A Conversation with Charlie (Age 5) About Sympathetic Characters

HIM: Dad, is Godzilla a bad guy?
ME: Well, I don't know. I think he's neither bad nor good. He's just a lizard monster.
HIM: I don't think he's bad. I saw a Godzilla at my friend's house and he was fighting this giant fish. And I don't think he's bad.
ME: Okay.
HIM: You know what I think?
ME: What?
HIM: I think he's misunderstood. Godzilla is misunderstood, Dad.

For Some Business Reasons

I must point out that I do some writing work that I have been paid for. Sometimes people hire me to write things. It's a fact.

The Impossible Questions of Charlie (Age 5)

1. "How big are the tooth fairy's claws?"
2. "What was the name of the first guy?"
3. "What's bigger than the world's biggest toilet?"
4. "What was Bush's littlest, tiniest mistake?"

I Think I Better Quit Radio and Book Writing

And go work in videogames. Because nothing is cooler than this and this is the future. It's a video of Spore, the new game from Will Wright who made The Sims.

You May Wish to Avoid Charlie (Age 5) on April 1st

HIM: You know what would be a funny April Fool's?
ME: What?
HIM: If you shot someone with a gun that didn't kill them but made them fall asleep!
ME: What? That's horrible!
HIM: Well, it wouldn't kill them. They would just get shot and then --OOH!-- fall asleep.
ME: But they would think they were dying as they fell asleep. And then they would wake up and be really confused.
HIM: Yeah! It would be so funny! And you'd yell "April Fool's!"

MySpace

Our rocky roll band, Chicken Starship, the most important band in the world, has a MySpace page. I still don't, like, get the whole MySpace thing. But I've been having fun with the feature where you invite people to be your friends who aren't really your friends. And my favorite part is the sentence that today's invitations has generated:

"Currently awaiting approval from Motorhead"

Am I ever. Explains a lot of issues in my life, actually.

Update: Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, Lucinda Williams, Tift Merritt, Franz Ferdinand, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have all signed on as "friends". It's odd, the more famous friends we get, the more I feel like a big loser.

My Own Version of Crash

I was in Los Angeles last week, hosting a radio show down there. Had a lovely time. Thanks for asking. For lunch, I sometimes went to a little cafe in the building. One of those featureless lunch places found in office parks. I ordered the California Club sandwich, figuring since I was in California I might as well. The guy working there kept glaring at me while he made the sandwich. I wondered what I had done wrong. I will point out here that he was of a different ethnicity, which is something I thought of only because I had recently seen Crash and while I hated it I wondered if that's what LA was really like. So anyway, back to the sandwich. Finally, he handed it to me.

HIM: There was no bacon. We're out.
ME: Oh. Okay.
HIM: So I put some extra turkey on there. And guacamole. You understand?
ME: Yes. Yes, I think so.
HIM: So now we're even. Okay?
ME: We're even?
HIM: We're even.
ME: Okay.

I guess if you're in the cop business or the gang business or the movie business, they make an epic film of your conflicts. But if you're in food service or public radio, you're left to make your own drama out of a club sandwich and the sense of uneasy justice arrived at through bacon substitution. I'm glad we're even.

Dropping Like a Stone

For a day or so, the book was at #138,000 or something. Today, back down to the 400's. I have hope there might be an uptick in seven months when it's released seven months from now and gathers publicity. But if not, it was a wild ride!

Sorry for the low output of posting

Full refunds for all. I've been in Los Angeles, hosting Weekend America for a week. And a weekend.