a yearlong diary in three-line poems by Jeff Rogers, day 200

Good Dog, Deserving

Red knew one command: sit. Kimberley taught him, we didn’t. We’d ask him to sit
To get harnassed for trips to the park. Whenever he wanted something he would
Make sure you were watching then quickly sit, so you knew he was a good dog, deserving.

Okay, loving this Gorillaz video. Not only do we have guest star from Bruce Willis, but Mos Def and Bobby Womack are also featured in the song, FTW. [Topless Robot]

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a blogumn by Robin Rosenzweig

As I continue to plan my upcoming nuptials, I’m getting to that point where anything and everything wedding-related that I see interests me. I already mentioned my obsession with Say Yes to the Dress in a previous blog. And that’s all well and good, but now I may have sunk to a new low. Despite having never watched an episode of the Jason Mesnick season of The Bachelor, I still felt an overwhelming need to see The Bachelor: Jason and Molly’s Wedding (and insisted that my fiancé watch it with me…I’m terrible).

For the uninitiated or pop culture deficient, two seasons ago on The Bachelor – in the most shocking conclusion yet – Jason Mesnick gave his final rose to Melissa Rycroft but then called backsies on After the Final Rose and dumped her on TV so he could get together with runner up Melissa Mulaney. A year and a half later, they got married – becoming only the second couple in 14 seasons of The Bachelor and 5 seasons of The Bachelorette to tie the knot.

Now, as a bride-to-be myself, I’m not really watching this because I’m all sentimental about love and marriage and junk. I’m watching to see (and be jealous of) the insane amount of free stuff that is lavished upon this couple simply because they are making an attempt to show that The Bachelor franchise is successful once in a blue moon. To the best of my memory, I saw Jason and Molly receive: free celebrity wedding planning and design, hair by Ken Paves (Jessica Simpson’s hair stylist) and a celeb makeup artist, a custom dress by Monique Lhuillier (and assistance from Lhuillier herself), free shoes for the entire bridal party, a friggin’ gift bag suite for the bridal party which included free vacations for everyone, and a lavish outdoor location that for the enjoyment of the viewing audience at the very least, was completely rained out. In return, they apparently had to put up with various Bachelor alumni that they may or may not know attending the wedding, and random interruptions during the ceremony by Bachelor host, Chris Harrison, one of which involved him throwing to a commercial break. Did I actually see them take a TV time out just before the vows?

The fiancé and I thoroughly enjoyed mocking the cheesy elements of this excruciatingly long two hour special edition of The Bachelor (not to be confused with the excruciatingly long regular editions of The Bachelor that we have been watching week after week). But I’m not going to lie – when they revealed that ridiculous gift bag suite, we both agreed that we blew it and should have gone on The Bachelor so that ABC could pay for our wedding, too. Silly us, meeting in the real world and not on TV!

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So according to my outline, I’m halfway through my latest novel. And so if this entry seems to lack it’s usual up-with-writingness, that’s because I always fall a little in hate with my books when they get to this point.

Photo Credit: Rusty Boxcars

The whole thing feels adrift and though I keep on reassuring myself that everything (or at least most things) can and will be fixed in the minimum four rewrites that I do of every book I take on these days, it seems that the demons get louder the closer I get to any goal. And this being my second women’s fiction novel, they seem to be particularly obnoxious.

You only have one book in you! You’re trying to do too much. You’re not doing enough. This is derivative. This is too different. Why can’t you write better? Doesn’t it bother you that you totally suck at the only thing you’re any good at?

Seriously, if a man treated me like my demons treat me, I would dump him … and get a restraining order. And quite frankly, I wonder how other writers get through this bit.

I know how I get through it — basically I feel like I have no other choice due to being talented at absolutely nothing else. You know how some writers have all sort of other talents? Well, I’m not one of those writers. It literally feels like I’m slogging through a humid Florida swamp and if I want to make it out alive, I just have to keep on going OR I WILL DIE.

Also, weirdly enough, writing is the only thing that takes my mind off the fear of not being a good writer.

Funny coincidence, I’m also halfway to my New Year’s Resolution of losing forty pounds, and it’s the exact same thing, except exercising is the only thing that quiets those demons.

It’s almost like you know you’re doing something right, when the voices in your head start insisting that your doing everything wrong. Hmm…

Well in that case, welcome back demons!

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Ernessa T. Carter is the author of the novel, 32 CANDLES, which will be released by HarperCollins/Amistad on June 22, 2010. Pre-order your copy on Amazon here.

Photo Credit: Rusty Boxcars

Hmm, well, Jeff from “Three Line Lunch” guessed correctly that yesterday’s lyric was from “I Am Woman (Hear Me Roar)” by Helen Reddy, and now we’re tied going into Soundtrack Wednesday.

This is my favorite country movie title song of all time, and it’s scary (and sad) how accurate it still is today.

They let you dream
Just to watch ‘em shatter

Guesses in the comments and Helen Reddy with a song that never fails to get me all revved up to do big things:

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Proof of Nerd ID by Charles Cron

“AND THE WINNER IS…” EDITION

Each Oscar statuette is hand crafted and takes 12 people 20 hours to complete; if a statuette does not meet strict quality guidelines it is immediately cut in half and melted down.

Photo Credit: Shaun Wong

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an occasional blogumn about an assortment of things by Ryan Dixon

Here’s a tip for any theatre-centric PhD candidate desperately looking for a thesis topic: write your dissertation on the history of sequels to Broadway musicals. In fact, I’ll make your job even easier and provide you with the research:

• Bring Back Birdie (sequel to Bye Bye Birdie). Opened: March 5, 1981. Total Performances: 4
• The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Public (sequel to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) Opened: May 10, 1994. Total Performances: 16

And that’s it. Two sequels. 20 total performances. Millions of dollars lost.

Well, that was it, until now. This evening, London’s Aldelphi Theatre will play host to the world premiere of Love Never Dies, the sequel to a little chamber musical you might have heard of entitled The Phantom of the Opera.

While normally I would have waited to write about Love Never Dies until it makes its scheduled Broadway debut on November 11, urgent circumstances have forced me to re-consider: after listening to the newly released original cast recording, I’m doubtful that the show will ever even get to Broadway.

Let’s get it out of the way: Love Never Dies is terrible. However, the truly important question is whether Love Never Dies (henceforth known as Phantom 2!) is so terrible that it’s actually good?

And the answer to that question is one big, MOTHERF*CKING YES!

While I expected Phantom 2! to be bad, I was fairly certain it was going to be bad in a tastefully done, dull way (similar to Lloyd Webber’s most recent musical The Woman in White). I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Phantom 2! is stuffed so full with glaring lapses of good taste and divinely rotten cliches that the cast recording resembles nothing less than a “Greatest Hits” collection of the Musical Hall of Shame’s first ballot inductees:

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a yearlong diary in three-line poems by Jeff Rogers, day 199

The Red Magic

Dogs smile. Red had such a winning smile, so purely happy
It made everyone around him happy: people, puppies, kittens, fierce dogs.
And his fur: so soft when people touched him you could see their tension drain away.

… though, I’d definitely have to file this under “too much time on their hands.” [Source: Topless Robot]

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a blogumn by Monique King-Viehland

One of the continuous arguments that we heard against Sarah Palin during the recent presidential campaign was that she was not qualified to be Vice President let alone President.  The real fear being that if something happened to John McCain, Would Palin have effectively run the country.  In fact when asked the question in a 2008 PBS.Org poll, 95% of respondents answered “No.”  Moreover, according to a CNN/Opinion Research poll conducted in October 2009, 71% of respondents “did not think she was qualified to sit in the Oval Office.”

At the end of the day, that is a real issue.  Whoever sits in the “Number 2” chair can end up becoming “Number 1.”  The second string, if you will, needs to be up to the job.  So this begs the question, what were the Democrats thinking when Paterson was selected by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer as his running mate for the Governor’s office in 2006?

I mean don’t get me wrong, Paterson had a strong political heritage and background.

The son of Basil Paterson, who was the first non-white secretary of state of New York, the first African-American vice-chair of the national Democratic Party, the first African-American NYC Deputy Mayor and the first African-American to run for statewide office in New York, Paterson was destined to be a rising star in New York politics.  And he quickly followed in his father’s footsteps.

According to Wikipedia, “in 1985 Paterson won a highly competitive New York (Manhattan) County Democratic party Committee selection process to serve the rest of the term of longtime state Senator Leon Bogues, who had died.  The following year, he won the seat for his first full term, representing the 29th District in the New York State Senate (Harlem) – the same seat occupied by his father.”  And in 2002, “Paterson was elected minority leader of the New York Senate, making him the first non-white legislative leader in New York’s history. In 2004 in Boston, he became the first visually impaired person to address a Democratic National Convention.”

In 2006, according to a New York Times article, Paterson was “respected and popular in the Democratic party, and [was] widely regarded as a smart political tactician who helped Democrats pick up seats in the New York State Senate in the 2002 elections.”

Spitzer and Paterson were elected in November 2006 with 69% of the vote.  And when Spitzer resigned in the wake of a prostitution scandal, Paterson became New York State’s first African-American Governor.

So what happened?

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