Random Friday Post

I have nothing coherent to say this morning, partly due to having drinks with the very interesting and talented Sean Ferrell at the World’s Greatest Bar last night. Sean and I share an agent and have been trading random pantsless jokes for months, so we decided it was time to put all that brain power into one place and pour whiskey over it. The experiment went well; I had some nice Glenmorangie Port Wood 12 year and we had a great conversation that ran the gamut from the movie memory hole to day jobs to the modern affliction that is modern pants requirements. Also, Sean outlined a story idea for a novel that I am going to steal, it was so good. Avast!

What was fun about meeting Sean, as well, is that at no time did either of us give any serious thought to dinner. Myself, I like to have cocktails after the working hours (9-5), and often when I indulge in cocktails (which for me means whiskey, neat) I slowly lose the desire for food until I wake up the next day starving. It’s hard to fnid folks who either share this sort of approach to serious classy boozing or who can at least tolerate it; usually people are tossing cheeseburgers at me, interrupting the flow of booze to me, which is unforgivable. In the immortal words of Mel Brooks as channeled through Gene Wilder: Food just makes me sick.

It’s a glum, rainy day in Hoboken today, which is good writing weather.  Of course, any day is good writing weather. I think I’ve decided to put a personal embargo on any essays concerning Twitter and the Kindle-slash-eBooks; I’m personally getting tired of everyone weighing in on whether Twitter is destroying conversation and privacy as we know it or just a toy for overly self-liking kids, and I’m definitely tired of the debate about whether the Kindle will destroy print books and whether that’s bad or not. I do have my opinions, but I doubt either technology will change/destroy the world, as nothing – not even the goddamn hydrogen bomb – has managed to do that so far. I’m no fan of the Kindle (because it strips you of your rights as a reader) and I’m still trying to decide if Twitter is fun and useful or just weird and pervy, but I don’t fear either technology and so I think I’ll just let them marinate for a while.

I’m sure someone will alert the media.

I’m also pondering Lost, which I’ve watched faithfully almost since the very beginning. I’m not as excited as other folks are about this season, and I have 2 theories: One is the inevitable letdown whenever the curtain is pulled back. The only revelations in a story that really sock you in the head are the ones you don’t expect. When Tyler Durden turns out to be the evil second personality of the Narrator in Fight Club, that hit me in the head (let’s table discussions of my intelligence and perception for later, thanks). But with Lost, I’ve been waiting for these revelations  – and guessing at them – for years now, man. It’s like any monster movie: The Monster always seems cooler and more badass when all you get are shadowy glimpses and people screaming. When they real that latex-and-CGI hokum, you’re invariably less afraid of it. With Lost, half the power was in the mystery, and as those mysteries get revealed they simply become spokes in the plot wheel, and thus a bit of a letdown.

My other theory is that Sci Fi is leaking into the mainstream at such a rate that you have a lot of folks who have never read/watched a time-travel story in their lives suddenly hooked on this show and it. is. blowing. their. minds. Don’t get me wrong: Lost is a great show. But I’ve read so many time-travel stories that the idea of looping back on your own life doesn’t, by itself, amaze me, so maybe I’m wanting more from Lost than some folks who started watching because it was a creepy and well-done survival story at first.

Anyway, I started this post at 10:30AM and now it’s 2:11PM, and I did absolutely nothing in-between. Talk about Time Travel. I’m apparently fast-forwarding through my entire life.