The inimitable (I mean that in a nice way) Colleen Anderson has an amusing post on her blog about the time she met me at a World Horror convention.

Or did she?

Yesterday I read an article in the Toronto Star by Heather Mallick about Robert Fulford of the National Post writing a critical review of Margaret Atwood’s latest story in the New Yorker, called Stone Mattress. The Atwood story is about a woman who was raped as a teenager by an older boy who gets away with it. This act sends the woman down a bad road in which she gets pregnant, becomes a prostitute, and then marries older men of ill health so that she can help them die prematurely and get their money. Ultimately she meets the man who raped her and exacts her revenge.

Fulford doesn’t like the story because he thinks it “comes across as a classic man-hating story.” Mallick doesn’t like Fulford’s review because she thinks Atwood is “entitled to fill her fiction with hateful men.” She also didn’t like that Fulford didn’t own up to once having been skewered in an Atwood piece, suggesting that his review of Stone Mattress was simply revenge, as if it’s not possible to dislike a story solely on its own merits, or lack thereof.

Mallick professes to have once adored Bob Fulford, “wisest and cleverest of older male journalists.” Now, she claims that Fulford has stopped regarding life with endless interest and even joy, and turned sour. This seems a harsh assessment based on a single review of Atwood’s story. When I read that line in her article it seemed so disproportionately harsh that I wondered what else must be informing Mallick’s revised opinion of Fulford.

As a reasonably decent man this whole episode struck a nerve. I’m aware that certain women don’t like men, or distrust them, and that because of the actions of some jerks they have good reason to feel this way. I have always tried to conduct myself in a way to give women reason to like men. I have three sisters, a mother, a wife and two daughters and many female friends and colleagues. I like women. I’m good to them. I treat them with respect. So it annoys me when I am confronted with women who think that, as Fulford writes, men are villains except when they are clowns. That’s just a different kind of hatred, and it’s no better than men disrespecting women. Understanding that there are men out there deserving of scorn, just as there are woman deserving of scorn because of hateful attitudes and actions.

So I am sympathetic to Fulford’s take on Atwood’s story, although Atwood is equally hard on women in Stone Mattress. The female protagonist, essentially a serial killer, is certainly no more sympathetic than the male schmuck she murders. But I’m more sympathetic to Fulford himself than I am to his take on the story because I’d like to know why Mallick has come to dislike him so much. Just disliking Atwood’s story, and not owning up to having been a victim of an earlier Atwood story, just doesn’t seem to justify it.

I once spent four days at Atwood’s house recording a series of interviews for CBC Radio. Surreally for me, the entire four days were spent conversing with Atwood and the rest of the crew in French, which I was in the process of learning at the time, having recently returned from several months of living in Aix-en-Provence, France. Apart from Atwood’s assistant at the time, Sarah Cooper, Atwood and I were the only anglophones. On the third night we all went to a restaurant together where circumstances contrived to place Atwood and myself alone together for about twenty minutes, and we conversed in English for the first time. The whole experience generated a certain camaraderie between us, or at least that was how it felt to me – I’ve met her several times since and she has never indicated that she remembers me. Although I consider this last point worthy of mention, I don’t hold it against her. I’m not sure that I would remember her much either if she were not one of Canada’s most famous authors, mentioned time and again on the CBC and in the rest of our national media. Impossible to forget, in other words.

However, I’ve never forgotten her friendliness at the time. She did not come off to me as the least bit man hating. Her characters and stories are fiction, after all, not necessarily representative of the author’s own mind set. The truth is I haven’t actually read much Atwood, apart from some short stories in a book she gave me on our last day together (Good Bones) and the aforementioned Stone Mattress. And a handful of radio drama adaptations of her work such as The Handmaid’s Tale.

No, if I had one bone to pick with Margaret Atwood it wouldn’t be her stance against men, it would be her stance against science fiction, which she seems to regard as less than worthy. Yes, she writes it from time to time, but when she writes it is isn’t science fiction, it’s something else, something better, “speculative fiction” maybe. I find this attitude inexplicable and insulting, and no I don’t feel that way because she has previously skewered me in her work, at least that I’m aware, not that I would be aware not having read much of her work.

So neither Robert Fulford nor Heather Mallick have done anything to alter my opinion of Margaret Atwood. I’ve never given Robert Fulford much thought but I feel rather sympathetic toward the man now. As for Heather Mallick, who’s work I have read from time to time in the Star, and to whom I haven’t given much thought either, I am now unduly curious about.

Just what the heck does she really have against Robert Fulford?

I just finished watching the series Michael: Tuesdays and Thursdays.

First a disclaimer. I used to work with the two stars of this series, Bob Martin and Matt Watts, back when I worked in Radio Drama for the CBC. Bob Martin was usually a voice down the line on Steve the First and Steve the Second (we would record him from a remote location) so I never got to know him. But I worked very closely with Matt Watts on Steve the First, Steve the Second, and then later on a show called Canadia.

A few words about Matt. We got to be pretty good friends working on these shows. In fact working with Matt on these shows was a dream. I have never felt so creatively in synch with anyone as I did with Matt. We almost always agreed on creative approaches and we both worked extremely hard to make the shows as good as we could possibly make them. We dreamed of a return to the golden age of radio drama, of content so entertaining and well produced that it could not be ignored.

Our dream never quite came true, but we did make some damn good stuff together in the time we had.

So now I’ve moved onto management at the CBC and Matt has moved onto TV. I regret that we may never be able to work together again creatively and that I may never again experience the creative synch that I experienced with Matt with anyone else. But I remain a huge fan of Matt’s work, and am delighted to discover that the move to television has in no way diminished that work. On the contrary, it has simply allowed a wider audience to experience the fruits of his labors.

So I’m obviously biased. But I think that any discerning critic watching Michael: Tuesdays and Thursday would agree that it is one finely honed show. The writing is superb. The direction is polished. The acting is note perfect. Even the music is appealing.

I wrote Matt at one point early in the season that I didn’t find the series exactly to my taste after watching the pilot episode. This feeling went away fairly quickly. The feeling was engendered by the prudish part of me, which responded somewhat negatively to the (initially) frequent sex between a couple of the main characters. I have some kind of a weird double standard thing going on there too, I have to admit, as I don’t have a problem with HBO fare like Rome or Game of Thrones. It was just seeing it on CBC, and the fact that it meant that I couldn’t watch the show with my eleven year old daughters, which would have made it infinitely easier to watch as the episodes aired.

Anyway once I got past that little peccadillo and was able to focus on the other elements I began to thoroughly appreciate the craft that went into this show. My rather egotistical appraisal can be summed up thusly: it didn’t require my involvement.

I should explain that a bit. I frequently watch shows and think, my God, why did they do THAT? Could they not see that the story required THIS? If only I had been allowed to participate in the creation of this show!

In fact, this is how Matt and I originally became acquainted. I recorded the pilot of his first ever radio show, episode one of Steve the First. My involvement was limited to recording the episode. Then someone else took it away and butchered the mix. When I heard it I was appalled, and I wrote Matt to tell him so. I told him exactly how it needed to be fixed (in my not so humble opinion). Matt complained to the producer, and I got to remix it to my satisfaction. I remained as opinionated throughout our working partnership, and as I’ve mentioned earlier Matt, to his enormous credit in my view, always took my opinions seriously.

Matt, Bob, Don McKellar and everyone else associated with the show got Michael: Tuesdays and Thursday right all on their own.

Well done guys.

In my last post I talked about reading a story I wrote as a kid at Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids.

Here’s a recording of my reading from that event , courtesy of organizer Dan Misener.

It runs about five minutes forty seconds:

Attended a really cool event Monday night put on by the inimitable Dan Misener of CBC Radio Sparks fame.

It was called (if memory serves) Grownups Read Stuff They Wrote As Kids.

I’d been wanting to attend one of these events for a while now.  This was the ninth or tenth one Dan has put on.  Dan and his wife are about to leave for France for a year, so I knew this was going to be the last one for awhile, so I made sure I attended.  And I volunteered to read.

So the weekend before I perused my three scribblers full of juvenilia, mostly written between the ages of 12 and 14 (Grades 7 to 9) for school.  I chose three potential pieces, each one varying degrees of ridiculous.  Although I remember thinking quite highly of them at the time I wrote them!

I walked to the Garrison Pub at Ossington and Dundas with Dan an hour and a half before the event.  I told Dan I had mixed feelings about reading my stuff.  On the one hand I felt a sense of betrayal toward my younger self because I would essentially be mocking that kid’s work.  And as a kid I had been proud of my writing.  I thought I was pretty good at it.  On the other hand, I noted, maybe the kid deserved to be mocked, because the one piece (the one I eventually read) had been written as homework, sitting before the television.  Even so I had thought it was pretty good at the time (it wasn’t, really).  (Ooh, there’s that pesky sense of betrayal again!)

We got to the club and it turned out nobody had set the chairs out.  So Dan and I (and the club’s sound guy) got to work setting up the chairs (two other readers eventually joined in).

We got under way at 7:30.  The place was packed — an impressive turnout.  I was the fourth reader.  The first two readers were awesome.  One guy read from a monster book he had written in Grade One, complete with cool monster pictures.  He was quite funny.  I can’t remember the second reader’s material as I type this (it’ll come to me long after I’ve posted this, no doubt) but I remember it was entertaining and well presented.  I began to have serious qualms about reading the story I had selected.  I didn’t think it was either good enough or bad enough.  I was afraid it would fall flat.

I didn’t hear the third reader because I was busy behind the stage trying to pick out a better story.  But Dan introduced me by saying I would read a science fiction story, so I was stuck with the one I’d selected.

Fortunately the audience was laughing by the second sentence.  They continued to laugh throughout.  Bottom line, I didn’t bomb.  Of course, the story had not been written as a comedy; I don’t think there was a single line in it that was supposed to be funny.  So although I didn’t bomb, I did completely betray my twelve year old self.  What a heel.  But it doesn’t bother me at all.  Because ya gotta be able to laugh at yourself, whatever age you are.

It was a great night.  The rest of the readers were terrific. A standout was a woman names Laura (I think) who read a will she had written at the age of nine!  Surreal and quite amusing.  I was really glad I participated, and many kudos to Dan for putting an event like that on.  (It’s simple, he told me on the way over.  Book the club, which is surprisingly cheap, get readers to sign up on line, arrange for the sale of tickets online, and Bob’s your uncle.  The odd time you might have to set up the chairs yourself.  Ticket sales go to fund the venue with excess funds going to charity.  A class act, Mr. Dan Misener).

I think he’ll be putting more of these on in a year, when he’s back from France.

Which means, of course, that the next one will have to be in French.

So that last post was a bit of an unusual one for Assorted Nonsense, but as Homer Simpson once said after drinking a bottle of mouthwash (I think it was mouthwash), What are ya gonna do.”

I’ve read it two or three times now and I must say when I saw Grondzilla’s comment, “How very odd,” I had to laugh, because (with all due respect to the author of the piece) it IS rather odd in the context of Assorted Nonsense.

I suppose a legitimate question would be, why did I allow it to be posted here?  And the short answer is because the fellow asked if he could post it here, and I could see nothing offensive about it.  And (almost) anything goes, here at Assorted Nonsense.  It is assorted nonsense, after all.

Which is not to say that I think Eric’s piece is nonsense.  It’s actually chalk full of good advice.  ”Shower your partner with compliments.”  ”Let your partner know you appreciate them.”  Nothing wrong with either of those.  ”Never allow bad feelings to harbour.”  Can’t argue with that.  ”Choose your battles.”  Common sense.

Our opinions begin to diverge in the subsections entitled “It’s a Small World” and “One Strike You’re Out.”  I would never warn my partner “Remember, the world is a very small place!”  Sorry Eric, but that just sounds a bit creepy to me.  Right up there with The Police song “Every Breath You Take,” which, if you think about it (and as Sting himself has pointed out) is actually a really creepy song.  The big problem with the advice you pose here is that you’ve forgotten about the concept of trust.  I would never remind my partner that the world is a small place, or tell her “Hey, Jane saw you at such and such a place” because A. I trust her and B. I’m not creepy.  Or try not to be.

Likewise with “One Strike You’re Out.”  Because you see, there must be opportunity for redemption and forgiveness.  Nuff said.

But how churlish of me to publish the fellow’s piece and then take it apart (except that I warned him I would do exactly that, and he was good natured enough to accept those terms).

The bottom line was that Eric’s stated goals were to get his name out there and practice his craft, and I agreed to help him do that.  And I don’t care that a by-product of this is helping promote his other web site.  Links to other web sites are the currency of the web, it has been said.

So thanks Eric, and good luck to you.

Okay, right away you’re probably thinking three things:

1. Has Joe’s site been hacked?  This is very unusual content for Assorted Nonsense.  and the answer is no, the site hasn’t been hacked, and yes, it is rather unusual content.

2. Why is Joe thinking about cheat proofing relationships?  Is there a problem with Joe’s marriage?  And the answer is no, there is not a problem with Joe’s relationship, and I will explain all in a moment.

3. Joe’s blogging again!  Yes, I would still like to blog every day, the trick is finding the time.

So what’s this all about?

Well, this fellow Eric J Leech emailed me a while back asking if he could write a guest post for Assorted Nonsense.  I gather he normally writes for a dating website called datingwebsites.org and he’s looking to practice his craft.  So I checked him out and he seems human.  As near as I can tell there are no hidden agendas here, other than the fact that he’s obviously promoting the aforementioned website, but I don’t think there’s anything sinister about it.

So I said what the heck, absolutely you can write for Assorted Nonsense.  It’s content after all.    And he submitted the following article.

The opinions he expresses are his own; I may express my own opinions on his thoughts in the comments section.

Take it away, Eric:

How to Cheat-Proof Your Dating Relationship-
By Eric J. Leech, writer for Datingwebsites.org

If you want to cheat-proof your relationship, whether it involves marriages, long-term relationships, or casual hookups from dating websites, hopefully you’re doing so as a precautionary step. If your loved one has proven to be untrustworthy, instead of cheat-proofing, you may want to try “loser” proofing your life, first. This translates into either getting rid of your cheating spouse completely, or overhauling your website’s profile, so that you no longer welcome these types of individuals into your life. However, considering there are more than a few good catches left in the dating sea, I’ll assume we’re dealing with one of them, and commence with the advice on how to cheat-proof, your lover’s loins from going south for the winter.

Curiosity Saved the Relationship
Your best defense is to shower your partner, with compliments, and curiosity. When a dating partner feels neglected, they will look for excitement outside of the relationship. This may include going to bars, hanging out with friends, or perusing dating websites during the wee hours of the morning. To feed this anxious energy, be curious about your partner. Find new ways to experience and learn about each other, through common interests and hobbies.

Appreciation
Let your partner know you appreciate them. Give praise when they deserve it, and say, “thank you,” whenever they do something special. Most importantly, do something nice for your partner at least once a day, whether it’s a love note, special dinner, or back massage.

Action Over Reaction
If you sense something is wrong with your dating partner, ask them about it. You should never allow bad feelings to harbor. Make it a practice to see how things are going. Ask them if there is anything about the relationship that isn’t working, or any of their needs that are not currently being met. Listen, and take all requests seriously. Take notes if it helps. The worst thing you can do is hide your head in the sand to the obvious signs of a problematic relationship. Action, beats reaction, in the majority of relationship difficulties.

Choose Your Battles
When you do decide to air out any differences, make sure you’re arguing over a real problem. Many disagreements are caused by external symptoms (coming home late, drinking with friends, etc.), rather than the true cause (lack of communication, intimacy, etc.).

It’s a Small World
Remind your partner that the world is a very small place. Keep in mind, the word “spying,” had no part in that sentence. You don’t want your partner to think that you do not trust them. Friends can be an especially valuable tool for this. The phrase, “My friend Jane saw you at the…” can do wonders to remind your lover that there are watchful eyes around all the time.

One Strike You’re Out
There is no three strikes your out rule, especially when it comes to dating, marriages, and cheating. Everyone gets one chance, and if they fail, they should be out on their ear without a Q-tip. People are either faithful or they are unfaithful. There is no gray area in this matter. Dating website’s members will be less likely to cheat, if they know they only get one chance.

Positive Reinforcement
To harvest positive energy, concentrate on the pluses of the relationship, rather than the negatives. Partners who are constantly complaining or nagging, create negative feelings, literally training their partner to avoid them (bad energy, breads worse energy). The easiest way to do this is to concentrate on rewarding your partner for what they are doing right (compliments, praise, etc.), and eventually the good will outnumber the bad. This is the most effective way to modify unwanted behavior, without creating a wedge between the two of you in the process.

Happy Thoughts, Happy in Love
If you are having a difficult time finding the good in your partner, remember what attracted you to them in the first place. If you are still drawing a blank, look into yourself, and ask if it is really your partner who is the problem. It may have more to do with you, then them. In other words, bored, unhappy people, experience boring and unhappy relationships. When you feel good about yourself, your partner will feel good about you, too!

Recently writer and blogger Lynda Williams invited me to contribute a post to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Workshop blog.  I’ve always wanted to attend Clarion to learn a thing or two or three about writing, but this may be the closest I ever come.  I was quite honored to be asked to contribute.

Lynda was interested in hearing about a writing pet peeve of mine, so I wrote a little something entitled “To Hiss the Unhissable.”

Feel free to check it out and hiss at it.

I watched Terra Nova with the kids last night.  I thought they might like a good dinosaur show, and I was curious about it.

SPOILER ALERT

It was entertaining enough to watch.  Possibly intriguing enough to watch another episode.  But not necessarily in the right ways on both counts.  You see, I find it instructive to watch mediocre writing.  Because I like to ask myself, how could this have been made better? 

(The girls were not entirely convinced either.  K didn’t think it made for a good family show, and she played her Nintendo DSI throughout the episode.  E paid attention, but doesn’t feel a great need to ever watch another episode.)

 My main issue with the writing was that it just didn’t seem like they were trying very hard.  And/or weren’t particularly inspired.  Or perhaps whoever wrote it just isn’t very good at storytelling. Hey, it’s possible.  Here are some of the problems:

The dad is a cop.  He lives in a world where they’re only allowed two kids.  So they have three.  Why?  He’s a cop, supposed to uphold the law.  Maybe it isn’t a great law, but it’s the law.  There’s no reason to think that he’s a corrupt cop.  So there’s got to be some compelling reason why he and his wife had three kids.  Even another character in the episode (Commander Taylor, the head of the expedition to the past) asks him that.  I have to admit at that point in the show they had me.  I was curious.  Why?  The cop’s answer?  “It seemed  like the thing to do at the time.”  I groaned when he said this.  The line itself is trite, and it smacked of the writer just not trying very hard.  It did no work for the character.  It didn’t advance the story or plot in any way.  It was just a stupid line.  But that’s not the worst of it.  The worst is that the question is hanging out there, why would this cop and his wife do this?  I can think of several compelling possible reasons.  And I’m sure there is one (there had better be one!)  But it needed to be trotted out in that episode so that we could better understand and sympathize with these characters.  Not in some future episode.  Why?  Because we may not be watching anymore then.

What else didn’t work?  Well, I loved how the characters in the episode possessed sufficient objectivity to comment on the stupidities of the episode themselves.  As if the writers themselves were aware of their work’s deficiencies and felt compelled to admit it.  There’s the example I mention above.  And there’s the son who remarks at one point that for his Dad to accompany them back in time he must first break out of a maximum security prison and then break into a maximum security facility.  Dear God!  If you’re aware that the plot is stupid and unbelievable, why not change it so that it isn’t stupid and unbelievable anymore?  It shouldn’t even have been that difficult a fix.  Of course, I don’t know what the overall storytelling arc is, which may be restricting the writers in some way, but whatever it is doesn’t justify keeping stupidities in Episode One, the very episode in which you most want to hook your viewers.

To me the fix would have been: don’t send the Dad to prison.  Instead of the cops finding the child, they almost find the child.  But the child is cleverly hidden (not in a vent where the child can be heard!) thus reinforcing the intelligence of the main characters and eliminating the need to send the Dad to prison.  Then, instead of the family going back in time because the Mom gets a job there, they are compelled to go back in time because they need to, to save the child!  So all their cunning and resources go toward making this happen (instead of going toward breaking Dad out of prison).  Of course, all this needs to be coupled with a compelling reason for the family to have had the third child in the first place.

The latter part of the episode is your standard kids do something stupid and get into major trouble as a result morality lesson, with lots of action and special effects.  From a storytelling perspective it’s all very superficial, not much going on in the way of character development, no great inner conflicts, not a whole lot of empathy generated.  The last real bonehead plot point was, after all the excitement of saving the kids from the mean dinosaurs and the inherent trauma of almost losing your kid (on the second day to the past, no less) the family gathers together to marvel at the size of the moon in the past.  I can see them marvelling at the size of the moon.  I just can’t see them doing it after almost losing their son/brother.  At that point just about all of them should have been asking themselves the following question:

What the hell have we done?

So unless the series gets a lot smarter fast, my family won’t be watching their family long.

Okay, I wasn’t quite as back as I thought I was.

I’m a little bit back.

First of all, thanks to Mr. Lozinski (who commented on the last post) for the wonderful piano solo he left me a while back on my answering machine.  Golden Brown, by the Stranglers.  Or in this case, by his talented daughter.  I must say I was utterly confused when I first heard the message, because it’s one of the few tunes I remember how to play on the piano, and I had played it myself recently on my mother’s piano during my vacation, and when I heard it on the answering machine my first thought was that I must have made a butt call with my Blackberry while I was playing.  Only it didn’t sound like my playing (it was much better).

At the end of the recording the truth came out, it was my friend Mr. Lozinski sharing with me his daughter’s rendition of the tune.

So… thanks for that!

And now for the requisite update on the novel.  You know, there was a time when I thought it would come in at just under one hundred thousand words.  About three hundred and forty pages.  The darned thing is now about one hundred and eight thousand words.  Three hundred and seventy two pages.  About three hundred and sixty pages are complete, so eighteen left to revise.  Course, the last time I had eighteen pages left to revise, I was on page three hundred and twenty, and somehow I wrote another sixty pages instead of just revising the eighteen.

Oh well.

Oh, and the seagull section is back in.

I’m happy about that.

But I’ll be even happier when the whole darned thing is done!