The Pecman

Yep, my central character in Groovy Kind of Love was on a high school swim team, and I was on swim teams for 7 years in Florida. Talk to me in email.

I have a better playlist: Beatles and more Beatles Beach Boys McCartney Lennon ELO That's enough to tide me over for at least 12 hours, without a single repetition. But: I admit to having one iPod that has nothing but Classical and Jazz on it, and sometimes that's the right thing I need. And I often write to just instrumental classical and jazz because that way, the lyrics aren't a distraction. Having access to a large variety of music is of prime importance to me.

And in the latest news: the kid has been allowed back to high school to graduate later on this year... Florida Teen in X-Rated Videos Can Return to School After Suspension An 18-year-old Florida student is set to return to class Wednesday after he says he was suspended when school officials learned of his pornographic online photos and videos. Robert Marucci, a senior at Cocoa High School in Cocoa, Florida, told CNN affiliate WKMG that he picked up his X-rated gig to help his mom pay the bills. His mom, Melyssa Lieb, said when students discovered the explicit material online, her son became a target. "He was bullied, he was threatened." Then, according to Lieb, her son was suspended, because the principal didn't approve of his after-school activities. more here: http://us.cnn.com/2014/01/21/us/florida-teen-suspended-porn/?iref=obnetwork

Cole is still young at heart!

Wow, that is a great story. Thanks for sharing it, DB!

Speaking as an author who has 4 novels on this site (OK, 3.3 novels plus I just started a 5th), I have no problem with it. As far as I'm concerned, the moment you post ASCII text on a website, it's out there amidst the flotsam and jetsam of the web. What I don't like is when the stories are reposted to other parts of the web without my permission. I've seen this happen with paid websites, which really irks me. But... it's always nice when readers contribute to keeping this site going with a contribution to The Dude! I encourage that completely.

Ship it FedEx to LA! They're going on water rationing early this year. I think we're going down to three toilet flushes a week and one lawn watering... and that's it.

I helped out Josh with quite a bit of editing and suggestions on The Least of These. My only comment is that he had some personal situations that were trying, and he was very conflicted with his lifestyle, his family, his religion, and other issues. I got the impression from some of our last communications that he was going to sever ties from everybody because of that.

I'm ready for that right now! I just hope it's better than my current life experience...

Hey! Stop hogging all the rain! Send some of that out to California! We're dyin' out here from lack of water!

Nobody got it in Showscan, because MGM balked at the expense of having to convert all the theaters and all that stuff. I saw some of Trumbull's 60fps 70mm tests at a SMPTE meeting around 1980, and my reaction then was that it looked a little too "electronic" and weird... not unlike the 48fps Hobbit material that Peter Jackson has done. In the case of Brainstorm, it would've been perfect for showing the difference between the movie and the Brainstorm helmet experience. One of the great messages of the movie was, if you had an argument with a close friend or lover, imagine being able to plug into their brain and instantly understand their life's experiences and point of view. You'd know exactly why they think the way they do in a way that's far beyond words or simple communication. Very interesting idea, though the movie barely scratched the surface of it. I honestly think it works better as a novel. But it will be interesting to see if they can ever find a way to plug a movie directly into our heads and bypass all the other senses. The problem is, I bet there could be an entire race of humans who'd be glad to just stay plugged-in all day long, as long as they keep getting air, water, and food. (I'm reminded of the world of The Matrix as depicted in that movie.)

I saw this as a local news report, and I thought, "what's the mystery? Gay boys desperately want more muscle." Of course they're going to use performance-enhancement drugs. If I could've had access to these drugs when I was a kid in the 1970s, I would've grabbed them immediately. Note that neither steroids nor human growth hormone nor testosterone will build muscle. What they actually do is help repair muscle after a hard workout, and give you faster recovery time. If you're a couch potato and take tons of drugs, you're never going to be muscular. The only way to do that is to hit the gym. The drugs just make it less painful and more productive. The problem with teenagers taking any drugs like this is that it will F them up at this age. Doctors say you should be at least 18 before taking any drugs like this, and they have to be monitored carefully (that is, ahem, in countries where they're still legal). There are a lot of health risks for young kids taking crap like this, including terrible mood swings, depression, increased acne, liver damage, all kinds of stuff. In moderate doses, it's actually not that bad. The problem, though, is when idiot kids assume that if a small injection of steroids is good, then a massive dose is even better. That's bad. And we're in a world where an average high school has linebackers that are all over 200 lbs. You can't tell me they're not using drugs. Compare that to 20 years ago, when the kids were maybe 150-160 lbs. On the other hand: I'd rather they be doing steroids than killing themselves with heroin, crack, and all that crap. That stuff is alarming, and the increase of easy heroin availability on the streets is at an epic level. (Witness the recent death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman.)

You ever see Doug Trumbull's 1983 film Brainstorm? Watch this: As the guy in the movie says: "imagine what this will do to the porno industry!"

Actually, Cuban Spanish and Castilian Spanish are very similar except for idioms and curse words. My favorite Cuban curse word (which my father used to bellow during family barbecues) was "CONJO!" [it was funny in the 1960s. Watch for this in DePalma's Scarface, also about Cubans in Florida.] Mexican Spanish is different, and what we were taught in Spanish class was that Spaniards look down upon the Mexican people's language because they feel they've bastardized it and made it "lazy" and low-class. (The teacher's words, not mine.) One could compare an upper-crust Boston accent to a white-trash Alabama accent and come to similar conclusions about English, or even an educated British accent vs. a Brooklyn accent. I think under the right circumstances, we're all billingual. What was the question again?

Really a tragic end to a brilliant career. Phil Hoffman was a one-of-a-kind actor, one of the rare people who could disappear into a role. He could play four or five different people and you'd never be aware it was him until after the movie was over. He became the character. The three roles that impressed me the most were the shlub in Boogie Nights who tries to proposition well-hung porn star Mark Wahlberg only to get rebuked, and hit himself in the head crying, "stupid! stupid! stupid!" (which my partner and I have laughed about for 15 years); his fantastic role in Almost Famous as cynical, world-weary rock critic Lester Bangs, giving career advice to the teenaged Cameron Crowe, who just got his first big break writing for Rolling Stone; and as the mysterious L. Ron Hubbard-like religious czar who runs a Scientology-like church in The Master. All three totally different characters, totally different stories, and it's like a different guy played each of them. Just ordered Capote on Netflix and can't wait to see that. The previews are amazing: you believe he was the 1950s/1960s writer. Terrible waste that he died. I know this is a poor taste joke, but I lamented to a friend today, "why is Hoffman dead while idiots like Shia LaBouf and Justin Bieber are still alive? There are times I wish Shia LaBouf would drive off a cliff, with Bieber sitting in his lap, and maybe with Lindsay Lohan in the back seat." [i know, bad taste, but I cracked up anyway.]

Virtual reality headsets have been around for years. There still isn't enough resolution, dynamic range, or low enough noise for this to work.

No, 5.6 is pretty bad. Those, we go "WHOA! What the hell was that?" The seismologists said a few months after the January 1994 quake that one of the epicenters was literally within 2 blocks of us, which explains why it felt like a 7+ to us. The official claim was a 6.7, but trust me, the strength goes up exponentially with every bump on the scale. A 4 doesn't sway us much (literally). I went through a dozen hurricanes in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s, some pretty bad, but at least for those you get some warning. Same with snow. But earthquakes are nasty, plus it takes years to clean them up. The freeway right next to us now was knocked down for 18 months, which was a nightmare since it's the main drag in this part of town. God help us when we get whacked again.

Put both those boys on Oxycontin, it'll be a whole different story. My best friend's wife died of cancer, and it took her about 8 months of struggle to finally go. It was an awful experience for her and her family (and me, too). I think she's been dead for 10 years and I still get a little misty-eyed at her loss. I'm a real whiner when it complains to lines of believability and keeping the story's internal logic intact. When it comes to something as basic as cancer, there's a thousand places to look for help on the web that'll give writers tons of background info on what the treatment and prognosis is. I get real bent out of shape when I argue with people who say, "hey, this is just a fantasy, so no rules apply." I think rules do apply in all types of fiction, even fantasy, even comic books. (I have a raging debate elsewhere with people on why Cars is one of the worst movies ever made because it makes no sense, but that's another debate. I can buy into Snow White, I can buy into Pinocchio, but I don't buy a world populated entirely of automobiles, especially when all the buildings, stairways, and sidewalks are clearly made for humans. And there are no humans in the movie and no explanation as to where they went.)

My high school Spanish was confined to the "donde esta, casa de Pepe" kind of Spanish. Not too useful. I can barely understand a little Espanol if they speak very slowly, but the Spanish spoken in Cuba, Spain, and Mexico are all pretty different, and they speak very fast in Spain, plus there's more of a lithp with Castillian Spanish.

Once I fixed the hole where the rain gets in, it stopped my mind from wandering.

My partner (the one with the law degree) often points out to me that in American law, when it's "Joe Smith vs. the Ford Motor Company," they do abbreviate vs. as "v" in the legal papers.

Show's been great this season. I'm crushed that the third show airs in America this weekend (right after the Super Bowl, ironically), and it's the end of Holmes for another year. Awful. I really wish they could do 12 one-hour shows every year like Downton, Torchwood, and most of the other British shows.

I stopped the moment I read that the guy was a Mormon and killed the web page. Not gonna read it.

That's very true. It's a very common element with American cop shows (particularly Law & Order) that somehow, the criminal seems to go on trial less than a week after being arrested, and the reality is that it takes months to get to trial, and sometime even more months of delay caused by the appeals process. None of this works for drama. But I think the reality of having sex with somebody dying of cancer and undergoing chemotheraphy is not the same as the reality of how quickly somebody can go on trial for a crime. Again, I suggested one possible fix for the former; just say he or she is not using chemo and is recovering from cancer at the time of the affair. That can work. I just use the plain, unadorned default format and it works fine for me. I have to blow up the webpage a size or two to make it readable for me, but that's the pitfalls of having a 24" high-res monitor.

Man, what's with the typeface issues on this forum? You guys gotta settle down and just use control-+ (command-+ on the Mac) to make the screen type more visible on your browser without actually changing the fonts in your messages. Back to the subject at hand: I agree 100% with Cole. I think not stretching credulity too far is the key. In this case, a couple of sentences could've solved the problem: say that the kid was in remission, he was no longer on chemo, and he was starting to grow hair back and feel normal. That works... then have the cancer return. I've had a half-dozen people in my life who actually had cancer in real life, and even for the one or two who survived, it's not fun, simple, or pretty. The day-to-day struggles they have to deal with are unbelievably cruel. Very true! I'm keenly aware of time in my own stories, and in addition to jotting down bullet points for chapters, I also write short paragraph-long bios of each character plus a timeline of exactly when and where everything happens. That way, if I say in Chapter 7, "remember when you shot that guy in Idaho on March 6th?", I can go back and confirm that yes, it was Thursday, March 6th that this happened. I'm not afraid of blurring the days so that I could say, "by the following week, he and I still weren't talking, and we avoided each other in the hallways." So as long as we're aware of the passing of time, and it's handled in a realistic way, I think it can work. BTW, you just reminded me in my current story that the climax was in Halloween, not Thanksgiving, so now I have to go back and rewrite it! Got a little ahead of myself (ahem).