These are things and links to whatever strikes my fancy. Favorite haunts, opinions or views I have, whatever else I feel an obligation to let other people know about.
This would be an essay I wrote as a term paper during my senior year of high school. This paper expresses the history of my Back to the Future fandom fairly well.
Another essay for school where I drew on my vast knowledge of BTTF to achieve an A. I recently stumbled across this all-but-forgotten essay, from the first term of my freshman year of college, as I was combing through old files. The cited sources are missing from the text, but oh well. It's my attempt to sound scholarly when discussing my fave films. :-)
I wrote this, originally, in my private journal that I have maintained since 1992 on my computer. The version here is a slightly-edited-for-all-eyes form of it. I was trying to capture and explain my feelings about writing and I think this is as good as it gets with me explaining what that medium truly means to me.
This story was my first published work -- ever! I wrote it in the fall of 1993 when I was a freshman in high school, for my Creative Writing I class. I had so many ideas then, so much time and inspiration. I had a huge level of output for things that freshman year, and a wonderful class that allowed me time and encouraged me to spill that out on paper. I also had an awesome teacher, Ms. Monnier. It was much fun visiting her years later and giving her a copy of my first published novel...especially since I started PIT in her class!
Anyway, this is me being Melodramatic and maybe a bit angsty. The story is pretty short for me and first appeared in SAVANT, the Arts & Communication High School's student magazine. I submitted it to the magazine, and was shocked when it was selected to be published. (Again, I was a lowely freshman.) The publication was interesting -- they had rewritten the beginning (gasp!), which surprised me. (My first realization that that could happen.) But someone also made an illustration to go with the text, which I thought was cool. My parents laminated me a copy of the published story, which I still have somewhere. I was so proud, it wasn't even funny.... Looking back on this story now, there are sooooo many things I'd change. But this is where my writing level was when I was a 14-year-old high school freshman, if you're so inclined to be curious.
Another short story from my freshman year, during the fall of 1993. (I was extremely prolific that year, due to being in my first creative writing class, having an awesome teacher, and being in an environment that was supportive of my writing ability.) I have a lot of weird ideas, and this story is one from the "what if?" files of the imagination. Which is kind of the genre I still like to read and write in. (PIT is definitely a "What If" scenario sort of thing.) This story, in spite of the pretty massive length (it was about 20 pages double spaced) was also published in SAVANT at the end of that school year. I remember my CW teacher thought this story idea was really unique and creative.
I have little to no memory of writing this story. It was for my creative writing class in the fall of 1993 again. Short stories are not my forte, BTW. I'm more of a novel-girl. If I remember correctly, my point in this story was to follow an object through time. I've always dug those kinds of stories. In fact, I'd like to do a novel-length work someday in that sort of vein.... This piece wasn't published in the h.s. lit magazine, BTW, mostly because it was something I did that was pretty much throw away. I didn't have the same passionate, strong feelings for this as I had for the aforementioned pieces above.
This is a short story that I wrote in the spring of 1997, in a short story creative writing class at my high school. If I recall correctly, the whole thing was kind of an experiment; I was trying to see if I could maintain an action sequence and pacing for so long, as well as experiment with writing a story from the first person perspective of a guy. Since writing short stories is not my forté -- generally a "short story" for me is, like, 20 pages! -- I figured this could keep the page length down. The results were pleasing enough that the story was recruited and published in my high school's literary magazine, Savant, in June 1997. Later, when I tweaked the tale a bit and submitted it for a creative writing class my sophomore year of college, it was the only thing my professor liked. (The version here is the tweaked version from fall 1998.)
I have thought about trying to get "Joyride" published somewhere professionally, but since the teens in this story are flagrantly breaking the law, I dunno how well it would go over with editors. And for anyone who's read my first "Partners in Time" book -- yes, two of the first names of characters from that novel are in this story. What can I say? I like those names, and at the time who knew PIT would be published? But the characters in this story are not the same characters in PIT.
And no, I did not write this from firsthand experience!
This was written for my sophomore year creative writing class in college. At that time -- the fall of 1998 -- I was going through a very difficult time, emotionally, in my life. I had been put on the drug Accutaine for some bad acne, and was suffering from the side effect of depression. Unfortunately, the doctors didn't believe at that time that drug was the cause of my feelings, so I was left believing I was going genuinely nuts. A year or so later, when the FDA put out this warning about depression being linked to the drug, I was pretty pissed. If I knew at the time it was temporary, I would've felt so much better.... But once I got off the drug, the bad feelings went away.
"The Photograph" was the result of me writing something very very dark that matched my current state of mind at the time. Post-nuclear stories have a weird and creepy fascination for me, and I suppose this was my way of being like, "Well, as bad as I feel now, at least I'm not this character!" I deliberately left her unnamed in the story, and I also cobbled a bunch of details from my own life in the story. (The bit about the view from her childhood bedroom -- that's from my own life.)
When I shared this story with my classmates, though, I found it interesting that people were polarized with it; people either really liked it or really hated it. Most people come away from reading this feeling kind of depressed, so I apologize in advance. My intent was not to do that in writing this; rather, it should show people why nuclear war is bad. Hopefully a fate like this will never come to pass for anyone.
Ummm, the less said about this one the better. Like "The Photograph," I wrote this for the same creative writing class about the same time, in November 1998. It's cringe-worthy mostly to me, perhaps, because this is sort of my "Worst Case Scenario" that I could see playing out with the first guy that I fell in love with. (And, of course, those feelings were unrequited.) Hopefully said-guy will never see this. And if he does... well, uh, what can I say? I was a melodramatic nineteen-year-old who dealt with the frustrations and problems in her life by writing stories.
-- Dr. Emmett L. Brown, "Back to the Future"
-- William Shakespeare
-- Andy Warhol
-- Nelson Mandela
-- Anne Shirley, "Anne of the Island" by L.M. Montgomery
-- Jules Renard
If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
Oh, how horrible it is that people have to grow up -- and marry -- and change!
There are moments when everything goes well; don't be frightened, it won't last.
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.-- Graham Greene
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it.-- George Bernard Shaw
Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.-- James Stephens
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.-- Anais Nin
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.-- James Branch Cabell
Intentions often melt in the face of unexpected opportunity.-- Shirley Temple Black
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.-- Albert Einstein
The universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent.-- John Haynes Holmes
I do my thing, and you do your thing...
You are you and I am I,
And if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful
If not, it can't be helped.-- Frederick Salomron Perls
It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.-- Mick Jagger
The person portrayed and the portrait are two entirely different things.-- José Ortega y Gasset
Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.-- Reinhold Niebuhr
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied.-- T.S. Eliot
I knew that I would be going places, and I just wanted to know where I was when I got there.-- Michael Jordan
Anytime friends have to be careful of what they say to friends, friendship is taking on another dimension.-- Duke Ellington
Better by far you should forget
and smile
Than that you should remember
and be sad.-- Christina Rossetti
The love that lasts longest is the love that is never returned.-- W. Somerset Maguham
If you're going through hell, keep going.-- Winston Churchill
Imagination is silly, you go around willy-nilly
For example, I go around wanting you
And yet I can't imagine that you want me too.-- "Imagination" by Johnny Burke
There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.-- Niels Bohr
Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible to do that very thing.-- John Andrew Holmes
Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.-- Ernest Hemmingway
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.-- Sigmund Freud
Well, I wake up in a cold sweat
Got a bone to pick with reality.-- "Nocturnal" by Eve 6
This would be a "duh" response to anyone who has known me for more than five minutes. I love these films. Over the years I've ranked 'em in different orders of preference, and for most of my (young) adult life, I've really dug 'em in the ranking of Part III, then Part I, then Part II. But, honestly, who can rank their children? That's how I feel about this. This movie has a bit of every genre out there, killer performances by all actors, and absolutely fantastic characters. (Why else would I write stories with these characters for more than a decade?) It's also tight -- even now, after some 100 viewings, I still catch new details....
I know what some people are thinking -- "Ah, a Michael J. Fox movie, natch." But I really dug The Frighteners when it came out; it's one of the few movies I went out of my way to see twice in the theater. I have always had this interest in ghosts, so seeing Fox as a sort of ghostbuster was pretty neat. He also gives a fantastic performance -- it really shows his range as an actor. Plus, there's the mix-of-genre aspect to it that I liked. Now if only they would put out a DVD of this film that's got all the goodies as the special edition laserdisc has, I can die happy.... Few people know that he got his movies mixed up a few times and that there are outtakes where he was screaming "Doc!" and not "Judge!" (And then cursing at his stupidity, heh heh....)
Robert Zemeckis and Bob Gale (of the BTTF films) once said that this was one of the greatest time travel movies ever made -- and yet no time travel takes place. You can see the influence of this film a lot in Back to the Future Part II, with the alternate 1985.... But, anyway, I grew up seeing this movie on the TV non-stop during the holidays and it was a favorite film of my mom's, but I really didn't appreciate it until I was probably about 11 or 12 and sat down to see it from beginning to end. Wow. I love the message this film has -- that one person can make such positive changes and differences in people's lives. Add that to the fact this is a film tied in tight with my nostalgic childhood memories of the holiday season and bingo! I watch this movie once a year, around Christmas; it's my little tradition. And yes, I am a wuss; I cry every time I see the ending and everyone is paying George Bailey back for being there for them....
I'm sure a few people are going "what the hell?" with this selection. This was one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it teenage films that came out in the latter half of the 1990's, when teen films were all trendy. But, oh my God, few films have the power to crack me up on repeated viewing as this one does. Seth Green's wannabe-rapper character is hysterical! And I'll admit to having a crush on Ethan Embry after seeing his performance here; man, if a guy ever felt that way about me as he does with the Amanda in the film.... At times, this film almost feels like an extended music video -- it has a great soundtrack, uses a lot of fast cuts and camera angles, and takes place mostly at this blowout party. Great teenage comedy.
This is a true teenage movie classic -- and a fantastic comedy. I saw it for the first time when I was 17, and I laughed myself off the couch! It's got a great 1980s feel to it, too, so it's faintly nostalgic for me, since I spent my whole childhood in that decade....
I bought this album after hearing a couple of the singles and liking what I heard. Oddly, I didn't love it at first listen -- but then I started listening to it when I would go off to write in coffee shops, or need to focus and concentrate, and the songs quickly grew on me. It's such a nice, mellow album, and never ever fails to help me write when I need to listen to something soothing, comforting, and not terribly intrusive or distracting. I've got such weird tastes -- I like punk and rock, but also piano and jazz stuff. Go figure.
Great record -- it did not leave my car for a few weeks! A lot of GC's stuff seems to rip off other songs -- am I the only one who hears the simularities between "The Anthum" and that Disney song from The Jungle Book that the bear sings?? -- but that familiarity also probably made it appealing for me. Some faves -- "Say Anything," which sounds like a song from the 80's; "The Anthum" and "Boys and Girls" just rock; and I love "Movin' On"!
I blame my friend, Nicole, for getting me into this band. I really like Lit and Eve 6 -- their melodies, their cheeky lyrics, etc -- and was lamenting one night about "When the hell are they gonna put out a new album?" She asked me if I heard of Marv 3, which was quite similar in sound. I hadn't, so she sent me a CD of a bunch of their different songs. Bingo, I was hooked. This is probably the best of their three albums, and the last one before they disbanded. My one complaint is that "Lefty," a track that is not on any of their albums but Nicole included on her compilation, is not part of the album. (Part of it can be heard on the bonus track credits.) That song kicks ass!
I did my best to avoid citing Greatest Hit albums here, but I exempt a boxed set from that classification. I absolutely love this collection. I mean, if I was left alone on a deserted island and could only have one album with me... this would be it! My parents bought it for me for my 19th birthday, and it had the odd timing of coming along right when I had my first experience with falling in love -- and, a week later, first experience with a broken heart. It was like a soundtrack for every emotion I felt at the time -- and has been, since. "That's Me" -- that song is me; I mean, that's totally how I feel! "Take a Chance on Me" and "The Name of the Game"? My theme songs for my luck and lot with love! If these were on tape, not CD, I would've worn out my original copy ages ago. I don't care what people think -- ABBA rules!
Tom Petty is the person to listen to when driving, I think -- I could be perfectly happy with an entire collection of his albums when driving across country. There's something about the sound that makes me think of road trips, and the fun memories I have of those. One song I really love on this album is "All the Wrong Reasons" -- there's this awesome melody to it, rather haunting. "Two Gunslingers" makes me think of the showdown between Marty McFly and Buford Tannen in BTTF3, weirdly enough.
I love this song, which is odd because I really don't like the other material I've heard from this band. But, oh man, this song has been My Favorite for years, now. Why? I have absolutely no idea. I think it's the plethora of memories I have associated with this song. I remember hearing it on the car radio during the summer of 1997, after I graduated high school, and that was a dang good summer in my life. I remember hearing it on the radio down in L.A. when on vacation down there in September '97. I remember hearing it over the radio when I was hanging out with a friend that I sort of liked in 1998. There's killer imagry to it: "And all at once you look across a crowded room/ to see the way that light attaches to a girl." The line, "I can't remember all the times I tried to tell myself/to hold on to these moments as they pass," pretty much sums up my view on life, too. I also have this odd draw towards songs with haunting melodies, or melancholy sounds to them. I think this one fits both bills. Whatever it is, hearing this song makes me stop what I'm doing, close my eyes, tilt my head back with a smile, and follow along every note with a delirious feeling. I once listened to this song on a loop about 30 times... and I never did get sick of it.
Like "A Long December," I am not entirely sure why I love this song, but I suspect it has a lot to do with the memories tied to it. This song makes me think of both friends and road trips. When it came on the stereo on the road trip I took in March 2001 with some high school friends, at 1 A.M. near the California/Oregon boarder, I turned it up, listened to it, and felt for a few minutes that I was hearing the soundtrack to that moment in my life. It was a brief experience burned into the synapses of my brain forever... and that song brings it, and other good memories, back. It also has a kind of wistful sound to it: "It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right/I hope you had the time of your life."
Another song that I can hear twenty times in one hour and not get sick of it. I remember the first time I really heard the song -- it was 1990, and my family was flying cross country to visit Walt Disney World or relatives in Ohio. I had headphones on and this song came on the airplane radio. I remember looking down from the window of the plane and having this realization where the song felt like the perfect selection for that moment in my life. I have heard the songs a ton of times since then, and each time I have the urge to drive fast, or skydive, star up at a starry night sky, or simply close my eyes and hum along, forgetting my day to day worries for about four and a half minutes.
This song came out during the magical summer of 1997, and the primary memory I connect with it is listening to it in the car I drove at the time -- an '86 Volvo Station Wagon -- when my friends and I were trying to find something fun to do late at night. Every time the part came near the end, where Mark McGrath says, "All around the world, statues crumble for me/who knows how long I've loved you," I'd jack up the volume and my friends and I would all scream out the line at the top of our lungs. The song also has this fun, peppy beat to it that brings to mind summer in general. It doesn't make much sense, lyrically, if you listen to it, but not every song in the world needs to, right?
Technically, I've seen this classified as a Christmas song, but there's really not a thing in the song to suggest the holiday season. (Unless a mention of snow counts.) It is simply as the title says -- a song about a winter's night. To me, this song brings to mind a snowy night with a hot cup of coffee or cocoa, a roaring fire, and a great book or something. I like the images that pop into my head when I hear it, and it has the added bonus of making me feel more peaceful and relaxed when I hear it. A great song to listen to late at night when driving... provided you are not tired.
There is a morbid streak in me that seems to like reading post-apocolyptic novels. ("Alas Babylon" by Pat Frank is a good one, as is the classic "On the Beach" by Nevil Shute -- they both have people dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear war.) This was the first book, though, that really scared the crap out of me when I read it, over the course of two weeks during my senior year of high school. I mean, to the point I had nightmares. Probably because the crisis seems so incredibly possible. We know people are messing with bioterrorism, so isn't it a matter of time before something gets out and kills a lot of people before it's under control? It's hella freaky if you sit down and really think about it.... The characters in this book were also great -- in spite of the mammoth length of the book (more than 1,000 pages, in paperback) I was left wishing for more, for a sequel of sorts. And if you've only seen the miniseries... Bah! That left out so much....
There are a couple key reasons why I probably dig this book -- it's got a really interesting premise, and the main character's name is Marty. Thus, I always picture Michael J. Fox (Marty McFly) as the main guy, and that's always a good experience for me. There is also, like, no sex in this book. I'm no prude, but I really really hate reading books where the author devotes pages and pages to sex acts between their characters. I mean, why do I need to be there with the characters during that? Whatever happened to implying, not telling? A lot of Koontz's books have at least one bedroom scene to them -- but this one doesn't. As much as I liked the book, though, I avoided the miniseries that came out of it a few years ago -- why should I let the (mis)casting of a Baldwin in the main role ruin my mental images of Marty looking like Fox?
This is neat because it's a time travel tale, and it's very very accurate with it's historical details. A must, I think, when writing these sorts of things. I also like it because, unlike a lot of science-fiction/time travel stories out there, this one doesn't take place in the semi-distant future, when humans have supposedly conquered the time barrier. I'm looking forward to the film they are supposedly making on this, whenever it comes out... although I'm sure they'll slaughter it up.
These are probably about middle grade, maybe young adult. But, wow. I didn't really read these until I was in junior high school, and the characters positively leapt off the pages. Once again, they kind of cross and mix up genres; there's ghosts, time travel, and this great love-hate relationship between two teens woven in there. There's four books in all -- "The Ghost Belonged to Me," "Ghosts I Have Been," "The Dreadful Future of Blossom Culp," and "Blossom Culp and the Sleep of Death" -- following a couple years in the life of Alexander and Blossom, growing up in this sleepy little town in the mid-1910s. There is this dry sort of wit that the characters have in narration that really tickle my funny bone. I really should buy these books, rather than check them out of the library once a year....
My brother gave me this book (at my request) for my 24th birthday. I love the supernatural, and from what I had heard of the plot, it sounded a lot like "Remember Me" by Christopher Pike, a fave novel of mine from my youth. As expected, I loved the book! Has it all -- humor, pathos, and a mystery of sorts. I think it deserves the popularity it got.
Someday, maybe, I will create my own page dedicated to the actor that I so admire. Until then, this site should fulfill your Fox-y needs. It's one of the few that is actually maintained and updated on a regular basis!
This is the website of my friend and writing mentor. Mary Jean is a supremely talented writer, and has some awesome fanfictions in a variety of genres -- including Lord of the Rings, "The Real Ghostbusters", and (my personal fave) Back to the Future. Her stories can all be found online at her website, as well as original artwork, editorials, compositions (as in music) and her nifty "Sim" skins.
This is a Portland-area rock band that is made up of guys I went to college with. The name has changed, like, 4 times in the last few years, and this is the latest incarnation. Their shows are never dull or lacking in excitement. Sadly, they disbanded recently, but their music shall live on forever!
Peter (Peat) Bakke is a guy I went to high school with, and this is his website. It's main fascination, for me, is the online journal, in which he details his adventures in attending college in New Zealand with Poncho, another mutual pal from high school. I find the reports both witty and horrifying. Best combo for web reading, I think.
Another pal from the high school daze, Tom Gammons, runs this website, which promotes his DJing skills. It's under almost constant construction.
"Ariokh" is really Izzy, another friend from the halls of ACHS, and a very talented artist. Check out his works that he is completing in art school, as well as his weblog of, um, very deviant thoughts.
Welcome to ghost hunting in the twenty-first century! The Willard Library in Evansville, Indiana, has a couple webcams set up in some reputedly haunted rooms. The cams run 24/7 and are quite fun to check out when one is bored on the 'net and looking for excitement. The cams have also caught a lot of funky, unexplainable things....
I am a member of this organization, which is the equvillant of a writer's organization for those specificly writing books for kids and teens, as well as the illustrators in that area. An excellent resource for anyone who writes in those genres, or is thinking about it.