Fun with Fiction: Behind the Cheese

He was upset and she knew it.

Life was slow and boring and he couldn’t take it anymore. She never really knew what to say to him when he was like this, so she stopped herself before speaking. Maybe he would snap out of it. Maybe he would smile and let the so-called problems roll off his back like the rain.

He kicked a clump of dry dirt away. There was no escaping it now.

“I am sick of this place.”

She held her tongue a little longer, hoping, praying, that he would come around.

“Wish I was never born,” he whined. “The boredom of modern life is too much. I don’t do anything. I don’t have any say in what goes on. Nothing much is expected of me. I have no skills. No function, really. It’s like I am part of the background. The color. Wallpaper.”

He looked at her with disdain and she knew what was coming next.

“At least you can do something,” he said and she nodded. “Dairy products. You make cheese. At least that’s something to hang your hat on. I just loll around, make a few new kids once in a while with you or that scene queen, Darla, and that’s the extent of it.”

He kicked a little more dirt around and sighed.

“Otherwise, I have no life.”

That was enough. Betty thought there was something wrong with him, but she’d heard this song before. Many times.

“Look, Billy, I’m sick of hearing you bitch about your life, day after day,” she said. “Year after year. If you hate it so much, get out. Leave. You know where the door is. Do it. Live on your own, but you won’t find it any easier out there, past the gates. You’ll be alone. Out in the cold. Chased by wild animals. Eating whatever scraps of food and who knows what else you’ll find on the ground. Tin cans! You’ll be back.”

Betty was right. He did say the same things and complain all the time. It was so easy for her. She had a career. A function in life. He didn’t and it was time for a change. He knew it. Maybe he was just trying to find the courage to do something new and take control of his life. Couldn’t she understand that?

“Betty, I’m scared,” he said. “I’m not happy with myself and I don’t know what to do. I would love a new life, but I’m too afraid to leave the farm and strike out on my own. I don’t know what I would do somewhere else. I mean, there’s gotta be more to life out there in the world, but what would I be? Who would I be?”

She thought about that for a bit, ate a little salad, and spoke.

“You’d still be Billy,” she told him. That clanged Billy’s bell. He kicked over pail of old rainwater with his hoof and chuckled. The bell around his neck clanged again. Betty smiled.

“Hah! I’d still be Billy with no life, no job, no home and no clue. What good is that? I’d rather be Billy the One and Only, so’s I can drop my seed all over this farm, so’s that we can have more milkers like you, so’s that Hank and Emily can make more cheese and sell it to that snazzy gourmet shop down in Topeka for who knows how much than be Billy With Nothing.”

Betty was happy. She’d seen this conversation with Billy wrap up the same way countless times. Even down to the “drop my seed all over this farm” part. He was over it, she reckoned, for another few days or so. She thought he might be getting horny again. A good sign, and after a few minutes, conception. Betty wasn’t that impressed, but was glad she was able to help Billy out.

Soon after they were done, one of the farm hands came over and filled the trough. There was a scream and he went running over to the sty. Later, Billy and Betty heard that Dottie, that whiny little twerp who sang all the time out by the tractor had fallen off the fence and into the pig pen. Justice served. Of course, someone pulled that vapid simpleton out of there eventually. She was still singing about somewhere over the rain cloud or rain bucket or something as her auntie wiped the pig shit out of her hair.

Then the dog ran away.

A couple days later, a big tornado came and tore the place up. Dottie got knocked out and was in bed for a while. The guys drew a mustache on her face while she was sleeping. Her Uncle Hank was in there a little too long one night with her and Aunt Emily gave him hell the next morning.

Billy thought that it was all very funny, but Betty was too busy feeding the kids to notice. After a few weeks, one of the pigs came around talking revolution.

Billy was up for it.

Finally, there would be something to do.

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This vs. That

Early morning, hot coffee, flipping through a food magazine and I noted some food-porn pictures of glorious edible artwork served at some of the nation’s best restaurants. Really, looked like the kind of stuff that people always say, “it looks too good to eat.” I’d be afraid to eat some of them, afraid in the same way I’d be afraid to to touch a painting in a gallery to check out the texture. These chefs go to great lengths to display perfection, using tweezers and paint brushes, sometimes creating food that doesn’t look real, other times putting something that seems casual and random but is actually choreographed chaos.

And then there was the picture of a roasted maple-miso salmon head (this was in Bon Appetit), adorned only with a few sliced radishes and scallions, a dusting of sesame seeds and a brush stroke of white sauce and a few dots of red (each of those last two might taken a little too much thought, but you get the idea). Bold. How dare a chef put such food on a plate? The outright balls of it! The audacious, mad genius!

Somehow, that picture reminded me of a trip to Paris, 10 years too long ago, when after trying this pretentious restaurant and that, we stumbled on a bistro and after a few glasses of wine, I found myself facing down a bowl filled with incredibly rich and simple lentils topped with a pork shank. Bread on the side. A jar of grainy mustard on the table. More wine. That was it, in all of its enlightened simplicity.

So I’ve been thinking about differences this morning, differences between simplicity and complexity, chaos and order, overrated and underrated, boldness and subtlety. For example, Fred Gwynne was funny and bombastic and over the top in “The Munsters,” but he was controlled, understated and far superior in “The Cotton Club.”

Are flaming Thai Bird Chiles really better than jalapenos, or just hotter? Is truffled lobster mac-and-cheese better than a grilled lobster with lime and butter? Is a short rib/brisket/sirloin burger with foie gras, a fried egg, edible gold leaf, guanciale and wine-braised ramps on a house-made pretzel roll better than a ground chuck burger with American cheese on a potato roll?

“Voodoo Chile” or “Little Wing?” “Born in the USA”or”Nebraska.” Buck Cherry or Jeff Buckley? The Jam or Pearl Jam?

“The Lords of Discipline” or “The Prince of Tides?” “Twilight” or “Dracula?” “The Beach” or “At the Shores?” “The Good and the Ghastly” or “Brave New World?”

Does any of this make sense, yes or no?

Flipped switches

The Zumba girls were dancing badly to The Pretenders‘ “Precious.” Terrible. No sense of rhythm.

Wait a minute. “Precious” was blasting through my headphones. Blasting through my headphones as I worked on the elliptical machine. It was the only machine available and I felt funny taking it since it was the closest to the classroom where the ladies of the day were grooving to some anonymous song. I had never seen Zumba and was curious. I also found it distracting that they were all dancing so badly to the song running through my head.

Call me The Sweaty Voyeur if you must, but I am pure of heart and soul.

Someone on an elliptical machine two spots to my right was apparently running from hungry wild animals, all settings on full blast. On another, a twenty-something woman was walking backwards while talking on her wicked-smart phone. People of all shapes and sizes, rippled dudes in Iron Man t-shirts, lithe women sweating after seven hours on the treadmill, gym employees checking out the crowd, men of my certain age and older in various stages of health and acceptance, some bewildered that health and conditioning had become so impossibly out of reach, passed as I trudged my way up and over an imaginary, hilly path.

The silent dancers in the glass-enclosed classroom struggled to find the groove of The Pixies‘ “Where Is My Mind” that now sluiced from the iPod Shuffle through my cheap headphones and into my sweaty ears. Didn’t they hear it? What was their problem?

For the record, my playlist today on the elliptical and the torture machines, went like this:

The Pretenders, “Precious”
The Pixies, “Where Is My Mind”
Jimi Hendrix, “If 6 Was 9”
The Rolling Stones, “All Down The Line”
The Rolling Stones, “Brown Sugar”
Faces, “Stay With Me”
Bush, “Everything Zen”
David Essex, “Rock On”
Living Colour, “Back in Black” (cover)
Screaming Trees, “Shadow of the Season”
Band of Skulls, “The Devil Takes Care of His Own”
Bruce Springsteen, “Atlantic City (Live)

Today, somehow, switches flipped in my head to the “on” position.

This was Day 1 in search of health and Day 1 of coming to grips with the concept that I will be doing something new for a living, leaving some things behind while mining for new crown jewels. I had been orbiting these ideas for weeks, months: lose weight, get healthy, keep writing the book, reinvent yourself, study hard that social media and believe you can play that game. Get your boots on and your big boy pants and stop whining and worrying, start doing and trying and taking aim.

Journalism today: Should we expect more, demand better?

These days, I feel both proud of and appalled by the state of journalism, especially when we consider such subjects as politics, energy, economics and even sports. It seems that journalism is skewed, or at least suspect of being too subjective and driven by agenda. In all fairness, there are plenty of outlets that offer the straight news, the Who-What-Where-When-How reporting we should expect and demand. There is also always a place for opinion; the op-ed writers and columnists own that ball field.

However, amid the Republican and Democratic conventions, the looming elections and the economic and employment concerns still hovering over us like dark clouds, there is too much control by reporters and their networks or publications, too much control of the news, of the truth. It has now become clear that we are not trusted to form our own opinions. In the minds of the gods of journalism, opinions should be doled out like so much candy, opiates, and we are forced to choose which truth to believe.

I prefer interviews and facts, though even those wild cards can be altered, blurred to steer the perspective of the readers or viewers.

As a writer, I don’t feel comfortable working with an agenda on my shoulder. I use the word “integrity” cautiously for fear that it might appear as though I am breaking my arm to pat myself on the back. Opinion is one thing — and valuable at that — but omitting or skewing facts in the name of perpetuating an agenda is not my thing.  That’s for taking sides, which is also a good thing but not in the name of what amounts to a journalistic lie and the short selling of one’s integrity.

Worse still is that it has become increasingly difficult for the non-journalists, the people of this country and most of the world to just get the news as it happened, the facts being straight and crisp and completely absent of subjectivity or hidden agendas, much like a well-starched white shirt.

Instead, these days, it’s all about speed over alacrity, style over substance, attention-grabbing over righteousness. The blogosphere has hijacked news in its most basic format and cable news, which has exploded since 9/11, has become a battleground for the Right, Left, Center… all with ratings being the ultimate prize, the captured flag.

I don’t like it. All I can do, all any of us can really do, is mine for facts, take in all opinions, overcome the noise and the lies and the bombast and demand the truth, tossing away any outlet that refuses to give it to you.

To paraphrase an old and well-worn cliché: There are three sides to any story, only one of them is true.

Are writers crazy… or courageous?

Are those of us who write — with the purpose of being published and read by strangers — out of our minds?

I ask this of myself many times, since writing, fiction or not,  is hard enough. Unless you’re already under contract, your the one who gets to decide when the project is ready for public consumption. You have to put the word out, market yourself, tell everyone and anyone about your book or store. Brag.

Lunacy or abject bravery?

You write a book and bark out, “Look at me! I made this! I wrote a book!”

You’ve never heard the sound of crickets laughing?

“Well, I know you don’t know me, but I promise it’s good! I mean, hey, it’s on Kindle so it has to be good!”

Well, that’s way too many exclamation points, someone said.

Piss off!

Then someone reads what you have done — wife, father, friend, complete stranger — and you realize that you just exposed yourself and your precious creativity to the outside world. That you want the reader to like the book is an understatement. You want the reader to love it, almost as much as you want that person not to hate it, because if they do and they’re part of your inner circle, you’ll get an awkward but polite smile and a halfhearted pat on the head. If your reader is a stranger…look out.

Many believe that the hardest part of writing is the re-writing, the editing. I say it’s the promotion. The selling. It feels so good during the writing process (at least it does for me), why ruin things by having to get out there and grind away at trying get other people to read your most personal work? What are we, a public service? Who cares if anyone sees it? Is it all about money? Ego?

No.

Whether it’s romance, pulp, sci-fi, fantasy, chick lit, satire, literary fiction, sports, current events, SEO-heavy web content, biography, articles, blogs or even advertising copy, there is still one common thread, one reason for it all to exist: Telling a story.

We as living, thinking creatures have told stories since cavemen drew on walls, since writers and painters worked under the weight of poverty and never finding fame until their bones had turned to dust. Storytelling is an effort to relate or elicit emotional responses, to find out that we’re not alone in our thoughts or fears and that there is something connecting each of us.

I plan to continue telling stories to anyone within earshot until I turn to dust, crazy or not.

Then there’s this other thing…

Okay, some of you have been reading my food blogs, done mostly to exercise my blogging skills as well as just have a little fun. Some of you are in this space for the first time.

As the comedy troupe, Monty Python, once dubbed a film: And now for something completely different…

Sometimes, I write for money (being paid or not is another story). Most of the time, I wear the hat of sportswriter, covering football, both pro and college. However, for the purpose of this particular blog entry, I also write fiction and there are a few things I need to share.

You see, a while ago, my father, Dave, a far more prolific writer than I am, was working on a novel. He had hit a wall, it seems, since I hadn’t heard him talk about it in quite some time.

“So, how’s the book coming?” I asked.

“Eh, I’m kind of stuck.”

I paused, not knowing what was behind the door I was about to open.

“I’ll help,” I said.

A few days later, I was in the middle of an adventure, both on the page and in my life. Of all the writing I had done, I had never touched anything that resembled a geopolitical action-thriller. And yet, there I was at the computer, reading his outline, trying to expel the delusions of literary grandeur from my mind… it was time to grind it out.

The result, finally, is the novel, “Tel Arad.” It’s written by the two of us and the cover features a shared byline. I cannot, nor can he (I imagine) describe the significance of that fact alone. We did it together and now it’s real.  I don’t know how many times my name has appeared in print under a headline, but the co-authorship of this book is worth more than anything.

I don’t know what readers will think of “Tel Arad.” I hope they like it. I hope we do well with it. The real glory, the true value, was found in the work. It cannot be judged or taken away. Someday, the book will be forgotten by others, maybe even ourselves, but the teamwork, the father-son effort it took to make something together will live on forever.

While we toiled, there was a dusty pile of papers under my desk, calling out: “Don’t forget about me.”

And so, I did not forget. When the work on “Tel Arad” was done, and we saw that it was ready for public consumption, I broke out that pile of papers, which in truth was a “dusty” computer file, made some changes, tightened up a few loose ends and sent it out into the ether as an e-book.

“Clean Like Tomorrow” was written too long ago and instead sat marinating in my own fears. I sent it out once to about 10 agencies. The responses ranged from “Well-written… but not for us, thanks,” to the equivalent of a blank stare. I meekly put it away. Don’t ask me about its category because I have no idea where it should fall, though it’s all about a woman, a son, a friend, lives in crises and characters trying to reconnect by changing their lives.

For those of you read one of my earliest posts (hell, there aren’t that many) I am working on something new and different. Hopefully, I will be done writing in a few months, the complete story finally revealed to me and ready for I-don’t-know-what. E-book? A literary agent? The empty spot under my desk?

And now for the advertising portion of this tale: You can find “Tel Arad” on Amazon as POD or Kindle, and “Clean Like Tomorrow” on Amazon Kindle with POD coming soon.