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Recently Read, Prose (9/17/13)

booksseptI haven’t done one of these in the longest time — blame my increasingly busy work (over-)load — and can’t really remember what I’ve read in the recent months since I last did one. Theoretically, I could simply look up my “Recently Borrowed” list on the libary’s website and make an educated guess, but instead I’ll declare a do-over and just list the books I read this past weekend. Sorry, everything that fell into that four month limbo!

Brian Stelter’s Top of the Morning was a book that I’d been really looking forward to — I like his work on the New York Times’ media beat a lot, and find the whole weird world of American morning television politics both fascinating and funny, so this seemed like the ideal book for me. Sadly, it wasn’t, and it ultimately comes down to Stelter’s writing, which read like it needed a stronger editor — he kept going back to the same tics (especially comparing a big event to a big sporting event, without any context because obviously everyone gets boxing references, right?), and was clearly more comfortable with shorter prose than something as long as this book. It’s not a bad book, but it’s one that could’ve been a lot better with just a little more time spent on refining it.

The Aimee Bender anthology, meanwhile, is as good as you’d expect from her. It’s also… sadder, perhaps? More melancholy? It felt darker, and lonelier, than I am used to, for some reason. Or, perhaps, it could be that there wasn’t the balance of melancholy and wonder that I’ve come to expect from her. Nevertheless, that’s all on me; I loved this collection, as I’ve loved all of her work. Aimee Bender’s awesome, you guys.

That said, maybe she’s not as awesome as Questlove? Mo Meta Blues was a wonderfully fun, wonderfully readable book, a memoir about a life filled with music that is just filled with joy and wonder and makes you want to listen to all the music he mentions (It gave me a serious Prince jones, of all things). I sped through this one, starting it on Saturday evening and finishing it before lunch on Sunday; it was just that enjoyable, that un-put-down-able.

I also read Fade In, Michael Piller’s unpublished-but-available-online memoir about the creation of Star Trek: Insurrection, a movie that I’ve never even seen. It was a curious read, because it’s essentially a tell-all about the way in which a movie can start as one thing, then end up as something entirely different (and arguably not as good) written by someone entirely complicit in all the changes and who isn’t outraged by them. It’s… Sad, but telling, might be the best way to describe it. You can tell that Piller did what he thought was best given the circumstances, but you can also feel his frustration about those circumstances at the same time. Weirdly compelling, even if you’ve never seen the movie like me.

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“Don’t Say That”

I once described myself as a geek to a lady I was working with.

She reached her arm across the desk, patted my hand and said “don’t say that, I think you’re a very nice person”.

From the comments section of this post.

I know, I know; don’t read the comments. But still.

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“You Do It in Secret”

I look at it like this: we have access to all of information, and yet we’re still separated. I find it fascinating, that people hide behind false names – that’s the only way a lot of young people can communicate with each other. I believe it’s to do with advertising: people are presented as gods and goddesses, beautiful and perfect. We’re just not like that. So how do you communicate with others if they are expecting you to be perfect? You do it in secret.

Terry Gilliam, from an interview with the Guardian.

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California, Here I Cawwwwwww-Wuh-Uhm

This past Monday marked the tenth anniversary of Fox’s The O.C., the increasingly weird and intermittently wonderful teen soap that introduced the world to the questionable charms of Seth Cohen, Ryan Atwood and the ever-troubled Marissa Cooper, a literal girl-next-door gone so horribly, horribly wild. The show’s mix of meta-commentary and achingly sincere emotional melodrama – Ryan loves Marissa but can’t help her as she self-destructs in front of his eyes! – was, for someone like me who sneaked in episodes of Dawson’s Creek like some dirty little secret back in the day, an utterly irresistible combination. Here, finally, was a show that I could embrace and adore, unapologetically.

Well, almost unapologetically.

The start of something for TIME that I started, then abandoned in favor of something else, this week.

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“Never Tell Somebody What You’re Writing Because Then You Won’t Write It Down”

This comes from Kai, my wife, who produced the film. She [quotes from] Rio Grande: ‘Get it done, Johnny Reb.’ It’s like, don’t make excuses. There aren’t any anymore. If you’re talking about it, you should be doing it and she doesn’t like to see talent go fallow. She doesn’t like to see people repeat themselves. She likes people to get it done, purely out of love of the person and then joy for the product itself. And that’s the thing: I talked about Much Ado for 10 years and it was Kai who finally said, ‘What if instead of talking about it . . . ’ and I went, ‘What?’ Someone will always tell you that you can’t. One of the things that she delighted in was the fact that, apart from telling the people at Marvel so that they didn’t freak out when they found out that I was directing another movie [while we were in postproduction on The Avengers], we really didn’t tell anybody. It was just our little thing. There’s an old thing they say: Writers never tell somebody what you’re writing because then you won’t write it down, and it’s kind of applied to the production in a way. If we let this get out and balloon into something that mattered to anybody besides us, we might not finish it.

From here. It’s Joss Whedon talking about tips for getting stuff done, which is at the top of my “I should get better at that” list currently.

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All Apologies

Okay, so I meant to stay a little bit quiet on here around the time of the San Diego Comic-Con, if only because I was working it for Wired and live-blogging the experience over there. I didn’t, however, mean to stay quite so quiet for so long. Blame the weird two-week mental hangover that followed.

For some reason that I can’t explain, Comic-Con was both better than usual this year – No nights spent awake, working all the way through to the early morning! – and worse, at least in terms of inability to fit back into my regular schedule afterwards. The first week back, I was thinking through sludge; I got to the Tuesday and my brain pretty much locked up with the rest of that week seeing me run on fumes as much as anything else. Last week, too, I found myself curiously overwhelmed by everything that needed doing. Why? I really have no idea. Everything just got to be a little bit much, I guess.

But that is, I hope, over. My new work schedule – I’m now writing for the Hollywood Reporter, Wired and Time – is still something I’m trying to get used to, but I’m getting better at it. I’ll really, seriously, try to write more here now. Honest.

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Like The Word As A Bang, You Have To Think Again

Suzi Eszterhas/Minden/SolentFrom the Guardian’s Photo Blog:

Wouldn’t you just love this job? An Orangutan caretaker bathes an infant at the Orangutan Care Centre, Borneo, Indonesia. This one-year-old is one of 330 orphans at the centre. They spend every waking moment with their caretaker and develop special bonds. Photograph: Suzi Eszterhas/Minden/Solent/Solent News

Comic-Con starts in two days. With the amount of stuff I have to do between now and then, I feel more than a little bit like this monkey right now: Washed out, and maybe a little defeated.