February 8th, 2010 / 7 Comments » / by Chuck
Said it before, and I’ll say it again: your story adds up to characters do shit and characters say shit. At it’s core, that’s every tale — somebody does something, and that somebody probably talks about it, and hopefully it’s not totally fucking boring. Right? Right.
Well, it’s time to talk about the talking.
(“Talk about the talking?” Really? Really, Wendig? You’re not going to go back and fix that? For reals? Yes. For reals. I’m leaving it. Suck it. Suck on those guava melons. This is raw. This is unfiltered. This is Jesus Juice, pumped straight to your liver and kidneys for processing.)
For me, dialogue is easy to write, but difficult to get right.
What I mean is, my characters will yammer and blather and chat and whine and argue and opine and emote and all that garbage, and they’ll do it willingly, without circus peanuts or a paycheck or even a rare word of encouragement. That part, for me, is no problem.
The challenge comes when trying to make the dialogue count, in trying to make it work.
I continue to be obsessed, you see, with this notion of double duty. (Double doody! Number two! … ha ha ha ha ha! Hee! … okay, clears throat, I’m done.) Dialogue is generally handed a single task in a scene: it speaks to the character, it provides information or explanation, it reinforces the theme of the work, it foreshadows events, it advances the plot or the story, it makes us laugh, it makes us cry, you take them both and there you have The Facts of Life — er, whoa. Sorry. Anyway. What I’m saying is, bad dialogue does nothing, and good dialogue does something.
Ah! But the best dialogue does more than one something.
It stacks shit on top of itself. Like a delicious mille-feuille.
This is especially true in a screenplay or a comic script; in such a format, you don’t have a lot of room to bring the awesome. (If you haven’t seen my overwrought essay on the differences in writing novels and screenplays, feel free to check it out.) You don’t have space to stretch out; no time for writerly indulgences there.
So, dialogue has to count. It has to fire on all cylinders.
With one bullet, you must kill two men.
Wuzza? You want some tips on writing dialogue, then?
I live to serve.
Learn How To Write It
Not trying to be a dick, but really, seriously, for realsies, learn how to write some goddamn dialogue. I don’t mean all that fancy stuff we’re going to talk about. I mean punctuation, attribution, process. I’ve seen dialogue by writers that should know better, and the dialogue looks like:
“John, I don’t want to go to the barn to milk the Blood Cows.” Mary said.
Hello? Comma? Please come to the emergency room.
Or sometimes it’s dialogue that overkills the attribution (Mary said Mary said Mary said Mary said, yeah, we get it, Mary said some shit).
Or it tries to get all fancy, and instead, looks like it was written by a pompous college freshman:
“Look over there!” John ejaculated.
Or it staples a dirty, filthy adverb to the sentence:
“Why did you murder Bessie the Blood Cow?” Mary whined seductively.
Dialogue has rules. Further, our eyes like to float over dialogue; it should be easy and even fun to read. You bog it down with every extra punctuation, with every extra attribution, with every junk synonym for said. Simplicity. Elegance. Ease-of-reading.
Get it? Got it? Good. Moving on.
Let Them Blubber And Ramble
Having trouble finding your center with these characters? Can’t quite get into the groove of how they talk? That’s because characters can be real assholes. Dealing with them can be like raining toddlers, herding cats, or worse, shepherding bees. Like with cats and toddlers (but not bees), you have to just let them run themselves out, and the way to do that in terms of your fiction is to let those jerks talk.
Just let them talk.
For as long as you need them to.
If I’m with a close friend, a professional cohort, or most particularly, my wife, I can yammer. The conversation can go for hours. Write like that. Write that kind of conversation. Is it going to be interesting to outside parties — meaning, the readers? No. Hell, no. No fucking way. But that’s not the point. If I have an hour-long conversation, it won’t be interesting to outside parties, but those listening carefully will probably be able to pinpoint character traits, or vocal patterns, or an overarching theme to the discussion.
That’s what you’re looking for. You’re painting with shotguns. You’re throwing noodles against the wall. You’re going to cut 99% (or even 100%) of that conversation. But you’re going to discover things about how these characters speak, and you’re going to savor that like a gobbet of meat held in the mouth after weeks of vegan eating. (Relax, vegans, I’m not picking on you. But we all know you really want meat. It’s why so many vegan and vegetarian products attempt to ape meat. “Ch’ken” or “Tofurkey” or “Veggie burgers” and what not. C’mon. C’mon. Meeaaaaat. It occurs to me, upon re-reading, that I said “ape meat.” Hrm. I’m sure ape meat is illegal. Don’t eat apes. )
Filter By Purpose
When it comes time to winnow the dialogue down to something manageable — like bonsai or pubic grooming — you want to wade into the fray with purpose. You may even inscribe said purpose on the blades of your vicious hedge trimmer. Remember earlier when I was talking about dialogue pulling double- or triple-duty? This is that.
Identify the purpose of the dialogue. Try to hit on at least two purposes for maximum awesomeness. The characters might be carrying the story forward at the same time they’re expressing important character traits. Or they might be giving the audience information while simultaneously reinforcing theme.
This’ll likely get a post of its own someday, because I think the ways to make dialogue — or any part of your story — rock multiple purposes requires finesse and technique. And I don’t mean to suggest I have either of those down pat, yet, but dangit, I’m trying.
Exposition Ain’t That Interesting
Here’s what’s fucked up about dialogue: the rule of writing is show, don’t tell, but dialogue is ultimately an expression of telling. In daily life, I tell people shit all the time. Some guy stops for directions, I tell him how to get to the post office. I don’t show him. I don’t take him on a wondrous visual journey down the back streets and potholed highways, past the meth den and the possum breeders, past Old Man Hymenbreaker’s place, past the bar where Johnny McGlinchey got stabbed in the neck with a shard of Native American pottery. Much as I’d love to, I can’t. So I tell him. Thing is, that’s not going to be that interesting for the audience, is it? Nope.
How do you make dialogue show and not tell?
The answer?
Characters should never speak.
No. No! Wait, that can’t be right.
What I mean to say is, you don’t need to be so concerned with the fact the character is telling. Rather, you need to be concerned with the fact that you, as the writer, are showing.
That doesn’t make much sense yet. I know.
The character can tell. You must show how the character tells.
Better? Still not there? We’re zeroing in on it. Don’t pee your pants.
Let’s assume that Ruth Rumpletits, the Matriarch of Archer Avenue, wants to talk about the history of the town in which she lives, Redlandtownsburg. We know she’s going to convey information, and we know an information dump is a boat anchor that will drag your narrative down. And yet, that infodump contains information that both the reader and the other characters must have. Fine.
How Ruth tells that history is where you have the chance to show and not tell — meaning, it’s your chance to make it interesting.
You will show her mannerisms.
You will show how she tells a story — just as you tell a story, so does she, and the way she tells it is of equal importance to what she tells. Her rules for storytelling are the same as yours, so keep that in mind.
You might show that she’s doing something else as she info-dumps all over the other characters. Just as many games feature mini-games, your big story will feature lots of mini- and micro-stories, and as Ruth tells her story, she might be cooking some eggs. Maybe she can’t find the eggs, or she burns her hand, or she suddenly freaks out from some acid flashback and she throws searing hot omelette cheese into one of the other main character’s eyes. Dialogue can be immediately punctuated by action — you’re showing what she’s doing as she tells her story. (Plus, action breaks up dialogue, which is generally good.)
One more thing:
Remember: exposition and information are sometimes necessary, but it forces you to go the extra mile to be interesting. Hence, do not overuse. I’m not saying “avoid like the plague,” but I am cautioning you not to rely on it, lest you perforate the drama of your story.
Avoid The Nose
Ever heard the phrase, “That dialogue is on-the-nose?”
It’s not a good thing.
It means that your dialogue is too precise, that it features characters saying what they’re thinking or otherwise acting more as an archetype or an agenda rather than a real character.
Your character is not an unfiltered expression of Message, Agenda, or Action.
Your character does not express emotion by talking about that emotion.
The character may be that in part, yes. But the audience should never know that — or, rather, should never feel that you’re talking to them. They want to feel like they’re witnessing something, that they’re looking in a forbidden window. The audience doesn’t want to feel told.
Look at your dialogue. Is it on-the-nose?
Example: if one character hates another, does he tell him that he hates him, how much, and why?
If someone is angry, do they say, “I am angry,” and then list the reasons why?
Do they tell a loved one how much and why they love them?
Does an ecoterrorist spout his ecoterror message like it’s out of a goddamn pamphlet?
In real life, maybe.
In fiction, don’t do that.
They shouldn’t say what they feel. They shouldn’t say what they’re doing all the time, or why, or how. Dialogue is a cipher, a code, a mystery, and the variables presented there speak to the character. Let the reader do a little detective work both in her head and in her gut. And this leads me to…
What Don’t They Say?
I’m boldly stealing from something one of the advisors said, and it’s this: an uncomfortable family dinner is not always uncomfortable because everyone sitting there is mouthing off about their feelings. Maybe in reality it is, but ultimately, what’s most uncomfortable lies in what they don’t say. The discomfort lies in cold stares and passive-aggressive statements. It’s how someone suddenly says something nasty about the mashed potatoes. It’s comments under-the-breath. It’s facial tics and gestures.
Sometimes, dialogue is about what characters aren’t saying at all. Sounds weird. Doesn’t stop it from being true.
Ever been in a fight with a significant other? It’s a battle of the unspoken. “Something wrong?” “I’m fine.” Those two words have cursed relationships for glacial epochs; even the mammoths feared them. Has a two-word phrase ever meant so much more? Could two words ever be more of a lie? “I’m fine” means that person is anything but fine. Those two words conceal a thousand other unspoken words. That’s the truth of dialogue.
Characters hold back. They lie — outwardly, and to themselves. They say things they don’t mean without intending to. They mix truths in with fictions. All of these things offer tension and uncertainty. They are transgressions spoken and unspoken, and out of such transgressions we get conflict. And conflict is the food that feeds the reader.
Authenticity Versus Reality
You are striving for authenticity in your dialogue.
You are not aiming for reality.
Ever see Michael Mann’s Public Enemies? (Originally mistyped as “pubic enemies.”) I haven’t, but I know why a lot of people didn’t like it. I get it. I’ve got the secret. See, Mann wanted to tell the story of John Dillinger in a real way. He used digital video and aimed for an unpretentious look at the times without all that maudlin posturing or grandstanding you find in period piece films. Great idea, but here’s why that doesn’t work: the audience had a perception of the past that is largely filtered through that maudlin posturing and grandstanding. We look back and we see the sweeping marquees and the canyon-like streets and the overwrought dialogue. Period pieces have a certain style, and that style is what we’ve come to expect.
It’s authentic. “Authentic” does not imply true or factual. If the world becomes convinced that wine made from grapes of the Bordeaux region of France tastes like Welch’s grape juice, it doesn’t matter if that’s accurate. It matters that it’s not authentic. Someone will sniff their glass and say, “It doesn’t smell of concord grape,” and put it down, all snooty-like. Authenticity is a matter of perception. Reality is not.
It’s why “But this really happened!” is never ever a justification for your story. Truth is stranger than fiction, which means you can’t automatically use truth, because it can be too strange. It feels real, but it doesn’t feel authentic, and so nobody believes it in the story.
Now, circling back to dialogue.
People speak in certain ways. You can learn a lot by listening to people talking.
But do not attempt to emulate it out of the gate (er, “out of the mouth?”). You’ll look like an asshole.
Reading the reality of how people speak is not easy on the eyes. Further, it isn’t authentic, even if it is factual. People say “um” and “like” and they misspeak and interrupt each other and sometimes don’t say very much at all. You can get away with a little bit of that in your fiction, but in my mind, you should only use it for flavor. A dash here, a pinch there. That’s not to say you’re removing all character and intonation from the words. Not at all. What you’re doing is attempting to distill real conversation into an essence. Squeeze it out. That essence is the authenticity, the perception, the expectation.
You’re using the juice of the lemon, not the whole lemon.
By the way, this is also why local color is hard to use. It’s not impossible, but once more, I say leave it to flavor. If it saturates your dialogue, it becomes hard to read. Dialogue should flow unbidden, like an undammed river, or a stream of urine unfettered by urinary tract disorders. Local color can be the equivalent of kidney stones.
Conclusion?
Conclusion is, I’ve gone on too long.
I ask you: comments, questions, complaints, prayer requests, death threats?
Anything to add?
Maybekindasorta?
Posted in: The Ramble
Tags: Advice You Should Probably Ignore, Stuff About Writing
February 7th, 2010 / 10 Comments » / by Chuck
That’s a really weird blog post title, isn’t it? No, this is not the blog post where I finally transition into becoming a woman. (Fun Fact: had I been born a girl, I would’ve been named “Charlene.”)
Rather, this is a post where I exhort you to watch…
MTV.
I know. I know. Just push past it. For now, just nod and smile for me, okay? I don’t need the twisted frowns, the raised eyebrows, the “jerk-off” motions performed by mocking hands. Stop sniggering. Stop it right now.
I’m not suggesting you plant your breadbox down in front of MTV for 12 hours and absorb whatever programming shines into your dull, vacant eyes. I get it. I’m not MTV’s target audience anymore. I was once, but no longer. I have no interest in Jersey Shore (though I did inadvertently convince Tyger Williams that I was a writer for that show), I used to watch Real World when it seemed filled with semi-real people as opposed to drunken 18-year-old drama-monkeys, and I would prefer that the show Teen Mom be renamed Meteor Strike (though, full disclosure, my wife loves this show).
That brings us to My Life As Liz.
I think…
I think I love this show.
At least, I like it. A lot. Maybe I “like-like” it.
Maybe it’s not a great show. Maybe I’m grading on a curve, like a starving man who eats at Sizzler and finds it a religious experience. I dunno. But I watched it, and I found myself taken in by its charms and by its earnestness. It’s a “scripted reality” show in roughly the same territory as The Hills or… Lacuna Bitch or Vagooner Beach or whatever those shows are (ever watch one? It’s almost like watching an art installation or abstract film, but not in a good way). Here, though, instead of taking handful of vapid rich kids in a vapid rich area of the city, it goes with middle-class high school kids in the middle of East Fucking Nowhere, Texas. Further, our protagonist, the titular Liz, is a girl who did not so much fall from social grace but pushed herself to fall. She once belonged to the empty-headed blonde hotties, but like SkyNet, she became self-aware.
At present, that’s the show. It’s her senior year, she’s realized that she’s different from anyone else, she’s embraced it, and life as a result is effectively a little slice of high school hell. She’s surrounded by cheerleaders and conservative Christians and her gaggle of doofy geek buddies (who gamble with comic books instead of money), and she’s clearly trying to navigate these strange waters until she can reach the other side of the shore (i.e. “end of high school”). Mind you, the “reality” part of this show is tenuous, as best — Liz Lee plays herself, and this is her interpretation of her senior year, but that year has come and gone. It’s not like they filmed it as it happened.
What do I like about it? It’s funny, for one. It feels sharp without being sharply written. Does that sound strange? What I mean is, a Kevin Smith film is sharply written, and it wears that on its sleeve. People don’t really talk like that. Buffy was the same way. Or Gilmore Girls. I love all those things, but the writing sometimes came off as a little insincere, because it’s so tightly wound. Here, the writing feels like the way funny teenagers talk; not always spot-on, but natural, and still with that occasional slash of razor-wit.
Two, I like the story here. I can’t help but embrace the irony that MTV has become the guardian of social norms as opposed to the guardian of freaks and miscreants (which, in some way, it once was), but here they have a show where the main character would probably never ever watch MTV, ever. She’s probably think it was bullshit. She represents what MTV used to look like, maybe, and the girls she considers her nemeses are far more in line with the girls of The Hills and such.
Three, it’s like Daria and My So-Called Life had a baby. Except with a kind of “low-budget indie comedy” vibe.
Four, I dig the protagonist. She’s cute, funny, imperfect, quirky (maybe too quirky?). I probably would’ve wanted to date her in high school or college.
Fifth, the music the music the music. Once again, maybe I’m like the starving dude in the desert, but Sweet Molly McGoggins, the music is great. Whodathunkit? Music. On MTV. The show has near-constant music playing, and at least half-the-time puts a little bar at the bottom of the screen to tell you what the song is, by whom, and on what album it lives. Given that over the course of the first two episodes I heard at least seven songs from my iTunes playlist, that tells me it’s got a beat to which I can dance. Because MTV kindly puts the show’s music list online, I can peruse it. In fact, it allowed me to discover new music. I’m always looking for solid ways of music discovery, and now I have a new source. (For instance, before I did not know the joy of The Bird And The Bee. Now, I do.)
So, yeah. On this, the day of the Manliest Contest, the Super Bowl (which would be much more interesting were it the Supernatural Bowl, y’know, like instead of Saints Versus Colts, it’s Catholic Saints Versus Pagan Vampires or something), I come to you as a 30-something dude and recommend to you an MTV show about a pixie-like teen girl. That’s just how I do.
Normally, you can check out full My Life As Liz episodes on the web, but they seem to be gone until February 18th. I checked ‘em out On Demand, so, try that.
Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.
Yet.
Posted in: The Ramble
Tags: Boob Tubery, The Pop Culture Vulture
February 6th, 2010 / 10 Comments » / by Chuck
Rewind two hours to five o’clock in the morning.
My eyes bolt open.
It’s dark. I can hear the whisper of snow outside.
And my brain starts telling me things.
No, no, not weird, vile things (“Assassinate the postal clerk, take a shit in the salad bar at the local diner, run naked in the blizzard to purify your Wendigo soul”) — creative things. Things about a project. Story stuff.
See, right now, we’re gritting our teeth and buckling down and trying to get our uber-revised film script for HiM up and running. To do that, we first have to pore through the notes we brought home from the Screenwriters Lab. We go through them, item by item, and dissect each idea and see if the core of each note is really what we want.
Most are, thankfully, but what that means is that we’re going to be incorporating a lot of new elements and really amping up some old elements to make them Triple Awesome.
Thus, I have a head full of story craziness.
Well, at five o’clock in the morning, my brain decided to start talking to me in the dark. “Hey. Hey! Psst. I want to talk about some things. Do I have some shit for you, buddy! This is good, this is real good. In this scene, the scene in the first act, I think you should –”
I won’t spoil it.
Point is, it gave me the work-through for a few niggling ideas that had been troubling me. And it further identified another question, a question of logic and cinematic awesomeness (that question, more directly, is “How do we make this work so it’s both cool-looking and makes sense in the context of our story and storyworld?”).
What I’ve done in the past is, when my brain starts talking to me, I nod, and I smile, and I pat the brain on his — erm, head? That’s weird — and I go back to sleep.
That is the wrong move.
It’s a bad call, Ripley. A bad call.
Much as it sucks, much as you want sleep, what you do is wake the fuck up. You wake up and you go to the computer and you write that shit down.
And that’s what I did, and that’s why this morning I saw… well, not a sunrise, but rather the slow illumination of the blizzard outside my window, from black to gray to white.
Don’t think you can’t help your brain along. You can actually invoke this phenomenon. The day and night before, literally load your brain with some questions about your creative endeavor that’s troubling you. It’s like a slow-cooker. Stick it in there, turn on your unconscious mind, and walk away. Just walk away. Stop thinking about it, and go to bed.
Your brain will heat those ideas up. It’ll break down the connective tissue and soften the whole problem up so it pulls apart with a fork.
Of course, you might awaken at five o’clock in the morning with fork-tender thought-meats, and now you have to do something with it before the food spoils. But that is what I like to think of as a “good problem to have.”
Now, now I need coffee.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled Snowpocalypse, Snowmagaddon, the Reveblizzation of St. John.
Posted in: The Ramble
Tags: Advice You Should Probably Ignore, Stuff About Writing
February 5th, 2010 / 37 Comments » / by Chuck
I didn’t always have a beard, you know.
Once, I was a baby-faced lad, as clumsy and innocent as a newly-birthed fawn using her afterbirth as a pillow. I’d wake up in the morning, the sun shining on my bare and rosy cheeks (the cheeks on my face, dirty bird, my face), and I’d get up and stumble around, and everything was newly-minted, everything was untouched and untarnished.
Then I grew up a little bit. I went to college. I went to college to bathe in lofty, adult-minded topics like art history or politics or drinking Yukon Jack and taking a nap on the concrete outside my dorm.
And so, I grew what is often mislabeled a “goatee.”
But that was not what lived on my face. A goatee — named so because it is a facial style handed down by Pan, the Randy Goat Lord — is merely the tuft of hair on one’s chin. Ah, but a Van Dyke beard — named after Dick Van Dyke, also a Randy Goat Lord — features a mustache and a goatee, often connected by what one might term “connectigazoinks.” They are bound by those fur bridges, bridges that link the nascent power of the mustache with the secret wisdom of the goatee. Tom Selleck plus Dobie Gillis Maynard G. Krebs. Those threads of hair are like the flux capicator of one’s face. Thrumming with energy.
And then, I left college, my Van Dyke beard full of new knowledge (and smelling still of Irish whiskey), and I entered the world.
The beard — the full beard — took me by surprise.
It just happened. I fell asleep, and when I awoke I found it had begun. A slow-growing garden. It was all Rip Van Winkle and shit. Time had passed. I felt the shoots and leaves of man-wool nesting upon my cheeks and jaw and neck, and I felt that familiar tingle in my hands and fingers. So I went ahead and took my anti-psychotic medication, and the tingling (which eventually tells me to strangle people in a Red Ryder wagon) went away, but I still felt the ancient power of the beard growing upon the soil and dirt of my soulface.
Now, I am bearded.
Now, I have power.
I want to pass this knowledge along to you.
The Many Flavors Of Beard
You’re thinking — “Oh! He’s going to tell us now about the many types of facial hair you can grow, from the Balbo to the Hulihee, from the two-pronged French Fork or the easily-gripped a la Souvarov.”
What? No. That’s not what I’m going to tell you. Shut up. I’m here to pass along secret shit. Imagine that I’m whispering. Imagine that I want to tell you something that only I know — do you think I’d just ramble off stuff you can already find on the goddamn Internet? That’s not rewarding. “Psst, hey! Hey, c’mere. Hunker down. Put your ear close to my mouth. Now let me whisper to you the ancient wisdom of the starting line-up of the 2008 Minnesota Twins.”
No, the sublime truth I’m about to fire into your eyes is that every beard has its own power.
You have to find yours.
Mine actually has three powers, and these three powers have been labeled by the gods as:
The Boon Of Language Stolen From The Heavens, a mystic power that allows me to communicate to you, the syphilitic rabble, with the uttermost precision. Many writers, professors, and cult leaders have this beard for just such a reason.
The Mighty Fires of Rage Burn Bright On One’s Fulgent Face, wherein I am provided a deep well of swollen rage that I can draw up into the threads of my beard and direct at foes with berserker-type effects. Vikings had that shit. It allowed them to… I dunno, punch bears to death and throw boats across oceans.
And finally, +3 Against Goblins.
Which explains itself, if you ask me. I haven’t had much cause for this one. I’ve only been attacked by goblins twice, but the beard really helped. The goblin war-axes fell against my beard like paper planes crashing into a hurricane fan — the beard tore that shit up. I guess the goblins have a rich oral history, and now my beard has entered into their mythic cycle (The Three Journeys of Cockblister The Bard is one such tale, but that’s a blog post for another day). So, the goblins don’t come after me anymore, though one day I suspect they’ll rally some new goblin hero to come get up in my grill, but my beard will just rape that poor goblin to death. I know it, you know it, and the goblins know it. But goblins are basically fucking idiots. They’re always eating mud and putting their pants on backward and sticking rocks and other debris up their asses.
My point is, nobody’s going to tell you what your beard’s secret power is. You have to discover that for yourself. You must commune with the beard. You just have to try shit out, see what works. Y’know, it’s like — jump in front of a truck. Did your beard stop the truck? Then that’s one of your new occult powers.
Oh, and the more beard you have, the more your power grows. You got mutton chops? Maybe you have +1 Against Unicorns or something. But you get a full-bore beard that hangs a few inches down, and you might be able to incinerate unicorns just by looking at ‘em. That’s some shit, right there.
And yes, this means that I will one day be an Old Man With Huge White Beard. That’s my dream. I want a beard that will hold up my pants like suspenders, that I can braid into my pubes. That’s some ancient barbarian gris-gris, dude. That’s like, pshoo. Huge.
Beards Are Like Swiss Army Knives For Your Face
Beards all have a generic power-set, too. Yes, each beard has its own voodoo, but beards are awesome in other ways.
For instance, every beard is a flavor savor. Right? You know what I’m saying. You’re eating some pea soup, and that soup is all up in your ’stache and goat. You’re not done with that until you’re done with it — you can keep sucking those facial hairs for flavor. In fact, you find yourself in the wilderness, you can use that for sustenance.
What’s really great is, you can actually make whole new recipes. You eat like, pea soup, some mashed potatoes, you drink some beer — that’s all in your beard. It’s mixing together, stirred around by the sentient cilia that comprise your face-coat. Ooh, even better, you don’t eat it right away. You let it sit. You let it hang there, glommed up in your beard for like, two, three weeks. You add new food to it periodically — lobster bisque, Cheeto dust, bacon fat, broccoli tips, hot chocolate, whatever. Then it ferments. The bacteria that lives in your beard (don’t worry, it’s helpful bacteria, like the stuff that colonized your gutty-works) will break all that down.
Basically, it makes a whole new food. I call it “beard cheese,” though the fruitier amongst us might refer to it as “facial Camembert.”
Let’s see. What else is a beard good for?
Oh! Temperature control. You might think, “Shit, a beard’s gotta be great in the winter to insulate your face from Jack Frost trying to sodomize your mouth, but I bet it’s a bitch in the summer.” Okay, first, yes. Yes, it is very good at keeping your face warm. But by some mystical scientific property, it also keeps your face cool in the summer. The beard maybe vents cool air? I don’t really know how it works and I don’t much care. I just categorize it as “another awesome beard-driven miracle.”
Finally, your beard can serve as a third hand. If the beard is long enough — and dirty enough — you can manipulate its many threads the way you might kink up a pipe cleaner or framing wire. You can shape the beard, which means you can use it like an additional hand. You can stick your keys there; the beard will hold them. Coffee mug in one hand, revolver in the other, and in the beard, a piece of pizza or a paperback romance novel. Actually, if you get a really good beard going, you can hold all kinds of shit in there — keys, cell phone, multi-tool, digital camera, loose change, a trained groomer squirrel.
Your Beard Must Be Maintained, Dummy
Don’t think you can get away with not grooming that beard, though. You have to treat the beard like you would treat a respected elder or a new lover — gently and with respect.
So, you need some grooming tips. I gotcher grooming tips right here.
First, the beard will resist trimming. All beards do. Beards don’t want to be cut down. These are independent creatures that have claimed your face. You have a relationship with this ancient being, and so trimming the beard runs the risk of you angering the facial symbiote. Obviously, the easy answer is, don’t trim your beard. But I get it. You live in society just like me. You wander into a bank and try to get a loan with some squirming facial nest that goes down to your knees and tries to choke the loan officer — well, c’mon. You’re going to be escorted from the building, and then your build will tear the head off that security guard, and next thing you know you and the beard have taken hostages and someone’s asking you about your demands.
So, to properly engage your beard for trimming, you must pray to the beard. There’s no “one prayer” that does it. Make up your own. It’s like wedding vows (but let’s be serious, this is way more important than any foolish human marriage). You don’t need to be all loud about it. Just whisper. The beard can hear you. It’s right there. Be cool about it. Offer it things. Give it glory and honor. Sing paeans of praise to its ancient heritage. Stroke it. Place yourself as subservient to it. Give it powerful names, like, “My Facial Father,” or maybe “El Beardo The Magnanimous.” Once in a while, sacrifice something to it. Nothing big — just a goldfish or a whistle pig or whatever, and then let the beard play in the blood for a little while (you can even nap while this happens, just dip the chin-hairs into the sacrifice and snooze for fifteen minutes; for the beard, that’s like playground meets Chinese buffet).
Now, when it comes time to consider the tools of the trimming, don’t be fucking dumb. Okay? A razor? Really? Might as well hack at your face with a pair of rusty garden shears. Stop that. You’re a grown-up. Put the razor down, you clumsy jackape.
No, instead you might choose the proper tools. Fire is good. Fire is pure. It’s the great consumer. The eldritch beard-gods respect fire. Lasers, too. They respect lasers, because lasers are basically space fire. You could also use a beard-eating creature to graze on your face like sheep? I don’t know what creatures eat beards, though. Do dogs eat beards? Maybe. Maybe if you got a really tiny dog — like, a toy breed of a toy breed of a toy breed — and you let him graze on your face, that might work.
Finally, you have to entertain your beard. This is pretty easy most times. Beards just like to chill out. A chilled-out beard is a smooth, happy beard. None of that kinked-up dry-skin shit. Smooth, like soul butter.
My beard likes to watch TV. Gilmore Girls, actually. Pro-tip from me to you.
Beards Are Awesome, And So Awesome People Have Beards
You know who have beards?
God and the Devil (the Devil is pictured at left).
Hell, all the really awesome gods and goddesses had beards. Zeus? Yep. Jesus? Bingo. Quetzlcoatl? You bet. Hell, even Athena had a beard. (And that’s a significant point: women can have beards, as I’ve noted in the past. They’re free to engage in intense hormonal treatments, but really, they can cut off some other person’s beard and wear it as their own, or they can just have their Male Slave — aka “husband” or “boyfriend” — grow one, which allows them to tap into the beard power. JR Blackwell knows the score about women and beards.)
Really, truly awesome beards are not hard to come by. Abe Lincoln? Santa Claus? Chuck Norris? Confucius? Grizzly Adams? The list goes on and on and on. And on.
I’m not saying that people without beards are not awesome.
Wait, y’know what? Yes. Yes I am. I’m willing to draw that line. Don’t have a beard? Are you one of those poor bastards who can grow naught but a velvety patch like the pelt of a fuzzy peach? Is your beard like the arm-hair on a prepubescent boy? Then you’re just not awesome. You may never be awesome. That’s okay. The world needs janitors.
Now, that does lead us to what I call the Osama Bin Laden problem.
Osama rocks a beard.
And Osama is a dick.
Well, duh. Beards can be used for evil. I already mentioned “the Devil” (pictured). You can’t deny that Osama has power, though, and that power is in part due to his crazy cave beard. In fact, let me offer a tip to Special Forces: you kill the beard, you kill the man. This is Samson-shit. You cut that beard off, and you won’t even have to kill Bin Laden. His people will do it for you. They’ll stone him to death. They’ll pee in his mouth, for his mouth will be unprotected by the beard.
Get that on a t-shirt: you kill the beard, you kill the man.
Word.
And In Conclusion
Repeat after me:
Beards are fucking cool as shit.
So — now what?
Get yourself a bad-ass beard. That’s what. Durrr.
I didn’t even crack the ice on all the awesome things a beard can do — this was just a primer. Can your beard store magical spells? Can it be used to summon mythical creatures to fight by your side? Can it store data, like a facial hard drive? I don’t know. But I bet it can. A beard can do anything, and those who have beards can by proxy also do anything. That’s the way of the world.
That’s universal law, hombre.
Beards.
Fuck yeah.
Posted in: The Ramble
Tags: Ha Ha Ha, Rants and Ramblings
February 4th, 2010 / 23 Comments » / by Chuck
Clickety-clack, bluh-boom!
Ahem. Or something.
What I’m trying to say is, hey, look, it’s another edition of that thing where I paint the walls with the brains of many topics, and see what pieces of information stick.
I do it every week, c’mon. You knew it was coming.
Though it’s really starting to smell in here. All these flies. Phew.
Slowly, I Gain Power
See that photo? Right there? C’mon. Don’t make me point. The one with the little baby mantis buglets. Right.
Well, if you click here you’ll see a book, and that book is called The Field Guide To Insects, Explore The Cloud Forests, and it represents my first official photo credit. A while back, the author said, “Hey, I’m doing this book about insects, and if you let me put this photo in it, I’ll give you a bunch of copies of the book,” and I was like, “Sure, whatever,” and I get emails like that all the time and they never really manifest into anything.
Except, boom. I got a box the other day, and in it sat three copies of what is genuinely a holy-fucking-shit beautiful book. It’s all pop-up and thick pages and lovely book odor. You can open these little pockets and build your own paper insects. It’s rad as fuck.
So, I’m happy to be in that book.
Thanks to the author, Paul Beck.
Speaking Of Awesome Power
I’m warning you.
I’m totally going to do a blog post about my beard.
Beards are fucking powerful, and I want to instruct you on the ways of harnessing your beard to be successful. And don’t think I’m talking just to the men. Oh, no. Ladies, you can steal power from the beards of your lovers, or you can wear killer fake beards, or you can grow your own with proper application of intense hormone therapy. Or, I mean, you just might be Italian.
Boom! Snap! Sick burn on the Italian ladies.
Sorry. Don’t get mad.
Breathe easy.
Try to hurt me, and my beard will protect me.
Anyway. More on Beard Power soon.
Work It, Yeah, Nnnngh, Work It In And Out
Work is equal parts “awesome” and “terrifying” right now.
It’s awesome because I feel well-placed for future awesomeness. Even if one out of the three things I have cooking finishes up and is launched into the world, I’m good. Novel is getting shopped. TV show is in the “pilot scripting” phase. Film script is looking good. The other elements on that are jostling for position.
Problem is, I don’t have any fresh projects that will pay me right away. Or even soonish. I just got paid for a project, and I’ve a couple payments still lining up. I don’t want this year to become the “feast or famine” year, though.
So, again goes the clarion call:
I need work.
You need something written, you contact me.
Send up a flare. Shoom!
Slap me in the face. Crack!
Fire a tranq dart in the meat of my cheek. Thwip!
Something.
Whatchoo got, Internets?
Chicken Borbey, The Time-Traveling Meal
So, I went ahead and made another of those recipes out of that 1950s cookbook (Bucks Cooks: The Artists’ County, A Gourmet’s Guide To Estimable Comestibles, with Pictures).
I made a little something called “Chicken Borbey.”
I can find no mention of this anywhere else on the Internet, which is rare. It’s like I found one of the Internet’s blind spots. I could climb into that dark pocket and live there, unseen by the rest of society. I found a loophole. A cubby hole. I own you, Intertubes. I own your shit.
Anyway.
This, then, is Chicken Borbey:
3 cups cooked and chopped chicken, butter, 4 TBsp chopped mushrooms, 8 TBsp cream, one slice of ham per portion, paprika, 3 oz. sherry, and toast.
Basically, you cook the chicken, mushrooms and cream together.
Then in a separate pan you sear the ham (which you sprinkle with paprika) on both sides, and put in the sherry, and let it reduce into a thick sauce that covers the ham.
Then you mix any remaining “sauce” with the chicken conglomeration, and toss in a pad of butter.
I had to change a couple things. I put in salt and pepper because… well, you need to season your food, people. I didn’t have sherry, so I used dry vermouth. The toast I used (not actually a part of the ingredient list in the book, but still mentioned in the prep) was English Toasting Bread. I’d never heard of such a thing, but it tastes unmercifully fucking delicious. It’s like soft pizza dough formed into a bread loaf. Procured from Fresh Market, if you care.
Anyway, the recipe looked pretty dismal on the plate, but I must say, it did taste pretty spectacular.
The one real issue? It’s a bitch to eat. Hard to cut, hard to pick up in your hands, just meh when it comes to the recipe’s construction. Were I to try this again, I might actually do it as a whore-derve appetizer thing. Little crostinis with little slices of ham and a dollop of the chicken and mushroom mixture. One bite. Chomp. Num.
Dear Haters, New Rule
Hey, Lost haters. I see you over there. Stinking up the place.
New rule: you get cranky about the shit I like here in my space, I’m going to walk into your house, point at the things you have there, and tell you how much I hate them. Painting on the wall? DVD on the rack? Wife? Child? I’m going to say, “I hate this,” or perhaps, “This sucks.”
And then I’m going to take a crap in your garbage disposal. Which sounds harmless, because it’s a garbage disposal. But go ahead. Turn it on. I dare you. Turn it on.
Don’t be rude. I’ll eat a lot of fiber. Prunes and what-not. I will. I’ll do it.
What I’m saying is, be a fountain, not a drain. Or I’ll shit in your sink.
Oh, and why is there a picture of a cymbal monkey?
…
Okay, you got me, I really dunno.
I just figure, hey, monkey with cymbals! He’ll back me up.
Ain’t that right, little guy?
Ook-ook, indeed.
(Oh, and winky smiley-face and all that, lest anyone think I’m actually going to come and void my bowels somewhere in your kitchen.)
Linkity-Links, Says The Sphinx
No, I don’t know what that means. You shut up.
Anyway. I got a ton of shit for you to look at, so, y’know, go look at it.
- Something about this website — The Crying Wife — makes me upset and uncomfortable, even as I laugh a little. It’s just… well. Just go there.
- Every week, I think I find a new Best Thing On The Goddamn Internet, and this week is no different. I give unto you: AXE COP. This just makes me happy to read it. Basic gist: five-year-old kid narrates a story, and his 29-year-old — brother? Father? I dunno — draws it. It’s awesome. Axe Cop. Fuck yeah. (My only complaint is I have a hard time navigating the site.)
- Such elegance in story-building. John August. Ten things to do with index cards. Yes.
- Godin asks: you a hunter, or are you a farmer?
- I never linked to this because I was away, but it’s time to change that: Video Games and Boobs. Brilliant because it features talking goddamn eggplants. Eggplants. Rick Carroll has a diseased brain, and you should all have a taste before he finally succumbs to whatever mind parasite is eating his thoughts.
- Will Hindmarch’s Escapist article is up: Curiosity Killed the NPC. I love this, because I think it takes a serious and honest look at how we actually feel about the protagonists we play, and about the choices “we” make as that character. I don’t necessarily believe that all game designers are really clued into this. Will is, though.
- The Lost writers room before the finale, from 5 second films.
- Doyce talks about diving back into your work after a break. Useful stuff — go read. He also has the best image over there, which involves snakes, tigers, and a train.
- A reminder that I still rock the Tumblr page, and if you go there, you will see a particularly bad-ass trailer for Bioshock 2. There you’ll also find the Banksy image (or one of ‘em) from Park City (Sundance) when I was there.
Posted in: The Ramble
Tags: Painting With Shotguns, The Pop Culture Vulture
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