Judge-Mentality

For the past several weeks, I have been reading scripts for a well-known international film festival. For the sake of non-disclosure, I'll leave it at that. So far, I have read 117 scripts, most of which were feature-length screenplays, along with a few dozen TV pilots and a handful of stage plays. While I cannot speak of the scripts themselves in specific terms, I can generalize. 

It is encouraging to know that there are a lot of really good writers out there. I laughed, I cried, I was moved by quite a few of them, even if that just meant wanting to turn the page to see what happens next. Others had more room for improvement. Some had good ideas that didn't quite play out. That's how it goes.  

Judging scripts is a lot like grading papers, which I think that I have learned to do objectively in my many years of teaching college. That is to say that my own tastes are not a factor in my judging criteria. When reading these scripts, I tried to focus on what works while offering constructive feedback on what does not. Having entered a lot of screenwriting contests myself over the years, it was an interesting experience to be on this side of the judging process. I tried to provide the kinds of notes that I might find useful as a writer. 

Many of these writers were obviously still in the early stages of learning the craft, while others had it down to a science. Good stories came from throughout the spectrum. As a general rule, the best writing--and this is true in pretty much any form--is the kind that says more with less. Editing is a good place to remove all of the stuff that doesn't need to be in there.  

Some of these scripts were overwritten; many offered descriptions that could neither be seen nor heard. These elements might work in a novel, but not in a script. Other scripts were simply too small for the big screen (no matter what size the screen actually is). By that, I mean that slices-of-life stories need to have some bigger idea behind them that people can connect with. The common advice of 'writing what you know' is reasonable when it comes to a first script, but after that, I recommend leaning on your imagination a bit more. 

I say this as someone whose first feature-length screenplay was in fact a melodramatic slice-of-life turd that was loosely based on people I knew and true stories that I had accumulated over the years. It would not have made a good movie. I can see that now. However, in the process of writing it, I became a better writer. With these scripts that I recently read, most if not all of these writers have since gone on to become better writers as well. It's just kind of the nature of doing anything. The more you do it, the better you tend to get. Your worst work can provide the most learning opportunities.

While I did read all of these scripts (which works out to something like ten thousand pages, as my weary eyeballs can attest), in most cases, it was pretty obvious by about ten to twenty pages in if it was getting a yes vote or a no. I read all of them with an open mind, but most of the time, this was how it went. There is a clear difference between writers who have mastered the craft and those who have not, just as there was a clear difference between scripts that told an engaging story versus those that did not. Only rarely did a script do both of these things exceptionally well, and that skill was typically on display throughout. 

I read a lot of well-researched biopics of historical figures where the story sometimes got lost in the details or in the mythology of that character. I read a number of coming out stories that were moving and real but which lacked a distinct voice or perspective. I read comedy pilots that no doubt seemed funnier in the heads of the people who wrote them, but they weren't quite able to capture that on the page. I read scripts that were good but which I also believed that the writer seemed capable of taking further. And then were the great scripts... 

These were the scripts where the writer demonstrated mastery of both the craft of writing and the art of storytelling. They were like good songs where the musicians play their instruments well. Along those same lines, my advice to aspiring writers is to hone your craft through practice and exercise your artistry by telling the stories that don't yet exist but should. Make them your own and say something, but don't be afraid to step outside of your own ego in order to do so.

As a bonus tip: revise your work, even if it means trampling upon said ego in the process. There is a clear distinction between a polished script and a first draft. To that end, I recommend that you take out anything that doesn't add anything new and remove as many adverbs as possible. Distill the narrative to its essence and rebuild as necessary from there. With enough work, many of the scripts that did not advance to the next round could in fact be winners another year. 

It was a joy to screen these movies, shows and plays in my imagination, almost like my own personal film festival, the opportunity for which I am thankful.

Analog

I went to film school on the cusp of the digital revolution. The internet existed, but sites like Google and Facebook did not. Everywhere I went, there were free CD-ROMs in cardboard sleeves that offered a thousand free hours of America On-Line (AOL) just for signing up. They made terrible stocking stuffers. 

If I recall, my Frankenstein PC had a Pentium II processor with 1 GB of RAM. To render a video file was usually an overnight process. I also had a special video card that allowed me to hook a VCR up to my computer. It cost me eight hundred bucks.

My camera was a SONY VX-1000. At the time, it was damn near top of the line in terms of pro-sumer electronics. It used Mini-DV tapes, which I have since found to be a terrible format--but back in film school, this thing was badass. It had zebra stripes on the screen to tell you if something was overexposed, as well as built-in neutral density filters to correct it. 

I could only afford this equipment because I worked for the telephone company when I first started going to film school. I worked as a service technician during the day, and then I took classes at night. In the meantime, I set myself up with some decent equipment so that I could make movies whenever I wanted instead of having to check out equipment from the "film cage" every time. I lived about forty minutes away on the red line, so I seldom made impromptu trips downtown.  

At a certain point in the curriculum, the next class for me to take was a six-credit whopper that was only offered during the day. Tech I, as it was called at the time (although I think the actual name of the course was Production I, but close enough) met four days a week for two and a half hours a day on the tenth floor of an old building downtown. One time I got to class early and threw paper airplanes out a screenless window for what seemed like miles. 

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I had reached a point where I had to decide between continuing to work for the phone company or go to film school full time. This would have to mean taking out student loans as well, as I knew that I could not afford to live in Chicago otherwise. I did have some savings, but I spent a lot of it on video equipment. Ultimately, I quit my job. To date, it remains one of the highest-paying positions that I have ever had--which is kind of sad, frankly. I chose film school over the blue collar life of my parents, because that I had already seen. 

In Tech I, everyone had to load a Bolex camera in the dark. It was an A or an F kind of thing. There were a lot of assignments like that. Maybe not the A's so much, but it could be pretty easy to get an F. Lens flares are one example, which is to say that JJ Abrams never would have made it. I think this was a way of weeding out the people who were there for fun versus those who were there to learn. By the third year or so, us learners were pretty much all that was left. 

Tech I taught the basics of 16mm film production, while also providing hands-on experience. Loading that camera in total darkness was a great exercise, but I can't say that it has ever come in all that handy. I wonder if the students there still use those old cameras, left over from making newsreels during the Second World War. The front had what we called a fully manual zoom, in that it required that the user rotates a turret with three different lenses on it: one wide angle, one standard, and one telephoto. On most of these old cameras, at least one of the lenses was messed up in one way or another. 

While some of the skills that I gained in film school have little value outside of the motion picture industry--or in some cases, history books--understanding the principles behind them I believe to be invaluable.

Progess

"...Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These are the rights that the founding fathers declared to be inalienable. Many of these men, of course, also owned slaves, and it would still be over a hundred years before women gained the right to vote.

This fundamental contradiction is at the heart of what it means to live in the United States of America. This, in large part, is what Critical Race Theory and the 1619 Project are all about. It is about recognizing a broader reality, rather than simply painting over our past with the eye-catching hues of jingoistic mythology. 

If you were a slave in the American south, your own children could be sold off as property. Slaves could not own anything themselves, nor were they allowed to learn how to read or write. They had no liberty, and even their lives were not their own. For census purposes, they were counted as 3/5 of human beings, which is the closest that the Constitution ever came to addressing the issue of slavery until after the Civil War.

Even the Emancipation Proclamation was fundamentally an act of war. It was Lincoln saying, "End the war or I'm going to tell all of your slaves that they aren't your property anymore, and then we'll see what that does for your economy and your ability to fight a war. Let's see you reenact this." I'm paraphrasing, but that's the idea... and I like to imagine Abraham Lincoln with a squeaky voice.

That leaves us with the pursuit of happiness. 

To be in pursuit of something is to move in a forward direction, chasing something--in this case, happiness. In that sense, you could say that it is indeed about the journey and not the destination. You could also say that it implies a fundamental need for progress, not just on a personal level, but as a participant in a functioning democracy. 

America is supposed to be a place where people can improve the station of their lives through will and hard work. For many people, of course, this has always been a myth, and in this country's most formative years, slaves worked harder than anybody. I dare anyone to tell me otherwise. As we all know, their labor was never paid, nor is it even acknowledged in most history books that examine that period. 

A better future is only possible if we are fully aware of the road behind us. 

Over the centuries, America has been engaged in the relentless pursuit of a more perfect union, which is an idea that predates the Declaration of Independence. This path is called progress. It leads us forward, toward the realization of the lofty ideals upon which this nation was initially founded. 

We are not perfect, but we are steadily getting better. Living in this in-between is precisely what it means to be American. It always has been. Over the years, we have improved incrementally. It started by abandoning outdated traditions in favor of a more pragmatic path forward.

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Equal rights, no matter your race or creed. The tired, huddled (or is it hustled?) masses, yearning to be free. It is the unwavering pursuit of these principles that defines the American experiment to ourselves and to the rest of the world. 

As Americans, we must work together to make our namesake Dream a reality, to be a country where people of all backgrounds can truly better themselves through their own labor, diligence and imagination. 

At the same time, we as a nation must do the same. We must collectively put forth the effort to become a more inclusive and better functioning democracy. We must not abandon the path of progress in favor of distraction politics or anything else that only serves to divide us. 

We are the United States of America, and progess means expanding access to voting booths, not restricting it. 

When this country was founded, only white, land-owning men could vote. Progress is the path that led us here, just as it must continue to lead us forward in pursuit of a more perfect union. 

We can and must do better. Ultimately, our capability for self-improvement defines us as a nation to a far greater degree than the imaginary lines that surround us.

Breakthrough

I try to conceptualize my goals in the same way that a martial artist chops through a cement block. They aren't striking the block, per se, but the space behind it. 

Whenever I set a goal for myself, I try to see the big picture first, albeit in soft focus. Only later do the details begin to emerge. For example, if I'm writing a song, I try to imagine what it might sound like as a fully realized compostion, and then I start to piece it all together. I can hear the vocal melody in my head before I know what the words are going to be. On the same token, if I am writing a book or a screenplay, I am a major proponent of outlining, as it allows me to see the big picture first... the space behind the surmountable piece of concrete. 

In life, I try to project where I want to be and then work out the specifics in terms of how to get there. The details are usually kind of hazy at first, but if my mind is focused on the future, then I find that it often makes the present seem a hell of a lot more manageable. 

It also seems to be helping with learning another language. I know where I want to be. Now I'm just taking the steps to get there. 

Digital Distractions

When I tell people that I don't own a cell phone, I am usually met with one of two responses. More often than not, people say, "Wow, good for you." Otherwise, they ask, "How?" as if there's some kind of trick to it. 

To that, I explain that I get by a lot like people did fifteen or twenty years ago. In fact, about twelve years ago, I did have a flip phone, but I never used it, so it didn't make sense to keep paying for it. Then I lived in Moldova for a year, where cell phones weren't quite as common, and I had no discernable reason to own one, as I rarely called any local telephone numbers anyway. After that, I lived in Micronesia for a year, where there were no cell phone towers. Those two years living abroad were enough to remind me that I didn't actually need a mobile phone to get by. 

It's not like I'm anti-technology or anything. In fact, I'm actually quite adept at working on computers and have built several PCs from barebones components. However, when I came back to the US from Micronesia, one of the first things that I noticed was how everywhere I went, people were staring at their phones. I'd ride my bike through the campus of the university where I taught and earned my PhD, and I'd see undergraduates completely missing out on the world around them because their attention was focused entirely on their smart phones. From my perspective, this seemed like a sickness that affected just about everyone I saw.

When I'd go to restaurants or bars, I'd see people sitting around a table with their phones out, not talking to each other. In class, when I was teaching, every once in a while, I'd see a student who was very obviously looking at his or her phone under the desk, which was rather annoying. As for me, the only times that I wasn't at home, I was either teaching, in a class myself, out for a bike ride, or playing music. In any one of those scenarios, if I had a phone, it would have been shut off anyway, so there would have been little point in owning one in the first place.

I've read that the average American spends about six hours on their smart phones every day, and that's not including when it's being used for work-related functions. That, to me, is crazy... far crazier than not owning a smart phone. That said, since I do not own one, it's almost like I have an extra six hours in every day compared to most people. I generally try to use this time to write, make music, and do other things that involve creating, rather than consuming. This blog is just one example.

If you look at all that I have produced over the past ten years, you can really see how this "extra time" has helped me to amass a pretty substantial portfolio of creative and analytical work. Besides, if people need to reach me, they can call my internet-based landline number or send me an email. I am not so important that I need to be accessible 24/7, though, and I tend to think that social media is a kind of sickness in itself. I see how it warps people's view of each other and themselves, creating echo chambers that can validate just about anything, regardless of whether it's even true or not.

This isn't to say that I won't ever own a cell phone. If I had to be reachable for a specific job, then I would certainly make myself available in a way that does not inconvenience my colleagues. In other words, I would get a phone if I ever had to for work. However, since I've never truly needed one, and because I can see the damage that they do to the interpersonal relationships that form the basis of our society, for the time being, I choose not to own a smart phone, as I think that in many ways, I'm better off without one.

On a side note, one of the many negative side effects that I've noticed with the prevalence of smart phones is that people seem less inclined to memorize things. For this reason, I made a point to give pop quizzes in the Film History class that I taught, as this is a skill that I think students should have, even if they do have virtually limitless information at their fingertips at all times. Besides, Film History is largely about understanding the connections between a series of facts, so it's kind of important to know all of the pertinent information.

Personally, I also prefer to use an old school paper road atlas when driving, as Google maps and other such services don't factor in common sense when providing directions. Furthermore, I think that the ability to memorize facts and figures is a handy skill to have, even if it seems like I only ever use it when playing trivia or teaching.

Update: I finally got a phone, mostly so that I can text with my two teenage kids. Other than that, it spends most of its time charging. 

Junk Mail

Every week, I get emails from an academic site that tells me how many times my book has been cited by other scholars. I cannot say for certain that it is legitimate, as the number one rule in scholarship is to be skeptical. That, and I choose not to purchase their annual subscription, for therein lies the root of my skepticism.

That said, according to this site, I have now been cited 535 times in papers, books, and articles. I don't mean this as a humble brag, as I do have serious questions about the legitimacy of all of this. On the other hand, cool. Maybe that means people are reading my book after all.

Also, I was thinking about how hard it must be for a Nigerian prince to send emails. Spam filters must hate that guy. 

(It's a joke. Nigeria has a president as its head of state. Still, I'll bet nobody opens his emails, either.)

Mad Science

Not too long ago, my partner and I were talking about those meal-kit delivery companies. I wondered who these were for, as it isn't difficult to buy groceries and look up a recipe online, so I didn't understand why someone would pay a substantial amount of money to have a predetermined meal that they still have to cook. Jamie suggested that these services are primarily for people who are intimidated by cooking and meal preparation.

This raised another question. Why are some people afraid of cooking? The answer, I believe, is that they are actually afraid of failure. They are worried that people, including themselves, won't like what they cooked, and so in this case, they shift the bulk of that responsibility to a third party. In that sense, these companies capitalize on people's insecurity, charging a premium for a service that need not exist if only people could learn to embrace their own potential for failure. 

I tend to believe that the more that you do just about anything, the better you are going to get at it. If you don't believe me, go ahead and pick something to learn, and then spend even an hour a day at it. You will likely be amazed at your progress. That said, it is important to be patient with yourself, as most skills also require the investment of a certain degree time and effort before they begin to pay dividends.

When I cook, I generally try to make things exactly as I would like them to be if I ordered that meal in a restaurant. That means that I put onions, garlic, and/or ginger in damn near everything, and when I make desserts, I tend to make them slightly less sweet in order to accommodate my own tastes. If I used a meal-kit delivery company and followed the instructions to the letter, chances are that whatever it is would not be as well-suited to my (and my family's) palette than if I was to just do it myself. It might even have cilantro in it, which is kind of like my kryptonite.

I think that the best way to learn how to cook is to abandon your fear of failure as much as possible. In fact, virtually every time that I cook something that I have made before, I change one element as an experiment that is intended to heighten the dish in some way. Sometimes these experiments fail, sometimes not. This is the nature of experiments, but this is also a very good way to learn what works and what doesn't. This is why I usually only change one variable at a time. In the immortal words of Peter Venkman, "Back off, man. I'm a scientist."

Obviously, this philosophy does not just apply to cooking, either. Far too often, it seems like people are afraid to try something new because it comes with a built-in risk of failure. Maybe you're afraid to play an instrument, or dance, or play sports because there's a chance that you won't be any good at it. I have news for you. Acquiring skill in any field requires a willingness to fail.

Michael Jordan did not make the varsity basketball team in high school, and most actors struggle for years before getting a break of any kind. I know that in my own experience, for the first two years or so that I played guitar, I was pretty bad at it, which I also found to be incredibly frustrating. However, I stuck with it, and once I got to the point where I was no longer terrible, it was a real game changer. Suddenly practicing became a lot more fun because I liked the sounds that I was making. 

It was more or less the same thing with cooking. For many years, my skillset was quite limited, and I screwed up fairly often if I ever tried something new. I could have just said that I can't cook and left it at that, but instead, I stuck with it. I learned from my mistakes, which wouldn't have been possible if I did not first give myself permission to fail. 

Now when I cook, it's probably only about one out of every twenty meals or so that isn't exactly what I wanted it to be, and even then, it's still not bad. It is extremely rare that I make something that anybody would ever send back at a restaurant--you know, unless that person was a total asshole. 

However, it is worth noting that these are the experiences from which I stand to learn the most. My first screenplay, for example, was a tremendous turd, but through the act of writing it, I became a better writer. I then applied the knowledge gained to my next screenplay, and so on.

You should not be afraid to fail, because in many cases, this can be the most effective way to learn what not to do. I say this as someone who has sent out hundreds of query letters for about a dozen feature length screenplays, as well as a novel and a couple of children's books, and very few of these letters ever even received a reply. I keep writing nonetheless, because I believe in what I am doing, even if nobody else does (yet). Besides, the more I do it, the better I get. This is true with just about anything. In fact, I have often found that the best way to learn how to do something is to simply do it. Even if you fail to some degree, you will have learned something in the process.

Along this same line of thought, I think that it's actually better to lose at chess than it is to win, because if you lose, then you stand to learn something from your opponent. The same is true from your own mistakes, whether cooking or just about anything else. Better yet, learn from the mistakes of others.

Twenty years ago, I could only cook a handful of things, none of which was all that complicated. Now I can make pretty much whatever sounds good. I don't have to rely on meal-kits in order to sidestep failure, in part because I am not afraid of to screw up. Hell, I've even gotten pretty good at failing over the years. In doing so, I have gained useful skills in a lot of other areas (hence the name of this blog).

Spare Some Change

 Here's an article that I wrote about ten years ago. I think it still holds up.

http://alifewithoutsocks.blogspot.com/2012/04/fish-out-of-water.html

Odd Jobs

I've often thought of writing a humorous memoir of the various hourly occupations that I've had over the years, particularly those that I held before I started teaching. Having entered the labor force at the age of twelve, I have worked in a truly random assortment of positions and professions over the years, ranging from assistant repo man to unpaid professional script reader, and from telephone line technician with a journeyman's license to no-budget documentary filmmaker. I've kept copious notes over the years, just in case any of the details ever slip away from me. This is one of those things that I think would make for a funny and compelling book; I just question who the audience might be... you know, other than me. I do have some funny stories in there, though.  

Who You Know

Applying for jobs can be a rather time-consuming and tedious process. At times, it can also be kind of soul-sucking. I recently spent the better part of the day completing all of the requirements for an online application, only to later find out that the job was never really open. Apparently, they already had someone lined up for the position, but they had to advertise it in order to create the appearance that they were considering other candidates. 

This is not the first time that I have experienced this exact same thing, either, and that's just what I know of. Over the past few years, I've applied for over a hundred assistant professorship positions, most of which were out-of-state. Cumulatively, I was granted one telephone interview for a teaching job in one of my lesser areas of expertise, which, understandably, I did not get. However, there were also dozens of positions for which I really believed that I was a perfect fit, at least in my mind. As such, I can't help but wonder how many of these jobs were advertised simply to maintain the illusion of fairness and meritocracy. I'm sure that I'll never know. 

I don't mean to sound cynical, as I do understand the reality of the situation, at least to some extent. In my penultimate year of graduate school, I took a seminar that basically spelled out the job market in academia. I suspect that if they offered this class at the beginning of the program, far more people would have dropped out. One not-so-fun fact that I gleaned from this course is that for every tenure-track position that I apply for, there are likely between one hundred and three hundred other perfectly qualified candidates, some of whom almost certainly "know somebody." 

Admittedly, at the school where I had been teaching before the pandemic, I never even applied for that position. Somebody knew somebody who knew somebody who mentioned my name. After the interview, I was in. Compare that with all of these other jobs that I had applied for, each of which required its own distinct two-page cover letter, often with an accompanying statement of interest, inclusion, and/or expertise. Applying to these positions is typically an all-day process, sometimes more. It is also mentally and psychologically exhausting.  

For what it's worth, I've also probably sent out over three hundred query letters for my screenplays and books over the years, only to find out that in most cases, they won't even open the envelope or email without a referral. Outside of contests, very little of my creative work has ever been read by anyone in its respective industry. I suspect that this is largely because I live in the middle of nowhere and don't know anybody in the right places. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

I don't mean to complain. Rather, I'm just sharing my experience in case it may have any value to anyone else. I may very well return to applying for teaching jobs now that the pandemic is drawing to a close, and I'll probably go back to sending out queries for the novel that I wrote last year, but I am also pursuing other avenues and trajectories... so if anybody out there happens to need a skilled writer, teacher and advanced scholar of media and culture who cooks extraordinarily well and plays about a dozen instruments by ear, please let me know. 

I long to do something worthwhile.

New Album

I made another album of original music. That makes six in the past four years. You can listen to it in its entirety here. 

Petrichor will soon be available wherever you get your music (if it's not already).

On a (Rock and) Roll

This past week might have been my most prolific ever in terms of songwriting. Seriously. I wrote and recorded four songs in seven days. As far as I can tell, they're pretty good, too. I'll keep working on all of them, but for one week, hot damn. 

I now have eight new songs. A few more and I'll have another album. I usually aim for right around forty-five minutes, just in case somebody ever wanted to record it to one side of a ninety-minute cassette tape. Plus if I ever want to get vinyl pressed, there's a practical limit with that, too, which is right around that same basic marker. 

You can hear the latest versions of these songs at my ReverbNation page. (The embedded links will take you there.) The songs that I wrote this week are:

Dandelion Wine (If Only...)

Rat Race

Petals in the Grass 

Light Pollution

Thanks for listening.

Another Song

I wrote a new song yesterday and recorded it today, then I posted it to my ReverbNation page. You can listen to it here. It's basically about the memories left behind when a person is gone. 

Within a span of twenty-four hours, this song went from not existing to being available to stream on the other side of the planet. That kind of amazes me. 

I hope you like it, and if you happen to need healing, I hope it helps.

Songs on Spotify

I haven't really posted too much on here lately, as much of my writing time has been dedicated to other projects, including my music blog, where I have been adding new material almost daily. 

A couple of my songs have really taken off on Spotify in recent weeks, and since I don't really use social media, my blog is kind of the only way that I communicate directly with listeners and fans. 

Hop over to my music site for more. 

First Dose

I can't remember ever being so happy to get a shot. My spouse and I got our first doses of the Covid vaccine yesterday. This might be a side effect, but I think I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. 

I can also confirm with some certainty that I have not had a mind-controlling microchip covertly implanted as part of a vast conspiracy to keep you from the truth... unless, of course, that's what I was programmed to say. 

Just keep your tinfoil hat on, you should be ok. Here in the real world, science is not influenced by whether you believe in it or not. 

Please get vaccinated -- if not for you, then do it for everybody else. Remember: we're all in this together. 

General Theory of Being Quarantined

I've noticed that after a year of being quarantined, people who own their own houses are repainting and remodeling, while people who rent are driving each other crazy. I'm sure there's an academic paper in there somewhere. 

Current Project

I spent the last few months of 2020 outlining and sketching out another novel. It's pretty well ready to be written.... but then I got an idea for a screenplay and decided to run with it. The story as I imagined it wasn't all that complicated. Basically, it's a road comedy about two friends who rent a car to drive to their other friend's wedding, none of whom have seen each other in over ten years. En route, as one might expect, hijinks ensue. I am imagining this as something that could be shot on a minimal budget. 

I chose to work on this project now, in part because the submission period for the big screenplay contests (Nicholl, Austin Film Festival, etc.) ends around the beginning of May. So if I want to submit a screenplay to any of these contests, I need to have a polished draft done by then. I also feel like this particular script has broad appeal, which might help it to land favorably with readers. 

Of course, as I probably should have known, as I get deeper into this script, the more complicated it is turning out to be. In my experience, if I don't make a detailed outline ahead of time, then I end up having to more or less start over once I do have one. That's kind of where I am now. The plot as I have coneived it is like a Rube Goldberg Device, where one thing causes the next, which causes the next, etc. As such, if I change even one plot point or character dynamic or whatever, then it's probably going to affect some of the other parts as well. As this story gets more complex, there become more moving pieces to consider with every decision. 

I still aim to have it done by the end of April, but we'll see how it goes. The most important thing is that it's good. That said, I tend to work better under the pressure of deadlines, even if they are self-imposed.

Dungeon Master

Back in the day, which was in fact many days back, I was a Dungeon Master, or a DM if you're hip. Our games comprised four to six guys sitting around a table, eating chips and drinking soda. Back then, the girls at our school weren't into D&D, or us. We played on a semi-regular basis. In our group, we had a thief, a magic-user and a dwarf, and there was usually a warrior and/or a cleric in there as well. As for me, I was none of the above. I was the effin' DM.

If you have never played Dungeons and Dragons or don't know much about it, let me fill you in. This is a game that takes place almost entirely in your imagination. You pretend to be a wizard or an elf or whatever, and you go on an adventure in your mind. It's kind of like role playing video games, only much cheaper. 

My job as the DM was to create the worlds that these adventurers would explore. I would invent a whole landscape and draw up maps on graph paper, and then I would fill these maps out with legends that corresponded to possible encounters and other information. What monsters lurked there? What kinds of treasure? What traps required a roll of the ten-sided die? Which monsters required a 13 or higher on the D-20? This was all stuff that I had to figure out ahead of time and plot out, including all of the variables. 

If there was ever a better boot camp to becoming a writer, I'm not sure what it would be. When I write stories in whatever form, one of my "primary objectives" (to employ the parlance of Robocop) is to put my characters into situations that are ripe with conflict. This is true whether it's a screenplay, a book or a song. Did you ever see the movie about the two people who got along splendidly and nothing bad ever happened to them? No? What about the blues song about the guy who is perfectly happy about everything in his life? Still no? That's because it probably doesn't exist, and if it does, I think it's fair to say that it most likely sucks. 

Oh, and incidentally, Robocop is the Christ story. Seriously. Murphy even holds his arms out to his side as he's getting shot, only to be reborn as the savior to all of New Detroit. (I'm talking about the original Paul Verhoven version, who has even said as much in interviews. I've never seen the newer one.)

Conflict is the lifeblood of drama. There's no link there. The underline is just for emphasis, because it's that fucking important. (Please note that the swear word in the previous sentence is also there for emphasis.)  

Don't get me wrong. In real life, I am one hundred percent in favor of avoiding both of those things whenever possible -- but when I'm writing, I am basically thinking about how I can apply extreme pressure to a sympathetic character in order to see how they react. What situations will help to reveal a deeper side to this character than we thought we knew? How can I make these characters face the things that they most fear and produce a little bit of wisdom from the experience? In characters, it is the gap between who we thought they are and who they grow into or reveal themselves to be that makes them interesting. On some level, that's what all stories are about: vicariously experiencing a series of interrelated conflicts that offer some insight about what it means to be human, including our remarkable ability to adapt to changing environments.

 

In fact, I would posit that roughly 99% of stories in the western world are fundamentally about one person who is subjected to a series of cause-and-effect challenges in order to compel change either externally or internally. In other words, the person or the world that he or she inhabits is now somehow different because of the events that previously transpired. If not, then we might ask what was the point of going on this journey with them? Conflict creates drama, which leads to growth and change. We engage with stories so that we ourselves might grow through the experience.  

I guess my point is that being a Dungeon Master did not lead me into a life of satanic rituals, celibacy and battle axes on my living room wall. Rather, this experience taught me a great deal about how to be a writer, and I am thankful for it, even if we never finished most of the campaigns that I designed.  

New Song

I wrote a new song the other day. It was one of those things that seemed to have come from out of nowhere. One minute I was practicing, and the next thing I knew, I wrote a song. After a few days, I couldn't get the chorus out of my head, so I went ahead and recorded it. I had no intention of writing/recording a song this week, but sometimes that's just how it is. When creativity strikes, I try to run with it. 

It's called The Regular, and you can listen to it at this link.

Chocolate Chip Muffins

I love chocolate chip muffins, especially when there's buttermilk in there. It reacts nicely with the baking powder, which in my opinion creates the perfect consistency, plus it adds just the right amount of sourness to balance out the sweetness of the sugar and dark chocolate. 

My favorite recipe (which makes 12) is an amalgamation of various recipes that I found online, combined with some additional elements and modifications derived from my own experimentation. It goes a little something like this:

1. Prep the muffin pan. If you have those little paper cups, cool. I didn't, so I just cut out a dozen four inch squares of parchment paper, then mashed them into a slightly dampened pan (so that they'd stick) with a standard pint glass, which happens to be just the right size. Then I sprayed my makeshift muffin cups with cooking oil and sprinkled the inside generously with white sugar.  

2. Put a sifter over a large bowl, through which I add:

    

    1 3/4 cups flour

    3/4 cup granulated sugar

    2 tsp baking powder

    1 Tbsp cornstarch

    1/2 tsp salt

3. I then mix the wet ingredients in a measuting cup:

    

    1/2 stick butter, melted

    1/4 cup veg oil

    1/2 cup buttermilk 

    4 tsp fake vanilla extract (or 2 tsp real) - personally, for most applications, I'm fine with the fake stuff

4. In a separate bowl, I mix up: 

    

    1 egg

    1 egg white

5. Combine the wet with the dry until it's all hyrdrated, then gently stir/fold the eggs in until they are no longer visible.

6. Add about half of a bag or so of dark chocolate chips, somewhere in the neighborhood of a cup. Stir them in until they are evenly dispersed. Use a rubber scraper to get under the batter.

7. Use an appropriately-sized spring-loaded scooper to fill the pan. I'm guessing that the one I used was somewhere around 1/3 cup or so. It should come up to about the top of the pan when you fill them. Once they're all in there, I sprinkle some more white sugar on top. 

8. At this point, I ususally let the batter rest for about fifteen minutes or so while I preheat the oven. Cook them at 425°F for about 8 minutes and then 350°F for another 16 minutes or so (until they just started to turn golden on the edges). 

9. Enjoy. Share. Next time, you might even want to make a double batch.

See the World

A while back, my son introduced me to this online game called Geoguessr. It was something that he had done in school on days that it was too cold or rainy to go outside for recess. On their website, they give you one free game per day. We did that for about a month before purchasing a one-year membership for somewhere around $25, which in my opinion, is totally worth it.

The premise of the game is that it drops you somewhere in the world using Google Streetview, and then you have to figure out which country you're in. Personally, I think it's really cool to see what these random locales look like, as a vast majority of them are places that I have never been. Many are in parts of the world that I knew very little about but now want to visit because of this game, countries like Slovakia, Uruguay and Sri Lanka. 

Please note that I am not being compensated in any way to write this, not by Geoguessr, nor by the Ministry of Tourism in the beautiful nation of Slovakia. I just genuinely think this game is a hell of a lot of fun. It's not for everybody, of course, but on some level, it does fulfill at least a little bit of my wanderlust while also keeping me from going completely stir crazy. Considering that we've barely left the house for this entire pandemic, between this and playing video games are about the closest that we have come to actually traveling. 

In the time that we've been Geoguessing, we've developed a few strategies. Usually, the first thing we do is try to narrow it down to a continent. License plates are a good place to start. Even though they're blurred out, you can usually see their shape. In North and South America, the plates are boxier, as they are in Japan and some other places as well, whereas European and Russian plates are wider and shorter. We also take note of which side of the road they're driving on, as that can help narrow it down considerably. Models of the vehicles are sometimes worth paying attention to as well. We like to look at any graffiti we find, too, even though it doesn't usually help all that much in figuring out the country. We just happen to find it interesting.

Once we've narrowed it down geographically, we primarily search for words on signs and vehicles. It helps to be able to recognize and distinguish between languages, but this can certainly provide a useful exercise in that regard as well. It's good to know the difference between Spanish and Portuguese, for example, or Korean and Japanese, Italian and Romanian, or Icelandic and Danish, etc. Also, with countries that essentially have their own alphabets, it can be helpful to memorize at least a few symbols from each. You might be surprised to learn how many countries still use the cyrillic alphabet, too. I didn't expect to see it in North Macedonia or Mongolia, among other places. Unofficially, in our house, we have a rule where we don't look things up while we're playing, although I suspect that most people probably don't play it that way. These are the same people who helped to ruin online Scrabble. 

While we're looking for all these types of clues, we're also looking at the landscape. Are there palm trees? That can be a pretty big hint that you're not in Canada. Are there mountains? Then you are not in Belgium. More to the point, are there any flags? That can also be a tremendously useful clue, but it requires that you memorize a lot of flags. I've also made a point to learn website country codes. Outside of the US, most of them end in something other than .com. For example, RU is Russia, MK is North Macedonia, DE is Germany, Switzerland is CH (for Confoederatio Helvetica - i.e., Swiss Federation), LV is Latvia, etc. As you may have noticed, some are more obvious than others. Knowing these are useful when playing Geoguessr, because a lot of billboards and company vehicles have web addresses on them. 

As far as pre-game strategies are concerned, it is also helpful to know where the various European powers held colonies in Africa. If you see women carrying baskets on their heads, but all the signs are in French, then there's a good chance that you're either in Senegal or Tunisia. If it's in English and they're driving on the left side of the road, you might be in South Africa or Kenya.

Incidentally, when we lived in Micronesia, the cars all drove on the right, but most of the steering wheels were also on the right, as it was generally easier to import them from Japan. I think this is somewhat of an anomaly, though. Either way, this is one of the places that the Google car has yet to go. Knowing stuff like that can be useful, too, as is knowing that you're probably never going to get placed in Saudi Arabia, Iran or North Korea, either. There are certain places that the Google car either cannot or will not go. Every once in a while, we do get one in China, but it seems to be limited to approved tourist destinations.  

Is playing this as good as traveling? Of course not. For one thing, you don't get to sample the local cuisine, which is part of the fun in going to new places. On the other hand, you're way less likely to get your wallet or your camera stolen this way, plus you can do it all without even putting pants on. 

Writing Agenda

I've decided to put the detective novel that I had been developing aside for now to work on something else. As far as the book is concerned, the story is fully outlined and I've got the characters pretty well figured out... but then I got an idea for a screenplay that I want to run with while it's still fresh. Sometimes, I find that's the best way to write comedy. When the muse appears and says that it's time to write, I just go with it. 

I have a certain fondness for screenwriting, too. I like the economy of language in the form. You only have about ninety pages, with relatively limited space on each page, to tell a cohesive and compelling story. This requires discipline, knowledge of the craft, and the ability to choose just the right words to say more with less. In some ways, it's actually harder than writing a book. I tend to think of my first three or four screenplays as practice scripts. They live in a box somewhere, never to see the light of day -- but sometimes the best way to learn something is simply by doing it. In the process, you improve.

The screenplay that I'm writing started with a title and just kind of snowballed from there. It's a comedy that could be shot on a modest budget. That's all I'll say for now. I suspect that the deeper I get into this project, the less time I will have to write blog posts. That said, I hope to have this script done within the next couple of months, at which point I will probably do a few more blog posts and then get back to working on the book. Once I am vaccinated, I also hope to get back to teaching. 

Summer Squash Soup

The other day, I went to the grocery store and they had all these "imperfect" summer squashes that they were selling three for a dollar, so I bought six of them. This evening, I made them into soup. Here's what I did:

1. Peel and cube summer squash, put in bowl with melted butter, olive oil, salt, black pepper, red pepper, paprika, cinnamon and about a little bit of brown sugar. Stir it up until it's all coated, then spread on cookie sheet covered in parchment paper. Cook at 400°F for about half an hour, until they start to brown. 

2. Chop up two carrots, two celery stalks and two onions. Put in bowl. Cut up about a pound of boneless chicken breasts and put in different bowl with a little bit of Italian dressing. 

3. Heat up soup pot. Melt butter. Put chicken in. Put lid on for a few minutes, then take it off so that the chicken can brown. Once the chicken was browned, I removed it from the pot and put it into a different bowl, which I set aside.

4. In that same pot, I cooked the onions, carrots and celery. I also added some minced garlic, chopped spinach and red pepper flakes, along with a little more butter and salt. 

5. Once that was brown, I took it out of the pot and put it into a blender along with the roasted squash. I blended it until it looked kind of like baby food, then I put it back into the pot, along with the cooked chicken and about two and half cups of chicken stock and a little bit of chicken soup base. I also added about a half cup of heavy cream.

6. Salt to taste. This was when I added some lime juice, ginger juice and white vinegar a little bit at a time until it was adequately bright. Then I sprinkled in some oregano and parsley, plus a few thin slices of gruyere cheese, and called it good.

Personally, I enjoy the mad science aspect of making soup. Add a little of this, a little of that, until eventually it tastes like something you want to eat.  

Balance

Balance is the secret to the universe. Now you know.

It is why atoms do not like their nuclei to be separated and why we don't all fly off into space from the cetrifugal force of the earth's rotation. Good old gravity has always got our backs.

We also have just the right balance of particles in the air around us that allows us to breathe, even though about three quarters of it is actually made up of nitrogen. Consider the impossibility of putting out a forest fire if all of the air on earth was oxygen. Nitrogen is what they put inside incandescent lightbulbs to prevent the tungsten filaments from burning too hot.

Homeostasis is happening all around us. If you leave a piece of bread on the counter, eventually the humidity level of the bread is going to achieve an equilibrium with the rest of the kitchen. The same is true if you leave a can of beer in the garage. Eventually, it will be equal in temperature to the air around it. Nature, by nature, seeks balance.

Sometimes when the very delicate balances of the natural world are disrupted, it can cause serious problems. For example, over time, as predators like coyotes, bears and wolverines are killed off and their habitats destroyed, then the animals that are further down the food chain overpopulate and overgraze, which causes soil erosion and other problems. Before long, these environmental imbalances can go so far as to change the way that rivers flow... and worse. Nature is constantly reminding us of the imperative of maintaining balance.

I tend to think that balance is an integral part of any artform as well. If you're using blue in a painting, for example, then an orange background will help it to stand out. In terms of the broader aesthetics, a balanced composition tends to make for an interesting image, as it invites the eye to move through it (instead of leading your attention to land in one place). 

When cooking, in most cases, a person seeks to achieve a balance between the various flavor elements at play. This is why cilantro can fuck right off. It overpowers everything else. If you want chocolate to stand out more, add some cinnamon, as this helps to ground it and provide balance. If you want to balance out a heavy umami flavor, add lime juice or some other acid to brighten it. If you put in too much spice, add a little bit of sugar. When in doubt, add ginger.

This holistic balance method is how I tend to approach baking as well. All measurements are approximate and subject to change at my discretion. I know that the fundamental difference between most kinds of dough is the ratio of liquid to flour (and sugar, if applicable). If I know what that dough is supposed to feel like, once I've got the right balance of the wet and dry ingredients, that's when it's ready to knead or bake or whatever. It really is all about having the proper balance. That isn't to say equal amounts of everything, just that each element is contributing to the whole without calling specific attention to itself. You don't taste the flour, the buttermilk, the sugar, the eggs, the vanilla extract, the baking soda or the salt. You taste the pancakes, which is to say that you taste all of these things in proportionate balance with one another. Then maybe you drown it in syrup, because pancakes usually need something sweet to balance out the flavors.

I could go on, as there are examples of this in nearly all of the things that bring us joy. In fact, I tend to think that the key to having happiness in one's life is to seek (or perhaps more accurately, allow) balance at every opportunity that presents itself. It seems that the more balanced I am in my own life, the happier I am. I suspect that this is probably true with most people. 

If I make a conscious effort to take time every day to exercise and nurture my mind (by reading/writing/teaching/solving puzzles), my body (through physical activity) and soul (by playing music/creating art/being with the people I love), then I generally find this to be a day well spent. 

It all comes down to balance.  

What is in a Name?

Part of the fun in making my own beer, other than the obvious reward of getting to drink it and share it with friends at the end of the process, is in naming my various creations. Before I started putting it in kegs, I bottled it myself, and every time, I would design a label to go with the name. Sometimes I drew it and sometimes I used clip art, but it was always fun. Frankly, it's the only thing that I miss about bottling.

I was designing beer recipes today, which happened to correspond with my ordering of the various ingredients online. One of the beers that I shall be making later this year is an American pale-bodied pilsner with complex notes of fruit, some European flavor and hops from Oregon that smell faintly of cannabis. I'm calling it Rick Steves. 

Watching his show, or other travel shows, helps make up for the fact that we can't go anywhere right now. It's not as good as a vacation, but at this point, I'll take it.

Twitter

Now that Drumpf isn't on Twitter anymore (that's still fun to say), I've started using it slightly more, which is to say occasionally. This past week, I've pretty much just been using it to yell at the television during the impeachment trial, a practice that has proven to be only mildly cathartic. Sadly, I know that it's going to take a lot more than that to preserve the integrity of our democracy. 

You can follow me @sands_zach, if you're into that kind of thing. Even though I still rarely use social media, please feel free to like me. Just like everybody, I like being liked. Every once in a while, I might even say something funny and/or intelligent in 140 characters or less. You never know. 

For me, the hardest thing about using Twitter is ignoring my inclination to employ proper grammar, or not choosing the right word just because it doesn't fit in the space available. Also, I'm kind of a compulsive editor, but only because I know that first drafts of anything tend to be inferior to what they could be if revised and polished. Even these three simple paragraphs underwent a number of reivisions before taking their present shape. 

Anything Goes

Keeping with the title of this blog, I've decided that this is the place where I will write about whatever I feel like on a given day. You may have noticed this. While I do have pretty diverse interests, they are all interconnected in certain ways. 

Plus about the only thing that I enjoy as much as acquiring knowledge and wisdom is the act of sharing these things. That's why I've been teaching college courses for over a decade. It's also why I created this blog. While the ideas that I seek to convey in these venues are quite different, the idea behind them is more or less the same. 

I believe that knowledge and its byproducts are worth exponentially more when shared, so I try to do whatever I can to make that happen. 

If you like my work, please share it with others.

Domestic Terrorism

More often than not, I think that the flames of terrorism are fueled by a perceived lack of other options. If your life is shit, then you have very little to lose, and some grandiose "higher calling" may seem a lot more appealing than whatever else you had going. I suspect that this is true no matter where a person lives. 

I've spent a good portion of the past few days watching the impeachment trial taking place in the Senate. To call what happened anything less than an act of domestic terrorism is to be complicit with what transpired. To have organized, provoked and commanded it is to be a willing accessory to murder and a traitor to the US Constitution. This should be as plain as day to anyone who is paying attention. 

As I watch this footage, I keep thinking: what rational person could have possibly believed that his or her life would be any better if they went to the Capitol with the intent to do harm to our democratically elected officials? Who thought that this was a good idea? And what exactly did they think January 7 was going to look like, anyway? Was it going to be like the end credits of Fight Club? Did they think that their credit card debt would suddenly be erased and that Kid Rock would replace [the proposed] Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill? Did they think that their king was going to knight them? Did they think they'd be cracking some brewskis in the Senate Chamber with Ted Nugent, with everybody putting their feet up on desks, keeping it real?  Or did they think that the nation would fall into complete anarchy, and that they could finally live out whatever other violent fantasies they had constructed? What was the endgame here? They must have known that a terrorist attack on the Capitol would not fundamentally change the way that our government functions, right? From the point-of-view of these terrorists, was this all just one big glorified act of self-destruction that was designed to bring down the entire nation with them?   

As I've written in a different article on another blog, when people don't believe that they have any kind of a future, this sense of impotence sometimes pushes them into doing terrible things in order to overcompensate for this. "My life sucks, so fuck you. Now my life matters." This is the terrorist's creed. As a domestic terrorist group organized under the flag of Donald Trump, it seems that most of the people who invaded the Capitol subscribed to this basic tenet, resulting in a rabid expression of toxic masculinity times a few thousand, all instigated and coordinated by their dear leader and his accomplices.    

By becoming part of a group, it lends a person a sense of belonging. I get that. This is why so many people give a shit about sports, and it's probably a large part of why organized religion still exists. Being a willing member of any collective can provide an amplified sense of self-importance relative to the size of the group in question. It feels good to believe that you are a part of something bigger. The dark side of all of this is that if a thousand other people believe the same crazy shit that you do, then it suddenly lends credence to your own batshit conspiracy theories. Of course, I think that most people need to already be in a pretty desperate state before they can accept the level of delusion that motivates them to commit heinous acts of violence like this. There are fans, and then there are fanatics, just like how there are pious individuals and there are zealots. A rational person knows the difference.

Desperation is rooted in fear. When people are afraid that they have no other options, they sometimes cling to something far more primitive than rationality and logic. This might account for some (but, of course, not all) of the people who buy into the unending bullshit delivered to them by a failed mail-order meat salesman who possesses an almost inhuman lack of humor. I have never understood why anyone would buy anything from this guy, but I think it's that they want to see something of themselves in this false image of winning that is such an integral part of his brand identity. A lot of these people wish that they too could shit in gold toilets and cheat on former fashion models with porn stars. Drumpf repreresents the crass vulgarization of the American Dream. 

But if he is indeed a symptom and not the disease itself, then what happens next, regardless of the outcome of this impeachment trial? I think that a lot of middle-America has given up on the idea of a government that works for them, and electing a professional bullshitter (arguably his only skill) to high office is the cynical expression of this existential despair. His "presidency" was nothing if not a series of calculated acts of destruction, itself a form of domestic terrorism. That said, I believe that the key to fighting the degenerative diseases of hopelessness and hate at the core of our society that led to this orange pus sac occupying the White House in the first place is to implement policies that provide more Americans with real opportunities to improve their lives, a chance to imagine and achieve a better American Dream. I believe that the Biden administration needs to invest in the alleviation of poverty in rural areas as well as in urban centers by helping to provide more opportunities to improve one's station of life in these places. 

By design, a democratic system of government is intended to be a tool for the people and by the people to protect and improve their standard of living -- not one person's standard of living, but everyone who resides within that nation's borders and who calls him/her/themself a citizen. Any form of government is capable of being corrupted, because even a perfect system is run by imperfect human beings. Some of them are in fact far less perfect than others, but very few of them get impeached twice in the same term. The only solution to ending the corruption that plagues our body politic is for there to be accountability for our public officials, for civility is a requisite to civilization. 

Finding the Patterns

Video games and I grew up together. Sometime in the early eighties, my parents bought an Atari 5200. Over the years, we accumulated a handful of cartridges for it, including Frogger, Dig-Dug and Pac-Man. These games were all about finding and exploiting patterns. For that reason, I tend to think that they were incredibly beneficial in the development of this particular skillset, which would later translate to a lot more than just being good at old-school video games. After all, music, comedy, narrative and metaphor are also about working with familiar patterns and then diverging from them in interesting ways. That is to say that I think much of my skill as a writer has been nurtured by playing video games over the years. I'll explain.

 

In Dig-Dug, there would be a certain path that I would take through each level, and the key to doing well in this game was to memorize those routes. In a similar sense, Frogger was about negotiating your way through a series of patterns in order to get your frogs home safely. There might be three logs, then two, all moving swiftly to the right, while just past that was a row of sea turtles in that same basic pattern, but moving in the opposite direction and with two of them disappearing at regular intervals. Pac-Man was more or less the same idea: find the most efficient route to take around the screen in order to eat all of the pellets while avoiding the ghosts, except immediately after you've eaten a power pellet, when you can then turn around and eat the ghosts. 

This was all pretty rudimentary stuff. In the decades that have passed since I was a kid playing Atari, of course, video games have gotten considerably more advanced, and the patterns within them have become far more complex. It really has been amazing to witness firsthand the evolution of video games. The technological advances made in this industry over the past forty years has been nothing short of incredible. 

When I was in college, I had an original Playstation, but I gave it to my brother after Final Fantasy VII called me out on the load screen for having played it for over a hundred hours. At the time, I thought that was crazy and that I shouldn't spend that kind of time playing this and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (which, incidentally, is also largely about finding and exploiting patterns in the environment. So is Super Mario Brothers, for that matter). As a general rule, I still try to avoid video games for the most part when I'm in deep with a big project that I'm working on, including my two stints of graduate school and the two years that I spent abroad. That said, now that I am an advanced scholar of media and culture in my own right, I still recognize the intellectual value in playing them, now perhaps more than ever. 

I have long been a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda games. In my opinion, when they work, they work exceptionally well (the original NES game, Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild), and when they don't (the rest of them), well, I just don't play those games. That in mind, one of the things that I most appreciate about this series is the developers' willingness to take chances. Sometimes they pay off, and sometimes they don't. This is the nature of experiments. When these experiments are successful, they fundamentally advance the idea of what video games can and should be. I also like these games because they are full of puzzles. Personally, my favorite part of Breath of the Wild (other than maybe the cooking) is probably the shrines. I love how the designers of these games are able to incorporate the puzzles seamlessly into the action. 

There is only one series of games that I probably enjoy even more than the Zelda games, at least in terms of replayability, and that is Hitman. That might surprise people who know me personally, especially since I'm not generally a fan of violent media. In fact, the most recent screenplay that I wrote was essentially a war movie in which no one is hurt or killed in the entire thing. That said, I like the Hitman series for many of the same reasons that I have already discussed, plus a few more that I shall explain shortly.

I first came upon this series by doing a web search for a type of game that I thought should exist: something with secret agents, disguises and special gadgets. When Hitman popped up, I thought that I might need to refine my search, but then I got the 2016 Hitman game for cheap and played it. What I had expected to be a brutally violent game isn't really that, exactly. I mean, it can be, if that's how you play it, but in my experience, I find that it's usually best to avoid a gunfight or anything like that. In fact, if you kill anyone other than the bad guy who is your intended target, then you lose a massive amount of points, which is one of many ways that the game developers incentivize strategy over unadulterated violence and mayhem. 

There are a number of things that are quite brilliant about these games. Among them is the fact that you can play the same level a thousand times and do it differently every time. It's kind like a choose-your-own-adventure book in that sense, and I tend to think that games such as this actually do use the same part of the brain as that which processes narrative. After all, when I'm writing a story, I am basically trying to get a character from point A to point B to point C in the most interesting way possible. Engineering a plot is creative problem solving, and for me, that is precisely what is so appealing about these games.

Every level is its own detailed world full of thousands of variables to be affected by a player's choices -- an expansive sandbox in which to create the story that that individual player wants to experience. Do you disguise yourself as a guard to get in close to your target and then throw a screwdriver at this person from across the room? Do you make them sick with poison and then follow them to the bathroom in order to avoid retaliation from armed observers? Do you use a sniper rifle from the next building over? The possibilities are nearly endless, and many of them can indeed be quite creative.

On a personal level, having each of these vast worlds to explore also helps to fulfill my sense of wanderlust, which has otherwise been all but rendered dormant by the pandemic. When I play Hitman, I get to travel to Italy, France, China, India, or any of the sixteen other locations, where I walk around in a simulacrum of this environment, like a form of virtual tourism. In fact, I think that this is probably why I have played more of these games during the pandemic than ever before, too. It's the next best thing to leaving the house, plus it's kind of fun to walk around in a world where I can have almost complete control over my environment. It's certainly a stark contrast to having to wear a mask everywhere I go out of a legitimate fear of microscopic organisms. 

Hitman 3 just came out a couple of weeks ago, and from what I have seen of it so far, it seems perfectly worthy of being a part of this series. In the same way that Hitman 2 took the basic ideas at play incrementally further than in the first installment, the third and final game in this series does this as well. In short, it appears to be everything that I hoped it would be: a good way to vicariously explore digital representations of the outside world while crafting an engaging and immersive narrative as I go. As an added bonus, it provides a challenging intellectual exercise that uses the same part of my brain as writing. 

Much like Pac-Man, the Hitman games are fundamentally about finding and exploiting the patterns of non-player characters, but this time around, how you approach the tasks at hand can be significantly different every single time. Are these games violent? It depends on how you look at it. In Pac-Man, you killed the same four ghosts over and over, whereas in Hitman, you usually have one or two targets per level. In both cases, however, I think that it's worth remembering that they're just pixels. Parents were just as worried about Pac-Man back in the day. The Hitman games don't train people to be assassins any more than Dig-Dug teaches kids to dig tunnels in their backyards and shoot dragons with some kind of air hose or whatever. Playing Hitman develops players' ability to recognize patterns in their environments, as well as the abstract thinking skills necessary to solve problems creatively. These games are also a hell of a lot of fun.