start writing things all your own (it’s usually earlier into your work than you think), but that time spent in the attractive nuisance that is the world of fanfic can be helpful if you use it to your advantage.

Except for the part where you spend the rest of your life terrified of someone stumbling across it and asking, “So, what was seaQuest 2047?”  That part just plain sucks.