About a year ago I started this blog with only a vague idea of what the point of it was going to be. Over the course of that year, my original idea has evolved, but I think the blog has become better for it and I hope it continues to evolve. That’s how things keep from getting stale.
I’m rather impressed with myself that I didn’t abandon it. There have been more times than I’d like to count that I didn’t feel like making a post. I didn’t have anything to write about, nothing I wanted to say. But I scrapped some words together and slapped it on the blog and called it a post. And it didn’t turn out too bad. It’s another shot in the arm for my self-esteem and my discipline. I can pull it together, even when I don’t feel like it.
The place isn’t been overrun by traffic, but I never expected it to be. Five hits a day and I’m happy. That’s five more hits than I’d ever thought I’d get. I figured that outside of a few friends reading occasionally, this place would pretty much be a left alone thing.
But the bits and pieces have added up and in the first year, this blog has logged over 2,000 views. So for the people who have read my blog posts, thanks. I really appreciate it. You give me the warm fuzzies.
For the record, my five most popular posts:
-Friday Funtimes–Rerun Junkie: Starsky and Hutch
-Friday Funtimes–Rerun Junkie: Hawaii 5-0
-Friday Funtimes–Rerun Junkie: The Monkees
-Writing Wednesday–Deadlines: Breaking Them
-Friday Funtimes–Video: We’re From Chicago! Yeah!
Don’t think I don’t notice the pattern.
The top five search terms:
-the monkees
-kiki writes wordpress
-the monkeys
-starsky and hutch
-pickle wraps
Five weirdest search terms:
-“hostel” “stalls didn’t have”
-deranged vietnam vet sniper hooks
-huge titties weightless environment
-new hawaii 5-0 homoerotic
-pregnant firefox mascot
The sad thing is that I know what post each of those searches are probably linked to. It’s amazing the kind of things people look for on the internet, but if they end up here and like what they read, I guess I can’t be too judgmental now can I?
(Yeah, I probably will be.)
So overall, I’m pretty happy with how my first year of blogging has gone. In many ways it’s been a lot better than I thought it’d be and I’m thrilled with that.
Now to keep it up and continue to get better during the next year.
That opening baseline. That opening shot of the New York skyline. That eclectic bunch filling a rundown squad room. Do you know what I’m talking about? Even if you don’t, you’ll be humming it soon enough.
Barney Miller is a 70’s classic, running from 1974 to 1982, that took place in the detective’s squad room of the 12th precinct in New York City. Cops cite the show as one of the most realistic cop shows to be on TV. It showed the funny, ridiculous side of crime. While other cop shows dealt with the more serious crime like murders and drug rings, Barney Miller and company dealt with blind shoplifters, philosophical bums, and purse snatching stockbrokers. And they did it all while dealing with staff shortages, budget cuts, and a poorly working toilet.
Though they occasionally tackled heavier subjects (racism, homicide, rape), the show mostly centered on the detectives getting by and dealing with a host of criminals and victims just as varied and interesting as they were.
The original cast consisted of Barney Miller (Hal Linden), Stan “Wojo” Wojciehowicz (Max Gail), Phil Fish (Abe Vigoda), and Chano Amaguale (Gregory Sierra). Ron Harris (Ron Glass) and Nick Yemana (Jack Soo) were officially added as regulars by the second season. In the beginning, Barney’s wife Liz (Barbara Barrie) played a bigger role, but by the second season had diminished.
In the beginning…
The cast changed over the seasons. Gregory Sierra and Abe Vigoda both left for other series, which led to Steve Landesburg as Arthur Dietrich and Ron Carey as the long suffering Officer Carl Levitt joining the show. James Gregory also joined as Inspector Frank Luger. Jack Soo passed away in 1979 and was never replaced.
…at the end.
The integration of the new characters was pretty smooth. It felt like what would happen at a real precinct. People get transferred or retire and new people move in. Personalities didn’t have to be replaced. This kind of show called for individuality. And it allowed for growth.
Barney was the wise leader, gifted with compassion and a desire to do the right thing. Wojo started off as kind of a thick-skulled muscle head, but over the seasons revealed a big heart and actually showed some growth. Harris was a styled intellectual with a gift for writing and a love for the stock market. Dietrich was also an intellectual, but he was more of a walking encyclopedia with a wit so dry it could be used for kindling. Chano was a street smart guy that never failed to go out on a limb to get his job done. Nick hated filing, made terrible coffee, and had a love for gambling. Fish may have acted like life was the pits, but he dreaded enforced retirement and even kidney stones couldn’t keep him off the job. Inspector Luger was always going on about the good ol’ days, but he always had his detectives’ backs. Officer Levitt longed to be a detective and was enthusiastic about his job, but was often overlooked (he felt because he was short).
The great part about the show was that the guest stars were as much fun as the detectives and many of the actors were on several times as different characters. Peggy Pope, Oliver Clark, Don Calfa, Florence Halop, Sal Viscuso, Doris Roberts, Michael Tucci, A. Martinez, Phil Leeds, and Christopher Lloyd were all on multiple times.
They also had some great recurring characters. Jack DeLeon and Ray Stewart as Marty and Mr. Driscoll are two of my favorites (and two of the few gay characters on at the time). They also had Florence Stanley as Fish’s wife Bernice, Stanley Brock as Bruno Bender, George Murdock as Lt. Ben Scanlon, and Jack Somack as the often robbed Mr. Cotterman.
So many of the episodes are fan favorites, such as “Hash” in which Wojo brings in brownies made by his girlfriend and the detectives eat them not knowing that they’re laced with pot, and “Werewolf” in which Kenneth Tigar brilliantly plays Stefan Kopeckne who believes he’s, well, a werewolf (he comes back in an episode in a later season as the same character, this time believing he’s possessed by a demon). All of the episodes are quotable. My personal favorites (that I watch over and over again online) are “Smog Alert”, “Rain”, “Hair”, “Group Home”, and “Bus Stop”. And of course, “Jack Soo, a Retrospective” is a touching, out of character episode reflecting on Jack Soo and the character of Nick Yemana after Jack Soo passed away from cancer. When they raise their coffee mugs to him in the end, it’s a guaranteed tear jerker.
Also, the last scene of the series is probably one of the best done in television. No gimmicks, no tricks, just turning off the light and closing the door.
The female cops were few and far between (Linda Lavin, June Gable, and Mari Gorman all did time at the 12th), but that never bothered me much. I’d rather have an all male cast than a woman shoehorned in just because they think they have to have a woman in there. Those cases never end well. (For the record, I didn’t care much for Linda Lavin’s Detective Janice Wentworth, but I did like June Gable’s Detective Maria Battista and Mari Gorman’s Officer Rosslyn Licori.) And not all of the serious material was handled well (“Rape” is an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable episode, even more so now because of just how differently things are handled and viewed now as opposed to how they were then).
But the shortcomings are easily overlooked (particularly if you just skip “Rape” all together, which hurts me to say it since Joyce Jameson is in it and I love her). Despite the 70’s suits and references, there’s a timeless quality to the stories and the jokes. Granted, you probably couldn’t take a bomb into a New York police department so easily today (it happened at least four times during the show that I can remember off of the top of my head), but we can relate to the budget cuts and the layoffs and trying to do right even if it is against the rules.
Not to mention the desire for a cup of coffee and a decent toilet.
I know what you’re thinking. It’s November. Why don’t you just call this post Nanowrimo 2011? Because while Nano will be a huge part of my existence for this month, I do have a few little things that I’d like to be doing on the side.
There are two contests I want to enter (should I scrape up the entry fees). One is a short-short contest and I’ve already got a story finished and ready to revise that I’d like to submit. The other is a memoir/personal essay contest. I’ve never done anything like it before, but I’ve got a few ideas that I think will work and I’d like to give it a shot. I’ve been thinking about doing memoir stuff for a while now and I think this might be a good leaping off point.
Even if I’m not able to enter the contests, I’ll still have some valuable material at the ready for when another opportunity presents itself.
Of course, this is all dependent on how well Nano goes. I’ve done 2,000 words a day with a goal of 60,000 words total for the past couple of years. Let’s hope the trend continues.
And at the end of the day, I have a few words to spare.
Halloween is a great holiday. Aside from the candy and the month long flow of horror movies and the radio playing “Monster Mash”, “Werewolves of London”, and “Thriller”, dressing up is truly my favorite part. Even though I’m usually only dressing up to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters, I take it seriously.
I have a philosophy on Halloween costumes (any costume really). I believe that a majority of it should be assembled from individual pieces and that as little of it as possible should be bought. In other words, the slutty version of whatever costumes don’t cut it for me. Buying the entire costume already put together is no fun. Buying every separate piece of the costume and putting it together yourself is more fun. Spending absolutely no money on a costume and pulling everything together from stuff you already own is the best.
For me, Halloween is a challenge. I like to see what I can come up with stuff I already own and I try to spend as little money as possible doing it. This isn’t half-assing it, either. I’ve come up with some really good costumes that have gotten me plenty of compliments.
I like to dress up as my own thing, a twist on something typical. Last year I dressed up as the perfect housewife. I put on a shirt and skirt and my flats. I did up my hair and make-up. I wore pearls. And then I wore the bloody apron my roommate made for me for Christmas (it says “Killer Cook” on it and with blood splatters and bloody hand prints; I love it) and smeared my face and hands with some fake blood (I always have some on hand) and carried around a really nasty looking butcher knife. It didn’t cost me a thing to do that year.
The one costume I did that I felt got me the best reaction was when I dressed up as a beauty queen. For less than twenty bucks, I scored a silver paint pen, some black fabric, and a cheap tiara. I put on a red and black dress, high heels, did up my hair and make-up. I then smeared my lipstick and mascara and disheveled my hair, the tiara looking like it’d been almost pulled out and put hastily black. With the fabric and paint pen I made a sash that said “beauty queen”.
While passing out candy, two little girls came to the door. One of them asked me what I was and I told her I was a beauty queen. As they walked away, one girl leaned to the other and said, “Beauty queens aren’t supposed to be scary”. To this day, I don’t know that I’ve gotten a better compliment on a costume.
Occasionally, I’ll go as actual characters. A couple of years ago, for the cost of a cheap wig and a bracelet, I went as Madeline Westen from Burn Notice. After creator Matt Nix retweeted a picture of my costume, my mentions flooded with compliments.
This year I’m going as Hetty Lange from NCIS: LA. Eight bucks for a wig is all I spent. I think this will be another good one.
Last week I wrote about how some stories seem to come to me as if by magic. That first draft comes so easily and requires very little revision to create a final project.
And then there are stories that are the bane of my very existence, the ones that I struggle with and can never seem to get them right no matter how much I mess with them.
All of my stories get revised. Whenever one of my short stories gets rejected, I always review it to see if there’s anything I can do to make it better. I admit that some stories get more than a little tweak after a rejection. Both “Erin Go Bragh” and “Elevator” (both published in my Rejection book) ended up getting significant rewrites more than once after being rejected. “Such a Pretty Face” required some serious work to get right.
But “At 3:36” is a story of a different beast.
It started off simply enough. I got an image of a scene in my head, a woman looking out the window, watching as the world stops spinning for forty-five minutes at the same time over several days. I wrote it out, explored that scene, and came up with the first draft. The sticking point was that I didn’t want to explain why the world was stopping. It was just happening and the point of the story wasn’t that the world kept stopping and needed to be fixed (this isn’t a SyFy movie, after all), but how my main character reacted and dealt with this event.
But I couldn’t get it right.
No matter how I cut the story or rewrote it or change it (keeping two basic things intact: the world stopping its spin and the main character’s reaction to it), I couldn’t get the story to work. I couldn’t get it to feel right.
I go a lot by how a story feels. If I feel like I’ve told the story I want to tell and created the effect I wanted to create, then I’m satisfied and I can work on polishing and revising that story to make it the best it can be. I never got to that point with “At 3:36” and it was pretty disappointing.
The other day I was in the shower, letting my mind wonder over things I needed to work on, stories that needed to be told, money that needed to be made, the typical things that run rampant in my brain during my morning showers. It was during these mental gymnastics that the possible solution to my “At 3:36” story woes came to me. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this story once and for all.
I won’t know for sure until I actually do it, which won’t be until December due to Nanowrimo, but for the first time, I’m excited about this story.
Considering that I hated it as soon as I was done with the first draft, that’s a big improvement.
Whenever someone tells me (or someone else) that I’m acting just like my mother, it’s typically not meant as a compliment. What they mean is that I’m acting in such a way that they don’t approve of and attribute my behavior to something genetically inherited from my mother.
However, I am like my mother in some ways, good and bad.
For example (and for Halloween), my mom and I both love horror.
The last time I was at her house, AMC was showing all four of the Alien movies and Mom and I watched the end of Alien and most of Aliens. She loves the SyFy channel on the weekends for movies, no matter how bad they might be. The People Under the Stairs was on Saturday morning and I immediately thought of Mom. She watched that movie a couple of times a week when I was a kid.
She took me and my friend to see Se7en. She rented me Rosemary’s Baby and brought home Dracula from the library for me when I was sick.
Mom is the reason I know who Stephen King is. She read all of his books. I can specifically remember her reading Salem’s Lot. I remember the cover of the book. I remember reading the dusk jacket.
I have yet to read it, though.
When I was finally allowed to check out an adult book at the library at the tender age of 11, Mom didn’t bat an eyelash when I came back with Jaws.
I can’t say that my mom is the reason why I like horror (as I said in my post about why I write horror, I’m not sure exactly WHY I like it or write it), but my mom was definitely a horror enabler. She liked it, realized I liked it, and encouraged me to explore it.
Of course, we don’t always agree on our horror likes. Mom liked Scream enough to make me watch it (during Thanksgiving dinner, naturally). I hated it. I enjoy Vincent Price more than Mom does.
It doesn’t matter, though. The point is that it’s a bonding point for us. Our relationship hasn’t always been the greatest, as happens sometimes with mothers and daughters. Sometimes it’s easier for me to focus on the differences and disagreements. They’re easier to see. It’s easy to forget when we get along or agree. The lack of conflict seems to diminish the recall on the memory.
But even as I picked my brain for more memories of the Mom-horror connection, I was shocked at the warmth that bubbled up behind them. It’s kind of odd that I’d get sentimental and gooey watching a guy run around in a gimp suit while he shoots through the walls because one of his cellar children escaped into them because it reminds me of my mom, but there you go.
My mother and I have an interesting, if not unique, relationship.
I always say that I’m a better rewriter than a writer, and for the most part that’s true. I’ve written about my love/hate relationship with first drafts and I try to get them done as quickly as possible so I can get on to the revision process, which I like and feel I’m better at.
However, I sometimes get it right the first time.
Hard to believe, I know, but it happens.
There are times when I get an idea for a short story, the idea comes so perfectly formed in my head that all I have to do is write it down. The only revising that happens are little tweaks and some polishing of grammar, word choice, and spelling and that’s it. Those are scary moments for me because I keep thinking I should be changing more, but I’m not seeing the problems. Eventually, after some worrying and mind-boggling, I give up and call the story done. I end up submitting it, thinking it’s a sure rejection.
Three stories that this has happened with have been accepted for publication.
“Land of the Voting Dead”, about a very unique polling place, came out in a rush and was in great shape when I finished it. It really did only need a few tweaks when I was done. Then I found an anthology I thought would be a perfect fit for it. Unfortunately, I was more than a few words short of the minimum word count. Surprisingly enough, after a few days thought, the scene I added to expand the work count came to me the same way the story did. It fit in perfectly with the rest of the story and the whole shebang got accepted.
“Sentries”, about plants used to deter unwanted visitors, was written with a specific anthology in mind. With the theme of the anthology in mind, I thought about what kind of story I could come up with that would fit it. There was no pressure; if I didn’t come up with a good idea, then I didn’t try to write anything for it. No big deal. Less than a week before the deadline, the idea came to me. I wrote it with the word count in mind, adding in a couple of scenes that weren’t in the original vision. Honestly, I didn’t know where I was going with them and thought for sure by the time I’d written the last word the whole thing was crap. I gave it a day and then read it again. Upon review, with a few small revisions, I found that it all worked and it ended up getting accepted to the anthology.
I almost got “Playing Chicken” right the first time. For the most part, the bulk of the story about a group of kids playing chicken with a ghost train and how it affected their lives, was right on. But there was one scene I just couldn’t get right. I knew how what I wanted it to, but I just wasn’t getting the job done. In the end, it took a couple of rewrites of that particular scene to get the clarity and effect I was going for. It paid off in the end, as the story got accepted to an anthology.
This phenomenon happened again last week. I got an idea for a flash-fiction story called “Someone To Hold” based on a superstition that if you leave a corpse’s eyes open, they’ll look for someone to take with them to the grave. I wrote the first draft of the story in a rush that I recognized. This story is mostly done. The revisions I’ll make will be superficial ones, polishing and tweaking to make it as perfect as I can get it. My hope is that I’ll be able to scrape up the entry fee money to submit it to a contest that I think it will do well in.
Then we’ll see if I really was feeling that first draft magic.
Warning! This post contains graphic details of my breast reduction surgery. It’s not for everyone and probably shouldn’t be read while eating anything. Proceed with caution.
In August, I wrote about my breast reduction surgery and here I am talking about my boobs again, this time about the negative aspects of my ta-tas.
Negative, you say? How can there be anything bad about boobies?
Well, there can be, and I’ll get to that. But first, I’m going to tell you why I have no trouble talking about my boobs.
When your boobs are as large as mine were, they sort of take on a life of their own. They become their own entity. My chest was large enough that it would knock things over. I’d unintentionally hit people with my boobs because, well, how could I not? They were between me and whatever I was doing. Reaching past someone guaranteed they were going to get some titty on them. Working in close quarters, an elbow to or a hand brushing a boob was common. My friends quickly got used to it.
Breasts that large attract attention. Comments were as common as accidental elbow blows. Men especially were fascinated by them. Of course. Men like boobs and boobs the size of mine are typically reserved for porn as far as they’re concerned. In high school, I had more than one guy ask if they could just feel them. It was less a sexual grope and more a need to satisfy a curiosity about objects that big.
I imagine that they thought what they saw in the bra was what they’d get outside of it. Little did they realize…
They are consequences to have breasts that large. Even breasts that aren’t that big, but grow rapidly end up with stretchmarks. That’s something you don’t see in the movies, porn or otherwise. I’ve got lots of them. They’ve faded with time, but in up close and personal situations , they’re noticeable.
The stretchmarks didn’t go away with my surgery, though with the smaller breasts I can at least be relatively sure that I won’t be getting more of them.
However, the smaller breasts came with a price of their own: scars.
I went into this surgery knowing that there would be scars. I don’t heal quickly and I don’t heal well. Chalk it up to the fair skin or genetics or whatever. It’s been that way since I was a kid. Considering the incision went from under my armpit, around my breast, and ended about half an inch from my breast bone, yeah, there was going to be a scar. It’s widest under my arms where the drain was implanted for my first week of recovery, but for the most part the whole thing has faded.
Due to the size of my breasts, I had to have what’s called a free nipple graft, which made for another incision scar. The surgeon cut up from the bottom of my breast and around my nipple. My nipples were then removed completely so the breast tissue could be removed and the remainder fung shui’d into a more functional and appealing fashion. My nipples were then reattached. The incision scars from this part of the operation have faded some as well.
Now, the risk of doing a free nipple graft is that the surgeon is taking off and then reattaching the nipple, meaning that if the nipple doesn’t get adequate blood supply, the whole thing could die and have to come off. I knew that going in and sure enough, it was a complication I had to deal with.
Before visions of a nippleless boob start bouncing in your head, let me assure you that wasn’t my case. I have both of my nipples, thank you. However, my left one didn’t get quite enough blood supply and the top layer of skin died and sloughed off. To me, it looks like long healed skin after a bad burn, that mottled pink and white, something-significant-happened-here skin. I have been reassured that it doesn’t look that bad, but no one can deny that it’s not a normal look.
My right nipple is fine and looks quite fetching, except for the tiny scar at the top where it pulled away from the skin a little after the stitches were removed.
With all of the scars and stretchmarks, my breasts have a kind of patchwork quality to them. I call them Frankenboobies as they were put together by man. And as glad as I am to have them and have them be this smaller, much more manageable size, I admit that I’m self-conscious about their appearance in the flesh, so to speak.
However, properly displayed in the right bra and shirt combo, they are fantastic and I have no trouble telling people that, too.
After all, if I’m going to talk about my boobs, I’m going to talk about the good and the bad.
The last time I went trick-or-treating, I was seventeen and a senior in high school. It wasn’t one of those throw-on-a-mask-to-get-free-candy deals, either. My friends and I decked out in full-on, homemade costumes.
I dressed as a Monkeeman. My costume was spot on. It's almost 15 years later and I'm still proud as hell of it.
Most people think that trick-or-treating is a kid thing and once a kid gets of a certain age, they should stop doing it. When word got out that I’d gone trick-or-treating as a senior high school, not all of my friends were receptive. They thought it was wrong. Ridiculous. Childish.
For the record, no house we went to turned us down for candy. Some questioned us. It’s not a done thing, kids our age trick-or-treating. A few gave us a hard time. But it was hard for them to argue with us when we put more effort in our costumes than some of the parents dragging their kids around the neighborhood.
That’s how I look at it. The better costumes get the better candy, no matter what the age. If a 45 year old man decked out as a convincing Homer Simpson showed up at my door, I’d be giving him Milky Way, while the 11 year olds who just smeared some fake blood on their faces would be getting my crap candy.
And yeah, I do get crap candy every year for just that purpose. I won’t turn anyone away, but I will make them wish they hadn’t bothered stopping at my house.
Though I haven’t gone trick-or-treating since high school, I do make it a point to dress up to pass out candy to the trick-or-treaters that show up to my house.
Consider it an inspiration to the youth that Halloween doesn’t have to stop when you’re thirteen.
If people show any interest in my career as a writer, the one question they always ask is why I write horror.
For the record, I don’t only write horror. Yes, a majority of my short stories do fall in the horror category, but I’ve written a few that weren’t horror. And my longer works, though I’ve tried to write straight horror, I can’t do it. In my eyes, they end up more dull than anything else. I joke that it’s because I can’t keep a straight face for that long. I mixed comedy and fantasy with my horror and that’s how I got The Outskirts.
But, yeah, the short stories I’ve had published, the short stories I self-published, the stories that are going to be published, are all horror fiction. So the question about why I write horror is valid.
The answer? I don’t know.
Horror has always been a genre I’ve been drawn to, whether it be movies or books. I can remember looking at the covers of the horror movie videos at the video store, fascinated by them, knowing that they would give me nightmares if I watched them. But that fear didn’t keep me from looking at Fangoria magazine in Radio Shack or watching Creepshow through my fingers in my best friend’s basement or picking Jaws to my the first adult book to read. I’ve had nightmares about Michael Myers since I was six, long before I’d ever seen Halloween, which is now my favorite horror film.
I can’t really explain it. I’ve always been drawn to the terrible and horrible.
I didn’t always write horror. I wrote my first letters and words at three. I wrote my first story at six. I’d literally been writing nearly twenty years before I tried my hand at horror. Something in me clicked. Answering a “what if” question with a horror answer just seemed to come more naturally to me. Since then, I’ve played to that as my strength.
I’m sure this doesn’t satisfy everyone’s curiosity. I’m sure they were hoping for some buried trauma that warped my brain. When you write warped things, it makes people question why you would want to, particularly if they don’t care for or haven’t really explored the genre. I can understand that.
Kiki Writes About... 