Alice and the Clown

About a year and a half ago I decided to explore the idea of getting a master's degree in French. Studying French on a higher level is something I've always wanted to do since learning French in Canada as a missionary. So I signed up for two classes at ASU: advanced French writing and 19th century French theater. While I loved both classes, my heart wasn't really in it so I decided not to pursue that degree.

In my writing class, one of our assignments was to write a short story using words from a word bank. I came up with a story called "Alice et le clown" and I posted it on my old blog about a year ago. Which was a bit useless because very few people who read my blog read French.

Earlier this week I thought I'd revisit that story and translate it into English. Here it is, "Alice and the Clown":

We arrived at the train station in Düsseldorf as the last train of the night pulled away. Alice let out an exasperated expletive. We met during my last year of university in London where I was studying European literature. The first time I saw her was at the library where she worked. It was in helping me locate a volume of short stories by Anton Chekhov when I fell in love with her.

But she didn’t reciprocate my feelings of love. Regardless, we he had become good friends and she accepted to grace me with her presence during a literary research trip for two weeks in Germany.

During our first afternoon in Berlin, on returning alone from a trip to a nearby cafe, Alice noticed something strange on the corner across the street from our hotel: an old man with bright lemon hair wearing a dilapidated pink clown suit from a time long passed.

Two days later, Alice saw him enter a store in Hamburg. Curious, she insisted that we follow him but in the store we didn’t find any clown. When she saw him the next day in Hanover she started to believe she was crazy. Finally, in Düsseldorf, after seeing him exit a cafe where we were ending the evening, she asked in tears that we leave immediately for Paris where her parents live.

Now here we are alone on the platform. Tears appear in the corners of her eyes and roll down her cheeks every time she blinks. She shivers from the cold. I know she’s not crazy but I don’t see what she sees. I approach her and hold her in my arms.

I've tried to write (lengthy) short stories in the past but with no success. I guess I just don't enjoy writing fiction enough (and I'm absolutely terrible at writing dialog) to tackle any sort of fiction over 1,000 words (this story weighs in at a light 283 words). So maybe really short fiction, or flash fiction, is my calling. Or at least a good place to start.

So here's where I need your help. I want to establish a word bank -- words I have to use in a future short short story -- to help inspire me. So please post a few words in the comments. Any type of word will do (except adverbs, I'm trying to steer clear of adverbs). I'll do my best to use them in a (very) short story.

a savory cephalopod

Last summer I came across a recipe for grilled baby octopus. I've been wanting to try this recipe ever since so last Saturday I went to Mekong Plaza, a local Asian market, with my brother Matt and picked up a pound of baby octopus.

The octopus needed to marinate for a few hours before grilling, so during my lunch break today I came home to defrost and prepare the octopus. It was a really weird experience. Whenever I cook any kind of animal -- like beef or chicken (I don't cook much fish or seafood) -- it's usually just a portion of the animal and that doesn't really give me much of an idea of what the animal may have looked like. On the other hand, with these little guys (each octopus was about six to eight inches long), here I was handling the animal in its entirety (minus most of the guts which had been removed from the head). I gained a new-found respect: respect for the butchers and chefs who prepare most of the meat that I eat; but mostly respect for this small, delicate, so interesting sea creature, whose life had been taken so I could eat it.

When you're dealing with the entire animal, it's very hard to ignore that this was once a living, breathing organism. Nor should you ignore that, animals should be consumed -- if that's your thing -- with thanksgiving.

I posted a photo of one of the octopuses* on Instagram and I was sort of surprised by some of my friends' comments. Sure, I will readily acknowledge that purchasing, preparing, cooking, and eating fresh octopus is a bit gnarly. But I didn't expect very many of my friends to vocalize how gross they thought it was. Which is totally fine -- I get and respect that tastes differ from human to human. For example, I think bananas, a typically normal food by western standards, are gross. Perhaps I'm more open than most when it comes to seafood. I grew up in a family that ate seafood pretty regularly. And recently I've been accompanying my friends Jeremy and Buster on a quest to find the best sushi in Phoenix. So after sampling shrimp heads, fish eyes, monkfish liver, jellyfish, sea urchin, and more, fresh octopus doesn't seem so weird.

I'm only just realizing this, but I'm actually a pretty daring person when it comes to what I'm willing to eat. Which is awesome because daring isn't a word I would use to normally describe myself.

I'm not too interested in trying this recipe again. The payoff could have been greater: while the taste was decent, it was just too chewy (as octopus is known to be) and not terribly easy to eat. But it was a fun experience cooking and eating something new. Most of all, I'm grateful for the respect I gained for those who prepare my meat and for the animals whose lives are taken so I can eat them.

*Contrary to common parlance, the plural for octopus is not octopi. It's octopuses.

of mustaches and transgender trench coats

The other day I posted this photo below on Instagram with the following caption: "If you want to start taking yourself less seriously, grow a mustache."

A few hours after posting I received a short text from my girlfriend that read: "so. mustache. tell me about that."

I responded: "Well, when I was at BYU--Idaho that was the only facial hair allowed. So of course I had to try it. So I would grow a mustache for the typical ironic reasons but also because no one else dared. [...] Anyway, there came a point where for me it crossed over from irony to 'I actually kind of like this.' I don't know... sometimes I feel more comfortable with myself with a mustache. It's kind of like, 'Yes, I have this awkward piece of facial hair and I don't care what anyone thinks about it.'"

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Do any of you watch New Girl? [If you do and you're not caught up, this post contains spoilers from the most recent episode.] If you haven't seen it, here's the premise: Jess (Zooey Deschanel) moves into an apartment with three guys -- Nick (Jake Johnson), Schmidt (Max Greenfield), and Winston (Lamorne Morris) -- after she discovers that her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Antics ensue. It's not always my favorite show but it usually manages a couple good laughs per episode. (That said, one of the best things I've seen on TV was when Schmidt pretended to be one of Mitt Romney's sons.)

Last week's episode opens on Nick modeling a new coat for Jess and Winston -- a women's coat that was delivered to their apartment by accident. Despite the gender mismatch, Nick sports the coat throughout the episode because he feels it gives him a new sense of confidence.

Since the debut of the show, it has been fairly obvious that Nick and Jess will end up together at some point. But until this episode there haven't been any concrete steps to making that happen. At the end of the episode, Nick is finally forced to give up his prized coat when its rightful owner, a female neighbor, knocks on their apartment door. Nick surrenders the coat and has a laugh with Jess about it outside their respective bedroom doors. Jess says goodnight. As she turns to retire to her bedroom, Nick grabs her by the arm, swings her around, and Nick kisses Jess with the passion of a season and a half's worth of sexual tension. Watch it here:

My friend Heidi compared it to Jim and Pam's kiss at the end of season two of The Office. Here, Jess and Nick put Jim and Pam to shame.

Since I watched that episode earlier this week, I've wondered at the writers' reasoning of including Nick's coat in this episode. The coat wasn't a necessary plot device, per se. Sure, Nick wearing a women's coat to gain confidence is funny and ironic but the story would still move on without it. But the episode wouldn't have been as meaningful without the coat. That coat was a bit like my mustache; it was Nick's way of saying, "Yes, I'm wearing this piece of women's clothing and I don't care what anyone thinks about it." That coat put him at ease and Nick stopped taking himself so seriously.

So then why did Nick's burst of confidence to finally kiss Jess come after he removed the coat? I don't know why or how but I feel like figuring out the answer to that question might be one of the keys to my own self-confidence. The coat was a crutch that would have hindered Nick from truly expressing how he felt for Jess. Yes, the kiss could have been just as passionate, but with that coat to lean on, it wouldn't have mean as much. It would have made the kiss, like the coat, seem like a joke.

Yes, I know, this all TV, and stuff like this doesn't happen in real life (does it?). But TV, movies, books -- stories, really -- matter. Stories matter because they give us a new way of looking at ourselves, a new way to relate to our world, a new way to identify and examine the crutches in our lives. And these crutches exist not only in love, but in all aspects in life.

So with that I ask: what is your mustache? What is your transgender coat?

The Dangerous Animals Club

About a year ago Audible.com lured me in to renewing my monthly audiobook subscription by offering a free audiobook to listeners of This American Life (which I love; I don't even mind that my girlfriend probably likes Ira Glass more than me). I promptly downloaded Steve Jobs' biography and loved it. Initially, I only planned on downloading my free audiobook and then cancelling my subscription. But then I forgot and Audible.com kept charging my credit card. And so the audiobook credits began to build.

So every now and then, with the intention of using all those built-up credits so I can cancel my subscription, I peruse the site for an audiobook that will keep me entertained during the more menial moments of my job. My rule for audiobooks is simple: it has to be something I won't likely take the time to read, but something I have a legitimate interest in reading (or listening to, in this case). Because there are so many books I do want to read, it's rare that I come across something worthy of downloading.

A couple months ago I came across an interesting title called The Dangerous Animals Club by Stephen Tobolowsky. The author's name sounded familiar so I Googled him. I learned that Mr. Tobolowsky is an actor and that he looks like this:

Image from here.

You've seen him before, haven't you? I couldn't pinpoint how I knew him so I went straight to his IMDb page, where I saw that his acting credits contained familiar films like Groundhog Day and Memento (I need to watch that one again) and the TV show Heroes, among so many other movies and shows I have and haven't seen.

I don't know what compelled me to download The Dangerous Animals Club, a compilation of Mr. Tobolowsky's autobiographical stories. Maybe I was interested to see what the film industry looks like through the eyes of someone who, on the surface, seems more grounded and human than the actors we see on the magazine covers that we are subjected to at the grocery store check-out line. Really though, I think my gut told me go for it. My gut didn't let me down. (I have since listened to it twice, purchased the e-book, and gave it to a friend for Christmas (I thought about giving it to all of my friends for Christmas, it's that universally awesome, but apparently I'm not that generous).)

It's a shame that our society doesn't value oral storytellers like we do actors and athletes. If we did, Stephen Tobolowsky -- who also narrates the audiobook -- would be a household name. This isn't to say that he's not a great actor, because he is. His storytelling is unparallelled, that's all I'm saying.

Throughout the book, Tobolowsky, or Tobo, as his friends call him, recounts tales from his life as an actor, college student, family man, and ordinary member of the human race. And he does so with the warm and humorous intimacy of close friend. In fact, by the time you finish The Dangerous Animals Club you feel like you're close friends with Stephen Tobolowsky. And just like a visit with a close friend, you don't want to the book to end. The most disappointing thing about The Dangerous Animals Club -- perhaps the only disappointing thing? -- is when you put the book down at the end (or remove your earbuds, in my case) and you realize that you're not actually friends with Mr. Tobolowsky. But that doesn't change the fact that if I ran into him on the street I'd have no problem calling him Tobo.

Aside #1: One of my favorite lines from the book was on filming at 11,000 feet on a mountain in New Mexico: "On the way up to the mountain, I got dizzy and nauseated at the same time, like when I was fifteen years old and made out with a girl who had just eaten a chili dog."

Aside #2: Stephen has a free podcast, appropriately named The Tobolowsky Files, that you can listen to here. Each episode is about 45 minutes long. If you're vacillating on whether or not to read the book, check out the podcast to get your feet wet. If you read the book and are craving more Tobo stories (if you read it, you will), check out the podcast. Either way, check it out. You can also find the podcast on iTunes.

Aside #3: As if on some kind of actor-memoir kick, I've also listened to Tina Fey and Rob Lowe's autobiographies. Both are funny and entertaining in their own way, but are nowhere near as interesting, heartfelt, relateable, and fun as The Dangerous Animals Club.

"I have a [great] feeling about this!"

If you've been living under a social media rock today, there is some news you need to hear: Disney has agreed to buy Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion and they plan on releasing Star Wars: Episode VII in 2015. If you're a huge Star Wars fan like me, this is either the best or worst news ever -- either way, it's huge. Personally, I am pumped. So pumped. Here are five reasons why:

1. Goodbye, George Lucas. Now, I don't hate the guy. But I will be the first to admit that while I enjoy Episodes I-III (especially III), George didn't do the best job with them. He is an excellent visual director, but he's terrible at harnessing the actors' talent and he can't write dialog to save his life. Think of the quality writers and directors the Star Wars brand name can attract. Sure, given the notoriety the prequels carry, it would be a risky move to write or direct a new Star Wars movie, but there are undoubtedly many great writers and directors willing to take a shot at it.

Lucas signs his life way. I hope this agreement contains a clause that he can't go back and tinker with the old films ever again. Full press release and image from here.

2. Pixar and Marvel. Marvel makes great comic book movies and, for the most part, Pixar makes the best animated movies. I'm hoping this logic follows with future Star Wars movies from the new Disney-owned Lucasfilm.

3. Despite the acquisition, Lucasfilm is not Disney. The acquisition allows ol' George to step down, letting others add to the Star Wars universe he has created. Lucas has simply entrusted Disney to protect -- and hopefully honor -- Lucasfilm's Star Wars brand (while padding his pockets with $4.05 billion).

4. Learn from the past. With the sale of Lucasfilm, Lucas has appointed longtime cohort Kathleen Kennedy as president. Under new leadership, I hope Lucasfilm will be wary to repeat the mistakes they made with Episodes I, II, and III.

5. Midnight. Maybe best of all, it gives me an opportunity to dust off my old Jedi robes*, head down to the theater and camp out all day while I wait for the midnight showing. In short, I have another opportunity to make memories with my family and friends. For me, that's what Star Wars is all about.

Since the release of Episode III, I've always wondered what Star Wars in someone else's hands would look like. With this acquisition I will finally see that. I couldn't be more excited.

*I don't actually own a set of Jedi robes. That needs to change.

Update: My brother Thomas is speculating on directors on his blog. Check out the post here and be sure to follow his blog.

no little plans

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized."
     -- Daniel Burnham

Through a series of events too lengthy to detail here, one night in late July of last year I found myself seated with my family for dinner at The Original Frank Pepe Pizzeria Napoletana in New Haven, Connecticut. (How come no one ever pronounces that second "C" in Connecticut?) It was possibly the best pizza I've ever had.

Now, I've always been handy in the kitchen. I remember baking cookies, cakes, and brownies with my mother and grandmother at a young age. As a teenager, every week I was responsible for our Sunday dinner dessert. I started small with cake mixes and simple chocolate chip cookie recipes. Over the past few years I've expanded my repertoire to include more complex desserts like baklava. My current go-to chocolate chip cookies recipe is much more subtle than the cookies I used to make. And I've even tried my hand at cake decorating.

About a year ago I decided I wanted to start making pizza. I can't detail exactly how this desire developed, I just know that this serendipitous visit to Pepe's in New Haven was the initial catalyst. I set the ambiguous goal of being able to make really good pizza.

For the past year I've worked on that goal quite passively. And today I can make a pretty good pizza. Earlier this week I remembered that quote above by Daniel Burnham. It's worth repeating: "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized" (emphasis added). So after a year -- a reasonable amount of time for someone with my home kitchen experience to come up with a really good pizza -- why haven't I been able to realize this goal? Because "really good pizza" is what Daniel Burnham would call a "little plan."

So this week I decided to upgrade my pizza goal to something that stirs my blood and hopefully stirs the blood of those around me. I don't want to make really good pizza. I want to make the best pizza in the world.

This isn't one of those bullcrap, shoot-for-the-moon-land-among-the-stars goals. When I say in the world, I mean in the world.

Of course, I have no idea how I'm going to do this. I'll begin by sampling the finer local pizza joints. And travel to the pizza capitals of the world will be necessary. More than once I've looked into building a backyard pizza oven (I should probably buy a home first, eh?). As Helen Keller put it, "Life is either a daring adventure or it's nothing." I look forward to the adventure that will come in creating a perfect pizza.

To Frank Pepe I say thank you for best pizza I've ever had. One day mine will be even better.

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It seems counter-productive to put a disclaimer on your dreams, but I do have to say this: While I will no doubt have to sacrifice in the pursuit of this lofty goal, one area where I will not compromise is in the relationships I have (or will have) with my family, loved ones, and friends. I love pizza but I love people more. The cool thing about pizza is that it's easy to share with people.

flat like the old days

For my birthday a couple months ago, this really great girl I'm dating gave me a set of maps of Canada that, based on the maps' provincial and territorial borders, date from somewhere around 1881 to 1889. She knows I'm a sucker for maps and old crap, and having served as a missionary in Quebec and Ontario, the great land of Canada is quite dear to my heart; so these maps were a perfect gift. (And she also got me a pizza peel and a pizza cutter, the kind that's a huge blade that rocks back and forth, which could also double as a weapon in the event of a home invasion.)

Here are the maps:

Ontario here was one of the first Canadian provinces when the Dominion of Canada was formed on July 1, 1867, although it was much smaller then than pictured on this map (it's even larger today).

Quebec, which was incepted* the same time as Ontario, is my favorite province, if only out of pure bias: I spent the majority of my mission there. (Don't worry Ontario, you're a very close second.)

And finally we have Montreal. I've heard Montreal called the San Francisco of Canada but to compare it to that great city cheapens it a bit, as Montreal holds its own among the great cities of North America and the world.

Not pictured: A map of the entire Dominion of Canada circa 1881-1889. This one is hanging on the wall in my bedroom and I was too lazy to remove it from it's frame to photograph it.

*Not a real word.

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Like I mentioned earlier, I love maps. So it shouldn't come as a surprise that I spend an inordinate amount of time on Google Maps, on both the mobile app and full web versions. Anyway, these old Canadian maps got me thinking. How hard would it be to add a function to Google Maps that lets you take a map back in time to see the layout of a certain country or city, say, 100 years ago? Google Maps already has layers for traffic, weather, bicycling routes and more so adding another wouldn't be that hard. Time consuming? Sure, to pore over old maps and come to a consensus on where borders and roads actually were is no small task (I nominate myself for this job). But Google is known for taking on new projects a piece at a time, and this wouldn't be any different.

Am I the only one who'd be interested to see what my home town looked like 10 years ago? Fifty years ago? One hundred years ago? True, this function may not have an every day use like Google Maps' traffic or navigation features. But if you're like me and 75% of your Google Maps usage comes from perusing maps for the sheer joy of it, this function would be awesome. Or rather than adding a new function to Maps, maybe Google needs to create an entirely new product: Google History or Google Old World or whatever they feel like calling it.

Google, you already read my email so there's a good chance you're reading this too. Please make this happen.

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Can Apple Maps do this? Google Maps news: "Google's Street View Goes Into The Wild".