Dead Television Report 1
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: EVE - What ya want
Topic: R-Dead Television Report
Tuesday 9:49pm 18July06

Well I'm about ready to go to bed and the Dead Television situation has gone on swimmingly. I posted a couple entries on both blogs. I was falling a little behind on my once a week postings.
It's better to go to bed feeling like I accomplished something than berating myself for the bad shows I just couldn't pull my eyes away from. Plus I listened to some music. I kinda like LL Cool J's new CD. He's mixing with a lot of R&B singers which gives it a nice edge. Sorry but I'm a fickle rap listener. I want it to feel like R&B more. Rap-lite perhaps? I'm from the Soul generation, rap has to sound good first and foremost for me.

I've got my 6 fans blowing my hair off because I admit I cater to my cats. Quincy has a thing about hanging out in the window all day, everyday and she was looking bitter every time she jumped up to find the window closed because I had the air conditioning on. She was stomping away with her head down. So I'm using my portable AC as a fan. Sounds crazy doesn't it? The cat doesn't ask for anything, she just wants to sit in the window, my kind of people. As they used to say.

I less wasted day behind me...

EY

IFOA Notes 3
Mood:  a-ok
Now Playing: Never Enough - Groove Theory
Topic: Writing Outings
Tuesday 18July06 6:28p.m.

Margaret Drabble

theme - the voices that tried to speak and didn't or couldn't

Round Table Discussion - How One Becomes a Writer.

with writers - Ronan Bennett, Isabel Huggan, Michael Winter

- Father kept a notebook of Isabel's stories when she was too young to write.
- giving away family secrets in writing as a child
- writing was meant to be a nice hobby
- your personal view wasn't worthy of investigation
- saying unsayable things
- the mistake - only feel as good as the reaction to your book or writing
- reading out loud
- fooling people into thinking your writing is semi-autobiographical

Ha Jin & Janet Turner Hospital
- everybody is capable of brutality
- mankind recovers after such horrible upheavals
- crossing the threshold of sure death people want to tell their loved ones that they love them. There is a radiant calm or transcendent calm.

Norman Jewison
Timing is everything in politics, in art, and in life.

Here are some other quotes that I've picked up from Biographies, magazine articles and even television shows:

Dostoevsky
- What does it mean to be a human being?
- people at war within themselves
- wrote about things as they were happening - reflecting on what was happening in society.

Dawson's Creek
Close your eyes and paint your future and the rest will take care of itself.

Anne Beattie
Manufacture stories

Oscar Peterson
Your musical instrument should be your needle and music your addiction.

Irving Layton
- wrote of the seamier side of society

As a poet I've tried to convert the lead, like an alchemist, of daily life into gold.
The role of the poet is to make life memorable for everybody. Make the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar.
There's no mercy for the failure. You either survive or perish. The trick is to stay human. How do you survive and swim to the other side/shore and stay alive? How do you stay Human? How do you stay human in a universe that wasn't made for human beings?
God created man in his image. What does that mean? Man is the 2nd creator. In order to be creative you have to be good and evil.
Man must be beyond good and evil. be aware of evil, use that knowledge, do something with that knowledge. Knowing what evil is, have it in your soul and do something with that knowledge. Looking deep into your own heart at your own potential of evil.
Whenever you've seen great art you know that a terrible price has been paid for that piece of art.

Suffered deeply, sinned deeply - the humiliation of knowing how flawed, how imperfect and how corruptible the human being is - beginning with oneself.

Mark Twain
articulating the issues of the day.

More to come...
EY

Dead Television - an Opportunity
Mood:  caffeinated
Now Playing: Say Somethin' - Mariah Carey
Topic: R-Dead Television Report
Tuesday 5:24pm 18July06

Last night after I'd gone on all my journeys... run to crappy tire to purchase a couple new fans, ran to Fresh Obsessed to buy chicken wings (been craving insane amounts of chicken for months)...I turned on my television while I did the odd thing around the house and cooked my chicken wings and didn't my converter die on me. I tried every little trick, well, tried plugging it into another outlet, but to no avail. Scared to unhook the converter because I won't know how to hook up the new one once I buy it and put the cable straight into my t.v. I decided to do without a t.v. for awhile. Sounds crazy doesn't it? But I'm looking at it as an opportunity to do other things, like, say, write.

Once I got over the shock of missing out on the rest of the Tour de France sans Lance Armstrong and with the controversial ousting of Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich and deciding that I wanted Floyd Landis to win since this could possibly be his last race, I knew that the t.v. loss is for the best. Sometimes I have to be forced to quit before I quit. I watch too much television. I can find any excuse to watch stupidness. There used to be a time when I was more discriminating about what I watched but I can't even say that any more. Okay so I don't watch Jerry Springer but I've watched, the Surreal Life, Flavor of Love (Can Flavor Flav be the ugliest man in the world? And what are those women thinking letting him sleep with them? I loved Hoopz but was being with Flavor Flav really a win?), the Princes of Beverly Hills or bell Air or whatever it's called ( with David Foster and his two step sons who are really cute, spoiled and out of control). Who knew David Foster swears like a truck driver (no offense to truck drivers that don't swear). Who knew that he was married to Bruce Jenner's ex-wife? Sigh! But I digress...

Okay those shows are the height of my bad television watching but still bad t.v. no matter how you slice it. I've watched re-runs of the Gilmore Girls, I've seen each season about 5 times. Pathetic.

So in my new t.v. less world I'm going to have a little contest with myself and see how much more writing I do. This is the true, t.v. fast. I may even add the odd dispatch or better yet the odd dead television report. We'll see how that goes. There really isn't many ways to procrastinate without a television. Even now, I'd usually watch Miss Match (which took over for the Gilmore Girls) and Law and Order Criminal Intent ( I would marry Vincent D'Onofrio if he asked me). That's two hours I blasted away on television when I could be writing instead. And instead today I'm sitting at my desk, typing on my laptop and submitting a blog entry and it's not even 6p.m.

Crazy!

I had to listen to the radio this morning to get the weather forecast. I couldn't remember any radio stations or their call numbers to set my stereo to except easy rock. Too funny! I remember why I stopped listening to Canadian radio.

For anyone in Toronto who wants to see a funny show go see, Desperate Housepets. It was in the Toronto Fringe Festival this year and was one of the shows voted to be part of the best of the fringe. All the info is below. Keep an eye out for the Goldfish who asks, "got any two's?" He's gonna be somebody!

EY


Desperate Housepets was chosen to be part of THE BEST OF THE FRINGE, and has received an extended run at the Diesel Playhouse (the old Second City theatre at 56 Blue Jays Way).
So let your friends and family know they still have ONE LAST CHANCE to see the show theA Toronto Star called "A Fringe Triumph"!

Showtimes:

Wednesday July 19 @ 9pm
Thursday July 20 @ 7pm
Friday July 21 @ 9pm
Saturday July 22 @ 7pm
Sunday July 23 @ 9pm

Phone 416 971 - 5656 for ticket info.

I'll add the Toronto Star review of it here by Richard Ouzounian:

If you want an example of the kind of thing that the Fringe does really well, then take yourself down to the Robert Gill Theatre to meet the exceptionally funny critters lurking in Robert Watson's inspired piece of insanity called Desperate Housepets.

This smart and sassy comedy is actually three playlets in one, each treating a different facet of human behaviour as seen through the eyes of our furry and finny friends. There are inter-species relationships, the search for meaning in life, and a life-and-death struggle.

The themes may sound serious but Watson and his director, Andrew Lamb, know how to work their concept for maximum hilarity.

In the first section, a flighty rabbit, played in superb camp style by Watson, tries to rekindle his relationship with a body-building hamster. Alan Lee is a masterpiece of butch confusion as the wheel-obsessed rodent and the whole sequence has a deft, comic touch.

In the second, three goldfish of unequal intelligence share an aquarium. Adrian Proszowski and Leah Wahl are content to gulp air and gobble fish food, but Watson plays a questing philosopher who scribbles Descartes on a blackboard and tries to instruct his hapless chums in the finer nuances of Kierkegaard. It's witty, intellectual stuff — sort of underwater Stoppard.

Finally, we're in the pound on "death row," where two dogs and a cat will meet their maker unless someone adopts them. Lee is a wonderfully mangy Rover, Proszowski a befuddled Fido and Wahl a scene-stealing malevolent feline. It's hilarious, yet touching as well.

Linking all three episodes is delectably plummy narration by Rachel Marks, which sounds just like the kind you hear on Desperate Housewives. But in this season of TV repeats, you're far better off with Desperate Housepets. Richard Ouzounian
www.thestar.com

IFOA Notes 2
Mood:  bright
Topic: Writing Outings
More Notes that I made at the International Festival of Authors...

Round Table Discussion

A writers obligation to an artistic truth
- remain faithful to the truthfulness of your representation
- turning up where you're supposed to be.
- look at contradictions within own family.
- another history that you were not being told

You write out of your imagination.

Make your character contradictory.

David Mitchell & Audrey Niffenegger

Audrey:
- Chrono displacement disorder - a character that jumps around in different times of his wife's life.
- playing with time, taking a cubist's approach

David:
- playing the genres like different sections of an orchestra
- use of diary entries, interviews and letters in one novel
- examining the world by changing one little thing.

Ursula Leguin

- The rage to do to other people in fiction what they've done to you.
- making up worlds and peopling them

Jasper Fforde

- taking a strange premise and making it credible.
Who killed Humpty Dumpty?

Round Table Discussion - Belonging and a Sense of Place

- feeling suddenly inferior because of colour of skin - Nadeem Aslam. Nadeem's parents told him "go and live a passionate life." Look at what other artists have done with their lives in order to make sense of your world, the world.

- what's the affect of having a sperm donor as a father, never knowing your real father - Tessa McWatt

- conflict between love and belonging and rootedness - Jan Zwicky

Comments from above writers

- Where do I belong? Who do I belong to? How do I want to belong?
- Writers feelings about not belonging, being outsiders, onlookers
- Where does this poem take place? nowhere, in my mind, in narrator's mind
- I don't belong to any of the places that I come from anymore
- a definition of self tied to a country
- I don't belong anywhere, I belong everywhere, I belong to my language (writing)
- the community in my mind w/ the intellectual writers.
- Setting - Toronto - no old buildings, no sense of history, a nation of immigrants
- We always produce a new past.
- We write about difference whatever that may be
- Understanding the world through writing

List the books you feel you ought to have read and read them

What is worthy of risk for your writing

What is the quality of the attention you bring to what you are writing.

You take up writing for a lifetime not for a living.

Baby Steps - Dreams
Mood:  cool
Topic: Living on Purpose
I've decided I have multiple personalities:

I'm living my life like a 20 year old starting out for the first time. I never quite got myself organized enough when I was in my twenties but I've learned a lot over those two decades. So I've decided on a do over.

Financially, I'm a 20 year old that had the kind of parents that gave strong, sound advice on what to do as in save the maximum amount allowed into RRSP's (Registered Retirement Savings Plans for my American readers), save up for your purchases, donate 10% to charity. For those of you who don't do this, it really does make a difference in your peace of mind. When you can give, you open yourself to receive. When you save, you know you're taken care of. When you save up for your purchases, you appreciate what you have.

In love, I may still be a teenager - the teenage virgin who isn't ready to go all the way. The teenage virgin who wants to take her time, who wants a boyfriend that understands that she's a virgin so he won't rush her. She wants the kind of boyfriend who will wait 8 months if he has to without mentioning it, asking for it, pushing for it. A boyfriend who by his silence lets her know that it has to be her decision when it happens. She has to be the one to say, to announce, "I'm ready."

It's about giving her "precious" self to the right boyfriend not to any boyfriend. That's the concept of having a do over. Clearly I'm not a teenage virgin nor do I sleep around but I am picking and choosing what it is that works for me. Instead of beating myself up for not achieving the milestones that "normal" people my age have reached.
In love, it's waiting before I give over my preciousness ( my heart, my self, my body) to someone.

A man with patience is sexier than one who coerces, or makes you feel obligated or makes you feel guilty. Sexiness is in the patience, knowing that it doesn't come easy and that the wanting is more than just sexual. It's just so much better after the anticipation, I think.

In my writing, I'm going back to beginner's mind. I'm going back to where everything about your new interest is fascinating and you look in all areas to learn, reading voraciously, making people that you meet characters, looking for the story in every incident.

When you see people as potential characters you find them fascinating, you want to know what makes them tick, what's their back-story. How did they become who they are now, what drives them? With beginner's mind, every aspect of life becomes interesting because every aspect of life pushes you to investigate more out of curiosity and relates back to the writing.

I have the imagination of a child with unreasonable dreams. I am able to imagine being a Billionaire writer if I want to. A child's dreams are unreasonable only to adults because the child is far removed from the realization of that dream but with baby steps all things are possible. With a child's imagination we are taken out further than what seems possible right now but that's how dreams begin right? The unreasonableness of belief is based on your current reality and makes it impossible for anyone to ever see that it can become what you want it to become. That's why people, adults, friends tell you, "Don't dream so big. Why don't you try a lesser goal? Why don't you become a nurse instead they need nurses more than writers. Are you sure you can deal with the rejection? Are you sure you can handle that?"

With baby steps, persistence, an unwavering belief and a multiple personality, all things are possible.

EY

Living an Inspired Life
Writing2Live