Galleries
Sci Fi Meets Romance
If I were to break out my Clever Movie Critic’s Big Book of Witticisms, I would use it to describe “The Adjustment Bureau” as “The Matrix: A Love Story,” leave the review at that and spend the rest of the day in Margaritaville.
'Rango' A Multifaceted Marvel
I guess the best way to describe “Rango” is to imagine taking four-parts Spaghetti Western, one-part “The Lion King,” two-parts “Chinatown” and three-parts “Blazing Saddles”; dumping it all in a blender and pressing “puree.”
Exhausted From Holding It In
He was going to, but as he laid his hand on the coffin edge the dog came out of the house and then the door slammed shut. On the front porch John Johnson stood with his pistol.
Discipline And Words
A man I trust very much said to me recently that I can let everything else I do be completely undisciplined, so long as I practice discipline as a writer. Instead, I fulfill obligations.
Fluid Movements
Wolves were after the girl. She ran and reached the tree at the end of the yard that held a swing she’d constructed out of a flexible sheet of red plastic and two dirty white lengths of rope.
Backstory: Feb. 10
It is excruciatingly hard to write a story. That’s true for most of us, anyway.
Covert Operations
I used to sneak out of my mother’s house, catch the 81 bus with the 4 a.m. workers and the homeless slouchers, transfer downtown on an empty corner near City Hall, and take the Number Four to my boyfriend’s stop in Silverlake.
Elephant-Sized Story In A Peanut Shell
Last week I typed in X, a punk band I used to listen to when I was a teenager. A few songs into the stream came “The World’s a Mess It’s In My Kiss.”
Chance And Howling At The Red Sky
After college, I worked for a rogue Houston branch of the recently investigated and presidency-threatening activist group ACORN. We solicited monetary commitments from low-income residents with a script about how we would organize neighbors to fight the city to tear down abandoned buildings, clear boulevards of prostitutes and round up packs of stray dogs.
Backstory: Under Pressure
“Don’t stint,” my mother always said. She said it when she spread the last bit of butter on the last slice of bread, then gave it to me for breakfast. “Don’t stint. Something will turn up by suppertime. Take a big bite and enjoy now.”
