I think it's safe to say the show was a success. A big one in fact. Ten shows, seven of them sell-outs, several standing ovations. AND we made back the 2000+ dollars the last show cost the theatre, and then some. (And then a LOT, actually.) Audience polls reflect a 90-95% approval rating. I couldn't have asked for much better. I'm just sad to see it end.

Anything of value I’ve ever achieved or arrived at in my life, I’ve come to it ass-backwards. Thus I took it as a given that, if I ever did achieve professional success, it would probably come the same way. What I didn’t really take into account, though, is that it might sneak up on me so subtly and quietly that I wouldn’t even realize it when it happened.

I’ve been trying for what seems like a hundred years to find success as a writer. I started out amongst a group of friends, aspiring writers one and all, with all of us on more or less even ground. Then, as time passed, I watched two, then three of those friends reach that first great marker of successful authorship, namely, getting published and getting paid for it. That left just me and one other member of our group still struggling, still down in the trenches. There are different degrees of success, naturally; monies have been distributed unevenly amongst the three. Big contracts and smaller ones. The money involved was not the primary indicator of said success. It must be nice, surely, but the true mark of accomplishment was the act of getting their work into print without having to pay some vanity press to print it. (In true publishing, they pay you, not the other way around.) Getting your name on the cover of a book--or your story and name listed as part of a collection of short fiction in a well-known anthology, in the case of one friend--these are the measurers of achievement. These are the trophies, the blue ribbons, the battle scars that say, yes, I have climbed that mountain! I have done it! I am a professional writer! Because, sadly, if you haven’t been published, by a real publisher, you’re not a writer. You’re just a wanna-be.

I’ve been a wanna-be for what seems like a century. I guess I’ve gotten used to it. You can get used to just about anything. A thumbtack stuck in the bottom of your foot, for example. It is never comfortable, but eventually the skin around the wound will calcify and toughen up. You walk with a limp, yes, but you don’t pay so much attention to the tack. It’s just something you’ve learned to live with. I must have gotten pretty used to my own thumbtack. Because, as I mentioned earlier, I didn’t even realize it when success snuck up on me.

I still can’t call myself a writer. But I CAN call myself a playwright.

A Theatre company is performing a play that I wrote. Me. Such is the requirement to call oneself a playwright. I was getting ready for bed the other night when it hit me. Holy shit! I am a playwright! How in the blue hell did that happen?

In the interest of fairness, I technically adapted an existing work for the stage. Frankenstein, for those who care to know. A true classic, though I based my version not so much on Mary Shelley’s brilliant novel as on the very first play ever written which was itself based on said novel. Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption, circa 1826 or so. A decent play for it’s time, but very much of it’s time, and a musical, no less! (This play, presumed lost for years, is in the public domain and can be found online, should anyone want to read it.)

So, okay, I "adapted" the story. Even so, I know how markedly different my version turned out to be, both from Presumption and Ms. Shelley’s novel, and how much of the script for MY Frankenstein is 100% unique (and copyrighted) to myself. Anyone who might read the two former works and then cares to see the latter performed will see the difference for himself. Not that it really matters, anyway. What matters to me is that I know the difference. I know my own work when I hear it. And hearing the lines that I wrote, that were birthed in my own warped brain, spoken onstage by actors, given inflection and nuance, given life, if you will, is a pretty damn sweet thing. After a century of walking around with a thumbtack in the bottom of my ego, it feels DAMN good. Little successes can be awfully sweet when you haven’t had any in a while.

Maybe this blog posting is really no more than me stroking my own ego, a bit of psychological masturbation. I know that no one likes that guy, the one who always goes around tooting his own horn. I don't want to be found guilty of that. Still and all, over the past century I have used this venue to do more than my fair share of bitching and whining, what my friend Kris calls “navel gazing,” over my lack of success and inability to achieve it. So it felt proper for me to then use this same site to strut and crow, just a little bit, over my newfound realization. Indulge me one last time, then, please?

I am a playwright!!!

Now as to whether or not the staged production of my Frankenstein is any good or not, it’s too early to say. I know that I and a large group of very talented people are busting our asses to guarantee that it is. I hope and pray that it is. I’ve dedicated a year of my life to this project and I want it to have been worth it. As Victor Frankenstein says in the script: “…when this task is finally complete, it will be worth all the hard work, all the sacrifices.” God, I hope so. But even at this point, when so much is still yet to be determined, I feel confident that, should the production fly or should it sink, it will not sink because the script is lousy. I do have enough confidence in myself to say that much.

So check it out (scroll down the page a little). My first little sweet taste of success. I’ve created a monster. And I’m damn proud of it.

I really want to believe it has nothing to do with race. I do. But I get a sick little feeling in the pit of my stomach when they show that map on the news, the one of the United States, with all the pro-Obama states in one color and the anti-Obama states in another color. And there's this whole chunk of states, the anti-Obama states, and they're the "Deep South" states. It could just be a coincidence, right? I want to believe that it is. I want to. But I don't.

Would people around here really be so bent out of shape over the health care reform debate if the man behind it didn't have brown skin? Bill Clinton tried to do basically the same thing back in the 90s and I don't remember anybody getting so riled up. Nobody shouted and called Bill Clinton a liar when he addressed Congress on the subject. (A representative from one of those Deep South states did that, by the way.)

I know not everyone who disagrees with the President is a racist. Of course I know that. I have friends who don't like Obama and they're as far from racist as you can get. Still, generally speaking, there's that map. And that cluster of states, all bunched together, like a big, black eye, like an ugly bruise.

I want very much to believe that it's not about race. Unfortunately, my fellow deep southerners aren't doing a whole lot to help convince me.

I Need Your Help

I'm having trouble wading through all the detritus on the Net to find the information I need, so I figured I'd throw it out there, um, here, and see what happens. I know somebody out there has the knowledge I need. Maybe they'll chance upon this site and hook me up.

I need to know how to stage a fake hanging for a play I'm directing. I already know there is some kind of harness that is used, but I don't know what it's called or where to get one. What I want is a very realistic-looking (yet safe) hanging. I'd feel really bad if I accidentally hanged somebody for real. At least if the person in question is a friend, or even an innocent actor type. Granted, there are some criminals out there I wouldn't feel too bad about. I mean, hell, it would be an accident, right?

So, anybody know anything 'bout hangings? Ay?

(And, as an aside, let us be clear. The past tense of "hang" is "hanged." To say a person was "hung" takes on an entirely different meaning.)

I got this off Facebook. It seems the BBC is betting that you, or me, or anybody else, has only read a total of six books off this list. I’m not sure what the criteria was for a book making this list (why only Hamlet of all Shakespeare’s works? And nothing by Bradbury?), but I decided to accept the challenge and count them up. I was very conservative in choosing. I left off books that I’ve only partially read, and books where I know the story from movies or stage plays. For example, I know the story of A Christmas Carol backwards and forwards, but I’ve never actually read the book, so it didn’t make the list. I had to actually read it, cover to cover, for it to count. So how’d I do? TWELVE, bee-yotches! Twice the amount the BBC predicted. And again, I used very conservative criteria. The number would’ve been much higher if I’d been less stringent.

So here’s the list. See how you rate.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma-Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Facory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So every year I give out my own movie awards, right, because most of the time I think the Oscars suck. This year I kinda skipped over it because, after The Dark Knight came out last summer, it was just academic. I saw Slumdog Millionaire and liked it well enough, but there's no way, and I mean no way, it was a better movie than TDK. It's not even close. TDK was the best movie of 2008, period. I felt there was really nothing else that needed saying about it.

However, I realise that I also failed to give out my annual award for worst movie. Usually this is a moot point, because Cabin Fever wins every time. I have stated that it will hold the award for worst movie until--and I hope this never happens--I see a worse one. Well, friends, 2008 was the year it almost happened. I saw a movie almost worse than CF. Thus, belated though it mat be, I dedicate this posting to the (dis)honoring of a truly horrible movie, Funny Games.

Gawd, it was bad. BAD. Lousy, lousy, lousy. And stupid. Did I mention stupid? Oh, was it stupid. And what makes it all even worse, there were some fine actors in this stinker. Tim Roth and Naomi Watts. What in the hell were they thinking? I've scraped better stuff off the bottom of my shoe! This movie was damn near a worse film than Cabin Fever, and that's saying a LOT.

So there ya go, Funny Games. Better late than never, ay? The BOB Award for worst picture of 2008. I seriously doubt there will be anything put out this year to compare to you in terms of suckiness.

There is hope, though. Because I just read--and this is what made me remember Funny Games and my need to (dis)honor it--they are making a sequel to Cabin Fever. We may yet end up with a new worst movie ever made!

Of course if Cabin Fever 2 ends up being worse than its predecessor, one of y'all will have to tell me about it. Because no way in ha-yull am I gonna watch it. Not even if Summer Glau is in it. In every scene. In a bikini.

Okay, maybe I might, after all.

So I went to my twenty year high school reunion this past weekend. A good time was had by all. But TWENTY YEARS?!! How the hell did that happen? I just graduated last week!

Actually, I'd buy it if it was ten years. It feels like I've been out of school for ten years. A good, solid decade. But TWO decades? Nuh-uh.

I can't deny it, though. I'm solidly into "adulthood" now. Not that I act like it.

Strange how one's definition of age changes. At 17, when I graduated, I would've looked ahead at 37 and thought, gee, that's pretty old. Now the 37-year-old in me looks back at the 17-year-old and calls him an idiot. And after watching so many of my classmates get liquored up and dance the Thriller Saturday night, I'm more certain than ever that we are nowhere near "old" yet. Old people, they cann'ae move like that.