Happy Anniversary!

Balloons to celebrate

I've been having a bit of a party on my Facebook page today. It was a bit of a special occasion. One year ago today, To Touch the Sun my vampire novel set in Chicago was published by Dagda Publishing (available on Amazon). In honor of that, Dagda is holding an ebook sale that started midnight Feb. 25 and will run through midnight Feb. 27. For .99 (cents or pence) you can order your very own ebook copy of To Touch The Sun. 

I have to admit there were times when I wasn't sure this was going to happen. As I've stated before, my writing a vampire novel was a calculated thing. I was hoping to interest an agent I was in pleasant communication with whose agency featured a vampire series. I enjoyed reading vampire novels, watching vampire movies, but I  myself never had the urge to write one. I never had a character or story I wanted to present. Since I like to try new things though this gave me the perfect chance to try my hand at a vampire novel.

Unlike past novels I've written where I had the story and characters in my head before putting pen to paper, I went into this project cold. The only thing I had to build on was "vampire chef." Slowly, as time went on, the story grew, evolving as did the characters until at last I knew where I wanted to take the story. 

Love how it looks on a library shelf.

And thus you have To Touch the Sun. You can find more posts on the process and other information regarding the novels in the series blog The Sentient/Feral Vampire Series. I'd never written like that before and it was probably the most enjoyable writing I've ever done. Not only that, by the end of what I thought would be a one off novel, I realized that I had another story to tell. That's why the epilogue isn't so much an ending as it is a jumping off point for the next novel in the series (Ujaali, due out in a few months). 

That's right: I started with two words and I now have four novels (written while hunting for a publisher for the first one) and a spin off novel featuring two paranormal investigators that appear in the third novel. (The agent, however, did not stick around. But that's a whole other story).

The cover makes a good poster too.

I think that's why this novel is so special to me (even though I've written others). It came out of nowhere and really captured my heart. That's why it was so important for me to get it published too. And why I was so thrilled when I finally found a publisher. And why February 25 will always be a special day to me.

So come celebrate with me. I'll probably be enjoying the glow for a few more days. Visit Amazon and get your own copy of To Touch the Sun. I hope people get as much enjoyment from reading it as I had from writing it.

Craig's Contract with his Audience

Only a few days remain until "The Late Late Show" is no longer hosted by Craig Ferguson. It's been a great ride. I've written posts that contain some of my favorite things from the show. What I want to point out today isn't the bust your gut funny moments, but those moments he made it real. That's one of the things that made Craig's tenure with the show so very special. Perhaps it was the main thing because it enabled because it enabled Craig to connect with his audience on a deeper level using his own feelings on a national or personal tragedy. It was cathartic for both host and audience.

Again, in no particular order, are ten examples.

This is the first monologue that I saw that Craig opened up about something troubling and it turned out to be a fantastic mix of humor and social slapdown. It's when I truly realized how special this show was with him at the helm.



David Letterman's production company, World Wide Pants, is the company that produces "The Late Late Show" which follows his own "The Late Show with David Letterman" every night. In 2009 news broke of Letterman's affairs with various female staffers over the years. As Craig himself says, this left him in a very difficult position since it was his job to comment on the news of the day.



This is just for fun. Apparently there was a power outage during the taping of his show. What do you do when a power outage occurs during the taping of your monologue? You take a few nips at the hand that barely feeds you.



Craig shared a lot with his audience. A lot.



I mean, a lot!



Five years after 9/11, an immigrant, two years shy of his U.S. citizenship, shared his memories of that horrible day. 



On July 20, 2012, a man went into a movie theater in Aurora, Colo. and shot 82 people, killing 12 of them. Two years ago an some change, we were still horrified by such an event (sadly I fear we've become a bit too accustomed to it now). A pre-recorded show of "The Late Late Show," including jokes about "The Dark Knight" (The film being shown when the event occurred) was scheduled to run, leaving Craig and his staff in a dilemma. So he decided to tape a new opening to the show that would address the shooting (and in fact his dilemma). It's the sort of sincerity that made his show so special.



And in a companion piece: On April 15, 2013 two pressure cooker bombs went off during the Boston Marathon. It was a horrific and cowardly act that left everyone shaken. Craig presents that confusion and anger perfectly.



Craig's mother and father had been on his show, his mother partaking in a particularly charming bit in which she went shopping with RZA of Wu Tan Clan. When his mother died, as he so often does, Craig shared his feelings with his audience. And he almost made it through without breaking.



Of course two years prior to the send off for his mother, fresh from the funeral, he spoke about his father's death. (The show that night actually became a wake for his father).





And of course honorable, and sad, mention belongs to his announcement that Craig would be giving up the reigns of "The Late Late Show."



Whether it was joy, frustration or grief, what you got with Craig Ferguson was an honesty and wit that couldn't be contained on a cue card. It was indeed his contract with the audience.

Let's Get This Party Started

I'm not quite sure when the puppet cold openings on The Late Late Show morphed into the spectacular lip synching numbers but I suppose it was inevitable in an ever evolving show. As I showed in the previous post the lip synching seemed to start with the puppets. A yodaling monkey, an acid rock wolf, a dinosaur and shark singing "Rain Drops Keep Fallin' On My Head." It was ridiculous and fantastic all at the same time. Eventually, with the help of a talented and playful staff, Craig Ferguson transformed this show opening featuring puppets into musical numbers that helped pump up the audience even more.

The numbers are remarkably notable when you consider the space in which they had to stage them. Some have quite a lot of choreography to them.

Again, in no particular order, here are ten of my favorite musical openings from The Late Late Show.

"Fireball XL5" was a children's show created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson of Supermarionation fame which Ferguson very likely grew up watching in Scotland ("Fireball XL5" actually did run on NBC on Saturday mornings in the U.S. from 1963-65). It had a curiously poppy closing song considering its science fiction theme that lends itself perfectly to a bit on the Late Late Show.


The Village People's "In the Navy" is a song screaming out for a good lip synching and Craig and his crew are just the folk to provide it.

 


"Look Out There's a Monster Coming" is a catchy little tune that can be found on the album 1967 "Gorilla" by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band (one of its members, Neil Innes, would go on to write the fantastic songs to be found in the Beatles-parody band The Rutles). And it's nice to see Geoff Peterson get in on the act.




The Late Late Show's take on "White Lines" (covered by Duran Duran) is one of those numbers that definitely cemented the party aspect of the cold openings.


I think "Wonderful Night" was the first lip synching bit that I saw and it only increased my affection for this show.

 


It's only fitting that when Craig took the show to Scotland, his country of birth, the opening would need to be big. Add an awesome TARDIS effect and you have a rockin' cold opening.


And when in France:


"Over At The Frankenstein Place" from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" was one of the more elaborate cold opens and it works excellently.


This next one is one of my favorites featuring a cover of "Istanbul" by one of my favorite bands, They Might Be Giants.



As a "Doctor Who" fan like Craig himself, this last one is probably the penultimate cold open for me. It didn't, however, actually open the show when it was broadcast since at the last minute it was discovered that they couldn't get the rights to the "Doctor Who" theme music. What was filmed was a practice run-through that Craig, none the less, winkingly encouraged should somehow make its way onto YouTube. And so it did. Brightening the lives of every Whovian out there.


These are the things that made The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, despite the late hour, such a joy to tune in. 

Craig Ferguson's Puppets

In my last post, I told you about my sadness at Craig Ferguson's imminent departure from the Late Late Show. Tuning into the show every night was like stumbling on an open house party at a neighbor's house, and late night will sorely miss that energy.

I would like to illustrate why I love this show with a few Top Ten lists (borrowing, of course, a concept from another show).

Borrowing a concept from another show, I would like to illustrate why I love this show so much using a few Top Ten Lists (although the the entries are in no particular order). To begin with here, are ten of my favorite cold openings featuring Craig's cast of hand puppets (a cast that seemed to grow as the concept went on):

So one night I tune into The Late Late Show and opening the show, I see a white rabbit puppet talking to the camera in squeaky cockney, an empty set behind him. I think that's when I officially realized that the party had begun. As much as I enjoyed the sketches written for the show (a particular favorite was Michael Caine at Hogwarts), there was something so audacious about a host opening his network show with only a white rabbit hand puppet talking to the audience (Craig doing the puppet's cartoon voice) that I was spellbound. And when he did it again and again (with a monkey, or a unicorn, or a puppet he referred to as a crocodile/alligator) I was a goner. 



Kronos, King of the Monkey People, is another puppet that has made a number of appearances on the show. With his firm, booming voice he professes to being on the verge of taking over the planet. The adorable elevator operator outfit (or is he a bellhop) he wears, however, makes it hard to believe that he'll succeed in these plans.



Kronos made an appearance in a rare multi-puppet opening bit featuring a dinosaur and a shark singing "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" before they started a toothy make-out session. 

I mean, come on!! What other show offered that?



Another toothy denizen of the Late Late Show puppet brigade is Wavy the crocodile/alligator. Fresh from the bayou, he apparently has an English cousin whose longer torso is perfect for High Def.



Wavy not only has an English cousin, but also has an English girlfriend, who he introduced to the audience. She seems a shy, retiring type, though I suppose one would be when dating a crocodile/alligator. (This is one of my favorite bits)




In what seemed like a shark week of his very own, Craig was having relationship problems with his shark. Breaking up is hard to do, especially with a shark.



But it turns out, that the shark has quite a personality.



The lip synching to songs became more elaborate as time went on and began to incorporate staffmembers, but there's something so right about puppets "lip" synching.



And speaking of elaborate, here's a little unicorn joined by friends to sing "The Lonely Goatherd."



Not to be outdone, however, is Kronos, King of the Monkey People, a monkey of many talents.



As an honorable mention, it seems only fair that Craig should have a puppet all his own.



There are any number of other puppet bits floating around out there on YouTube and I highly recommend an hour of surfing.

My next post will discuss the more elaborate cold open lip synching.

Craig Ferguson's Party

Craig and Secretariat bust some moves

Recently The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson released the guest line up for Craig's final shows and it reminded me of how bitter/sweet the next several weeks will be.

James Corden

Ferguson's last show will be Dec. 19 and frankly I don't want him to go. Oh he'll probably move on to something else (at the moment he's got some game show thing that he's hosting on another station) and the next host (James Corden) of The Late Late Show will probably do a good job, but this show with Ferguson has been magical since he took over in 2005.


I remember early on in Craig's (I call him Craig cause he makes me feel that I can) tenure trying to tell a coworker about the show. I had a hard time explaining the show because it was so atypical of talk shows. What you normally see is rote: Host is introduced, host does monologue, host does wacky banter with sidekick/bandleader (of course hard for Craig to do since he's had neither for some time. Technology solved that problem eventually). After the break the first guest comes out, there's a bit, then the next guest, then maybe a musical act, then end of show. It stays that way for years.

The Dreamboyz

Maybe it was Craig's punk sensibilities left over from a misspent youth that led him to break that format. (During the 80s he played in a band called the Bastards of Hell, later renamed Dreamboyz, which also featured current Doctor Who Peter Capaldi). Sensibilities which apparently also flavored his life some years after. Not only did he depart from standard talk show format with his television show, Craig often departed from the formats that he himself would establish for his own show. 


An early sketch featuring Ewan McGregor




It was like watching one big comedy bit being tried, tested, tailored and trimmed to offer a tighter result.


The show was constantly evolving and it was brilliant to see what he and his staff came up with.


Consider the evolution of Geoff Peterson, gay robot skeleton sidekick. The lack of a sidekick had never hurt the show or Craig's performance. In fact, he seems to have the mutant ability to be entertaining without sake of sidekick, cue cards, band or other late night paraphernalia (which he often joked were lacking due to the cheapness of CBS). Deciding at some point it might be fun to have a sidekick, he took Mythbuster's Grant Imahara up on his offer to create a sidekick. In the beginning, Peterson's vocabulary consisted of seven pre-recorded phrases (one of them the often played "balls"). Craig would interact with the robot using the buttons at his desk which set off the phrases. Later, writers handled Peterson's dialogue using an iPad to control it offstage.






Over time, Peterson's vocal abilities were tweaked as were his motor skills (somewhat) and now voiced by Josh Robert Thomas, he's become an integral part of the show. With comedy and improv skills as sharp as Craig's, Thomas is able to keep up in whatever direction the host goes.






What could have been a prop for a bit lasting a few months evolved into a favorite part of the show for many viewers. But comedy evolution is exactly what the show has been about. Quick, pre-opening bits with puppets turned into puppet lip synching songs which turned into elaborate, choreographed lip synching performances featuring puppets, Craig and members of his staff. I think that's when the show really became a party. There was a sort of "oh well, what the hell, let's try it" attitude not seen since Letterman started the Late Show in the 1980s and went on fast food road trips with Zsa Zsa Gabor or tossed stuff off the top of buildings.


Only Craig takes the attitude to the next level, encouraging the audience to stick with him by sheer force of his enthusiasm for life. Every sketch and monologue is an invitation to join the party. It's clear right from the theme song.





It could be his enthusiasm for life that leads him to share so much of his personal life with the audience. Craig has led a life, and come close to death, and as with most people recovering from something he's almost evangelic with his openness.


When Britney Spears was going through some issues, Craig stood apart from the crowd capitalizing on it with "Britney is so messed up" jokes by delivering a monologue in which he encouraged people to cut her some slack. Using his own, misspent youth as an example he encouraged everyone to just let her work it out. And he was able to deliver the lecture in his usual, funny, disarming way.


On Feb. 1, 2008 Craig became an extremely proud citizen of the U.S. and later showed clips of himself taking the test and his swearing in. 







We met the members of the Ferguson family when he had on his show his nephew, his sister, and his parents. He even arranged a filmed outting for his mother and RZA of Wu Tang Clan and the two actually corresponded afterward. When his father died, followed later by his mother, he opened respective shows with eulogies for them both.


It was instances such as this that helped Craig achieve an intimacy with the audience whether in the studio or at home. It's perhaps that intimacy combined with his comedic inventiveness that will be missed the most.


He addresses all his guests with an easy familiarity as if they are old friends just hanging for a chat. In most cases this easy familiarity is able to loosen up even the stiffest of guests. By the end of the interview they are willing to choose between ending on an awkward pause, playing the mouth organ, a moment of meditation or one of the other interview-enders Craig and his staff has come up with.





But even during the interview he seems genuinely interested in the guest and most times he probably is. If he uses the sort of guest question cheat sheet found on the desk of other talk show hosts you wouldn't know it. His is a very stream-of-consciousness style of interviewing which helps make the interview more enjoyable for the guest, the audience and more than likely himself as well.




So, I'm going to miss my friend, TV's Craig Ferguson. Late night won't be quite the same without him. Though I look forward to what he has in store for his next incarnation. I'm sure it'll be a party.

The Martian

When I was a kid I saw a movie on TV called "Marooned." In it, James Franciscus, Gene Hackman and Richard Crenna play astronauts whose mission goes horrible wrong and strands them in space. NASA works on the problem of rescue before their oxygen is gone, but this isn't exactly like sending a boat out into the lake (or even the ocean) to rescue some sailors.

One scene that stayed with me has Richard Crenna's character going out to make repairs only to accidentally rip his space suit. Leaking oxygen, he floats off into the black recess of space where he will eventually die, his body floating forever. I cannot fathom the helpless of such a situation. Even those sailors stranded at sea have some shred of hope that a ship will pass by or a plane fly overhead or they'll drift to land.

I was left with a very similar feeling while reading The Martian by Andy Weir. Well, perhaps I shouldn't state "reading" but rather "listening" since I experienced the tale by listening to the book on CD expertly read by R.C. Bray. I was completely engrossed in the story. Which is funny since it contains the sort of minutia that the tale of a man stranded on Mars would have to have (well now that decades of probes to Mars has given us a clue as to what being stranded on Mars would actually be like) but which might make a plot drag. In this case, it didn't.

Mark Watney is a botanist on a six member expedition to Mars. A massive dust storm forces the team to evacuate the landing site, but on the way to the ship Whatney is hit by debris. Unable to detect life signs from the computer in Watney's suit, the team believes him to be dead and must leave the site immediately or be trapped themselves.

But Watney is not dead. He awakens later, completely alone on a planet hostile to our sort of life. He makes it back to the habitat where he can take off his suit and assess his situation which is pretty dire. He's been left on a planet that offers no food, no water, no oxygen or even a livable environment and even if a rescue mission was launched, it could take months to get to him. His only slight hope is to wait it out until the next mission arrives--four years later.



He does have some things working in his favor. When the crew left they left the supplies that were supposed to hold six people for a specified amount of time. Not enough to last one person for four years but enough to at least give him time to think.

And it's as Mark enters survival mode that we're introduced to the minutia of what that survival would entail. There is a lot of calculating that goes on mainly because he's going to need to ration his supplies to buy himself as much time as possible. Food, for example. Watney decides to grow food to extend the prepackaged food supply. He decides upon potatoes (since the crew were left several potatoes to enjoy as a Thanksgiving feast) because, as he explains, he can supplement lower ratios of nutrients with vitamins, but he will still need to meet a certain caloric level and "taters" (as he refers to them) will give him a the necessary calories to still be able to function. How do you grow potatoes with dead Martian soil? You enliven it with microbes? How do you obtain said microbes? Well, it isn't pretty (it involves human waste), but Watney's impromptu farming in the habitat (or Hab) involves a lot of calculation starting with how much farmable "land" he'll need to create for the optimal yield. He calculates soil depth, water requirements (his and the soil), even how many potatoes he should put aside from the first harvest to act as "seed" for the next crop.

This is what I mean about minutia. to balance on the knife edge of survival, Watney has to calculate everything and considering his situation he finds himself having to improvise a lot too. If something breaks on Mars, there aren't any fix-it shops to help. That's not to say that is a dry book. In fact, there were moments where I laughed out loud. The beginning of the book is told through Watney's log entries and along with his cleverness, a sense of humor helps keep him going. And there were moments when I burst out laughing. Usually at little asides that helped diffuse the tension of listening to a man trying to stay alive a bit longer.

Later the narrative alternates between Watney's log entries and a mix of log entries and straight third person accounts from the folks at NASA trying to figure out how to rescue him once they discover (through probe photos of Mars) that Watney's still alive. It's not only the cost of such an expedition. The main question, considering long it takes to build these rockets, is, can one be sent up and reach him before his supplies run out?

This is where the talent of the reader, R.C. Bray, really shines as he takes on the personas of a myriad of characters involved in the rescue operation. Male, female, a variety of accents are all performed effortlessly and draw you further into the story, the fears and concerns of the characters matching that of the reader's.

Ultimately though it's the story of one man trying to survive against all odds that holds you. Mars throws a lot at Watney as he works on his plan to reach rescue and you can't help but wonder, "Has he at last met the problem he can't solve? The one that will finally destroy him?"

Take a listen and find out.

Goodbye to the People's Poet

As usual, I'm late to the party on this. Or perhaps I should say wake. On June 9, 2014 Rik Mayall died of a heart attack at the age of 56. It was depressing news. I've always enjoyed Mayall's work and he was young. Six years older than me when he died. That sometimes makes you think. I wanted to post something about this sooner, but this is the soonest I was able.

I'm not really sure how I discovered the television show "The Young Ones." It could have been through a friend, could have been my seeing a video of it. For a while MTV was showing the episodes in the mid-80s. However it was, at some point I saw the show and was blown away by it. Comedic anarchy it was a force to be reckoned with.

I've been a fan of British comedy from the days of watching Sunday night "Monty Python" episodes shown on our local public television station. "The Young Ones" brought the absurdest sensibility of Python to extremes. Sometimes violent extremes. For all intents and purposes it was a sitcom. Four students of diverse personalities living under one roof and trying not to kill each other. Well, perhaps not really trying that hard. It broke all the rules.

Rick Mayall, one of the writers along with Lise Mayer and Ben Elton (who would go on to write The Blackadder series) cited his own years at university, and running into these groups of divergent personalities, as an inspiration for the show. Curiously, the television show "The Monkees" also served to inspire the creative minds behind "The Young Ones" who used similar techniques like jump cuts, montages and breaking the fourth wall. The show was a sort of a Punk Monkees (which may have been a band name in the 80s. If it wasn't, it should have been).

There was even music in the show as every week they somehow managed to sew into the plot a musical performance by a popular band such as Madness, Motorhead and Dexy's Midnight Runners. This was done primarily for budget purposes since the producers discovered that by adding musical acts they could classify the show as a variety show and the BBC would offer it a larger budget than it would offer a sitcom.



Rik Mayall played Rik, the "People's Poet" a would be anarchist whose anarchy only went so far as to cause no inconvenience to Rik. His character was always fighting some sort of injustice even if it was only imagined.



Ade Edmondson played Vyvyan the punk, the one who did everything he could (and usually violently) to piss the People's Poet off. Vyv's philosophy was "why walk through a door when you could crash through a wall?"



Nigel Planer was Neil the hippie. But not a happy hippie. Rather a decidedly unmellow hippie who went through life waiting for the other shoe to drop and probably shouldn't have been living with other three guys, most certainly not these guys.



Christopher Ryan played Mike the cool person, the unofficial leader of the group. Mike was an operator who always had an angle, even if the angle rarely played out. He was a legend in his own mind.



Mayall was part of the alternative comedy scene that began blooming in the 80s. Infused with a sort of punk mentality these alternative comedians offered comedy less formulaic, more free flowing than that which preceded them. Names like Alexi Sayle, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, produced comedy that was edgy, unpredictable and often laced with political commentary.

Of course some of it was just purely ridiculous--or violently ridiculous as in the case of The Dangerous Brothers, one of my favorite bits that Mayall did. Teamed with Ade Edmondson, Mayall was one half of a brother duo whose act consisted of death defying stunts, most of which usually went terribly wrong. It's pure slapstick, utterly ridiculous and completely hilarious.



Around the time I discovered "The Young Ones" (which led to The Dangerous Brothers) I came upon a more subdued and thoughtful (if that's the right word) character of Mayall's. Kevin Turvey was an investigative reporter who, from a chair in a darkened studio, delivered earnest commentary on issues that really seemed to only concern him. Mayall completely invests himself into the character and I was completely fascinated by it.



After "The Young Ones" he starred in a series called "The New Statesman," a wicked take on the wickedness of power. Mayall plays Alan B'Stard, a Thatcherite MP prepared to do anything to satisfy his ambitions. Think of it as a comedic "House of Cards." The character is much more subdued then Mayall played in the past, much more diabolical. It's a perfect take of the creepiness infesting the government in Thatcher's England.



Perhaps my favorite project was another teaming with Ade Edmondson called "Bottom", a sitcom in which two middle age losers share a flat. It's almost as if they asked, "What would Rick and Viv from the Young One's be like ten years later." Mayall and Edmondson came up with the idea while appearing in the play 'Waiting for Godot." It's frenetic, often times raunchy, and boasts one of the catchiest closing themes of any show.



A curious change of pace showed him capable of carrying dramatic roles too. A friend turned me on to "Claire de Lune" an episode featured in a larger series called "Rik Mayall Presents" in which Mayall plays a single dad who juggles his parental duties with driving a cab and going to school. Along the way, he helps a damsel in distress and gets more than he bargained for. It's an interesting story and it reveals an acting range that might surprise people who think of Mayall only as the crazy energy comedian. His performance is sincere and subtle.



Of course that crazy energy he could dial up came in handy for the children's show "Grim Tales," in which he told popular children's stories. His to ability channel his inner child is perfect for the show and he's thoroughly engaging.



And speaking of inner child, I liked "Drop Dead Fred." It delivered what it intended to deliver (at a time when every movie didn't have to be a blockbuster filled with explosions). It was a simple story, at times quite touching, about a woman trying to reconnect with that inner child in an attempt to learn how not to be a doormat. Mayall was perfect as Drop Dead Fred, the imaginary friend of the character played by Phoebe Cates who retained a child's lack of impulse control. It was a movie about finding a balance in life between humor and responsibility.



In April 1998 Mayall was seriously injured in a quad bike accident. As he lie a coma for five days, doctors weren't certain if he'd survive. He did, but it left him with epilepsy for which he had to take medication. Often times he joked, however, that he beat Jesus' record, rising after five days dead as opposed to Christ's three. He moved on with his career starting up again with voice overs then moving on to guest starring roles and even live shows of "Bottom" and "The New Statesman."

There are a few people I'd like to have met to tell them what a profound effect their work had on me. I was introduced to Rik Mayall's work during a time when I desperately needed to laugh and laugh often and watching the shows of Mayall and his contemporaries helped me through that time. I would have liked to have told him that.

Perhaps one day I'll get the chance.

In the meantime, I'll enjoy him in one of his most famous cameos: Lord Flashheart in "Black Adder the Second"