Q: Notwithstanding his association with the "Prince of Persia" flick, what's your beef with Jake Gyllenhaal? And, if I may, do you dislike Maggie Gyllenhaal?

Ed. note: Years ago, I experimented with the Formspring webpage as a way of collecting questions and providing answers. (Sort of a protoReddit AMA . . . not that I've ever gotten into Reddit.) Here is an old one from late May 2010 that brings back fond memories and, to be frank, I like the way I constructed my answer.

A: I'm jumping out of order on this one . . . AND I'm answering more than one in a day. (My "Blogging for Success" book says you have to develop a relationship with your readers . . . so I am accommodating YOU, trustworthy questioner!)

So . . . what is my beef with Mr. Gyllenhaal? Well, mostly it stems from his constant comparisons to Tobey Maguire back ten years ago. At the time they were both up-and-coming young actors. Both has large doe-y eyes. And they both a.) were supposedly in the running for Spiderman and b.) dating Kristen Dunst.

(So much so that when Maguire was rumored to be out of the Peter Parker role for Spiderman 2, there was strong opinions that Gyllenhaal would step right in.)

Andbutso, the point is, I've always thought Maguire was the better actor. I first loved him in Pleasantville, and really, really loved Spiderman and especially Spiderman 2. And I liked The Ice Storm and thought he did a fine job in Seabuscuit. Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal was in stuff like The Day After Tomorrow, etc. (Though I really did enjoy Donnie Darko.)

And there were always these persistent rumors that Maguire was a bit pretentious and a bit Too Much. But at least he never had The Bubble Boy on his resume.

So, while I was in the throes of my love for Spiderman and Spiderman 2, I became (willingly) associated around my office friends as a lover of all things Tobey. And to help bolster that definition, I sort of adopted a (kind of irrational) dislike of all things Gyllenhaal. And it helped that another of my work friends was willing to play along and support Gyllenhaal in opposition to me.

But that has mostly died off at this point. If pressed, I'd say that Tobey deserves an Academy Award before Gyllenhaal's pecs get nominated for one. But I'm willing to live and let live as I get older.

*****

As to Maggie, I don't dislike her at all. I enjoyed her just fine in The Dark Knight, squirmed my way through two-thirds of Secretary, didn't realize she was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, need to watch Donnie Darko again, and keep getting her mixed up in my head with Zooey Deschanel.

But, no. I have no beef whatsoever with Maggie Gyllenhaal.

So, there's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Home beer brewing (because Tom asked me to)

Here's another in the newly created series . . . You Asked for It!

My colleague and once-time left-handed tennis partner Tom asked me to write about home beer brewing.

Credit: Wikipedia

Sadly, I have zero experience in this field, so I can only break down the components of his suggestion and tackle those to see what I can come up with.

A. I've never tried to make beer at home, but I have been known to drink beer at home. What sort of beer, you might naturally ask? Lots of different kinds. I've never been the sort of person who settles on one beer and drinks that to the exclusion of other choices. I like variety and I like to experiment with different kinds of beer.

Here are the brands that I have liked the most in recent years. Sorry, but these probably won't turn out to be terribly exotic. I'm not that creative.

• There was a time when I was big into Molson. Some people say that Canadians are especially devoted to beer, but maybe that is just me remembering the McKenzie Brothers from my youth. Still, I liked the taste of Molson Light well enough and I've always found the Canadian maple leaf aesthetic to be a pleasing logo in a variety of contexts.
• When Lynda and I visited San Francisco for our 10th wedding anniversary years ago, I drank Anchor Steam beer for the first time. I liked the taste and I especially liked the distinct bottle shape and labeling. Anchor Steam isn't found in every grocery store around here, but I have reliably found it in Giant Eagle and if I'm in a beer drinking mood that also combines with a hankering for nostalgia, I usually spend the extra $1.50 to take a drink down memory lane.
• Samuel Adams beers are easy to find, so I often pick them. I especially like to get their variety packs and also like their autumn and winter seasonal beers. I don't usually go for a regular old Sam Adams Light, but there is nothing wrong with that either.
• Speaking of seasonal tastes, during the summer I like the Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy beer on a hot day when I might be spending time outside for a cookout. The strong lemon flavor is a good choice.
• Finally . . . lately I've been enjoying the Magic Hat Elder Betty beer. It's a quirky name and the flavor is interesting. It might just be my latest experiment, but its a good one--for now.

B. Secondly, when I think of home brewing, I think of bathtub gin. I've never made (or tasted) that, but I have used my bathtub for unconventional means.

Back in my high school band days, I'd occasionally commandeer the bathtub at home to clean my French horn.

 

 

 

Credit: cgconn.com

 This is something you have to do every now and then--fill up the tub with water, pull all the slides out of the horn body, unscrew the valve covers, let soak. Then you take everything out to drain, dry off, reapply slide grease to the tubing, add new valve oil, etc.

If you are in a really industrious mood (or if you had a concert coming up, you might follow this maintenance up with a bit of silver polish and buffing to make the newly cleaned instrument shine and look impressive.

Where is my F-horn now? Down in the basement, awaiting the day I decide to drag it out and find how few notes I can still play.

Anyway, Tom . . . there's my answer to your suggested writing prompt. Thanks for the input and I hope you learned something new.

Thoughts On Evil (because Tracy asked me to)

Sometimes when you ask the Internet for help, you get back answers you weren't expecting.
But here goes . . .

What is evil? Some would say that evil is this:

Credit: cowcaholic, on Deviant Art.com

But, I try to remember that he once began as a lonely, abandoned boy in an orphanage. Or some might say that evil is more closely related to this guy:

Credit: Lucasfilm, & badassoftheweek.com

 But . . . he too was an abandoned boy who didn't get all the help he needed and was given the wrong tutelage by the wrong people.

(And then, there is this version of him, which might be evil or hilarious, depending on your particular point of view.)

And for some other people, maybe this is the most evil thing of all.

Credit: Diet of Worms

Maybe you don't like this style of painting. Maybe you don't like Godzilla. Maybe you're not in favor of Godzilla unleashing its wrath upon this simple hut bathed in such beautiful light. But is Godzilla being evil here? Can we truly know what is in Godzilla's mind?

As one of my favorite YA authors suggests, we need to try and imagine others complexly and accept the fact that life resists simplicity. So, I'm not sure about the true nature of evil. Even that "legitimate rape" dude isn't evil . . . he's just terribly misinformed and perhaps willfully ignorant and misguided. In our fevered media culture all of our positions must be rock solid and we must all be true believers. That rigidity is dangerous, certainly. Counterproductive, absolutely. But even that is not evil.

Maybe evil is focused, determined selfishness. An unwillingness to consider that our actions have consequences outside of ourselves . . . to fail to notice that we are not the center of any universe, not even our own personal ones that we wrap up in every day. There are others--people who struggle with their own problems. And we can help them if we are willing to imagine that their lives are just as worthy of consideration as ours. To refuse to do that is evil.

Welcome humans!

Credit: David Martin, et. al. I found this by searching "Why Won't You Grow" and most of them came up me. So, I've got that going for me . . . which is nice.

If you are happening upon my blog for the first time, due to the recommendation of my friend Dean, then welcome to Why Won't You Grow?!

If you are wondering how I know Dean, we work together. I've visited his house, drank his wine, and eaten his wife's pizza. We've played Dungeons & Dragons together. He's also been to my house several times and even brought his children. I someday plan to sneak up on Arya and whisper "Winter is coming." to see what she might do.

So, what else might you want to know about me? Well, if you follow the links along the top of the blog, you can learn more about me and WWYG?! as well as visit my other digital sites on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. If you are interested, you can ask me questions here or on the Tumblr site.

What else should you know? Well, most of my best ideas come to me in the shower . . . but they never seem to make it on screen as well as I'd like. For instance, I had lots of witty things to say in this post as I cleaned up this morning, but nothing new seems to be making in on this screen as I type.

Most of my recent posts show up on Twitter and Tumblr these days, so I welcome any new followers there. But if you aren't subscribed to those spaces, you can visit here. Anyway, welcome to the one or two of you that might show up here. And even hello to the inevitable spambots that might sneak this way.

Do you believe in pure evil? For instance--is it possible for a human being to be purely, entirely evil?

The simple answer is that, no, I don't believe in pure evil--certainly not when applied to human beings.

I believe that all people may choose good. (It's kind of central to my religious faith.) And so I can't believe that no one is redeemable or worthy of hope.

Even the worst characters in history had the chance to be better people, if only they had taken that risk and accepted the challenge to make better choices. But everyone is given the free will to make up their own paths and those paths can be good, bad, or vacillating between the two on a frequent basis.

Anyway, that is my (very short) answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

What are the last 5 albums you've listened to twice in the last 2 months?

(I tried to answer this question earlier today, but it doesn't seem to have gone through. Yet, if it somehow DOES end up as a duplicate, then . . . have fun comparing how well my memory does over the span of approximately two-and-a-half hours.)

It has been a while since I sat and listened to an entire album because:
1.) the advent of the iPod's randomizing feature has made me impatient for new things,
2.) I spend most of my time listening to podcasts rather than music during my listening hours, and
3.) my kids don't usually let me pick what I want to listen to.

But, given those parameters, here are some albums that I HAVE listened to on a regular, reliable basis recently.

a.) Taylor Swift "Fearless"
As I noted above, my kids push me in certain musical directions. Luckily, this is an album that we can compromise happily on. I enjoy Ms. Swift's lyrics and her musicality isn't bad either. We can all settle on this in the car without much in the way of fights or hurt feelings. And that is sometimes a VERY valuable thing.

b.) Bruno Mars "Doo-Wops & Hooligans"
This is the most recently album that I have purchased. Lynda expressed surprise at its slow jam nature and groovy rhythms, wondering if I had purchased this. But I had, and I was glad that the NPR music review didn't lie. It is funky and smooth . . . just like me.

c.) "Jingle Spells 4"
If its late November, that means I'm listening to the newest charity album of holiday tunes with a Harry Potter flair. For the past four years, Wizard Rockers of all types and the creative folks at The Leaky Cauldron Web site have worked together to produce and sell a holiday album of increasingly good music. Over $50,000 have been raised in this effort over that time. To purchase this unique album for yourself, visit here: http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/features/wizardrock/jinglespells4

d.) Weezer "Hurley"
This is the third-most recent album that I have purchased. This album features the kindly mug of Jorge Garcia's "Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes" on the cover and inside are songs inspired by my favorite Mystery Island drama. When I get back to blogging more often, I plan on providing my own individual interpretations of each song. But that might be a while.

e.) an assortment of Sesame Street albums
When you've got a less-than-three-year-old, you sometimes have to go with the flow . . . whether you want to or not.

Well, that is. There's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

How much $ would it take for you to grow your beard down to your collar bone?

Um . . . let's go with (Dr. Evil voice) one . . MILLION . . . dollars! (/Dr. Evil voice)

Ask me anything

BEDAu Day 18: Flotsam or jetsam?

I'm glad you asked, because I've thought about this a lot in the last week and I'm ready to admit it now.

I'm a jetsam man.

Jetsam has been taking it on the chin to flotsam for so long. (I think jetsam was last popular back in the 1920s when ladies were dames and when legs were gams and when alcohol was hooch.)

Clearly, its been too long since jetsam had its day. Jetsam has been second banana for too long and I am ready to see this change.

Jetsam has a style that I think suits the zeitgeist. It seems more hip, more now, more ready for the digital age. Flotsam is just so . . . analog, you know?

I'll do my best to make jetsam the new and hip thing that is gonna take the world by storm.

Are you with me?

Anyway, that's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

BEDAu Day 8: You are a well-respected editor at a large publishing house. How much of your identity is wrapped up in that statement?

To begin answering this question, let me first tell you a story.

The spring before I went to college, I went and visited the Georgia Southern University campus in Statesboro to interview for a spot in the Bell Honors Program. As I have mentioned in this space before, the BHP was a full scholarship program with a small group of new incoming students each year. The BHP curriculum got you through the basic core classes expected of everyone at GSU, but they were taught in a "higher-level" seminar style (kind of like graduate school?).

I had already completed the paperwork and submitted my entry essay (which you can read here in all of its cringe-tastic glory: http://wwywrite.blogspot.com/2009/01/bhp-scholarship-application-essay.html). But I had to do one more thing; go in for a personal interview with the BHP director and some of the faculty.

Dr. Joiner asked me questions about myself and some other perfunctory stuff about the essay that I wrote and the type of activities I had done in high school. Standard, getting-to-know you type of stuff. At the very end of the interview, there was The Final Question that was (I later learned) asked of all the prospective candidates. The question is "If you knew that someone in this room could give you the honest answer to any single question, what would you ask them?"

I thought about that for a minute, looking down at my hands in my lap, which had recently been sitting on the table and leaving sweat marks for all to see on the table top.

I looked up and said "I would want to know what job I could find that when I woke up in the morning . . . three days out of five, I would be happy to be going to work."

*****

So, that is where I start my answer to this question. How much of my identity is dependent upon my role as editor? It is very little, I hope. Certainly, I hope that the people I work with see me as more than the sum of my editorial skills. I dearly hope that my family and my church friends and my extended relatives think of me in more expansive terms than whether or not I can diagram a sentence and shorten wordy sentences down to fit a space.

The standard hope is that when I die, people won't talk about what a great editor I was or how many successful book projects I was involved in. They will remember things like my sense of humor or my willingness to help when asked. They will remember parties I held or the fact that I delivered a stuffed pepper and a metal helmet to people on their birthdays. They might remember that I had a good cheesecake recipe.

Hopefully they will remember me as a good father, a good husband, a good friend, and a good brother or son. These are the things that i hope can truly define me. These are the characteristics that I certainly WANT to be remembered for.

Anyway, there is my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

BEDAu Day 6: What is the optimal size of a post-apocalyptic survival group?

Well, I'm no real expert but I HAVE read "World War Z."

Unfortunately, I can't remember if the author mentioned an optimal size of a survival party. What I do remember about the book is to:

A. Fill the bathtub with water to drink.
B. Go to the second floor with your weapon (and the bathtub--hopefully).
C. Destroy the staircase and start shooting.

As to what constitutes a good survival party, you'll need a good marksman, a good foraged, a tracker, a survivalist, and someone to entertain everyone.

I guess that means five?

Anyway, that's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

BEDAu, Day 3: Suppose you knew that you had exactly 24 hours left in your life, and you could spend those 24 hours in any way you wanted. What do you suppose you would spend your time doing/seeing/ eating/visiting/arranging, etc.?

Well, I think that I would basically spend it with my wife and my kids.

If money was no object, I guess I would want to spend that time somewhere amazing, or be somewhere that I had never been before to share that unique experience with my most loved ones.

But you, questioner, made that hard for me by only giving me 24 hours left. So, unless I fly against the rotation of the earth, it's gonna be damned hard for me to go somewhere that is truly outstanding. For instance, I don't think I am going to be able to make it to Europe or Asia or somewhere like that and have any time left to really enjoy time before I kick the bucket. And really, the bulk of my time would be spent doing stupid bureaucratic stuff like waiting in line, transferring my luggage, and sitting in planes.

That, my friends, is no way to spend your last hours on earth. And why drag your wife and kids along for that ride? Because there will be so much pressure for that to be a wonderous time . . . that nothing would go well and disappointment would surely abound.

So, lets stay local, okay?

I guess I could make it to someplace relatively close like New York--a place I've never been. But would I want to spoil my wife and kids first visit to the Big Apple by up and dying on them? That seems kind of selfish of me. And I'd stick them with the necessity of bringing my dead self BACK to Ohio for the burial and stuff like that.

So, I guess the other extreme is to just make a picnic of really nice food and take my family to the local cemetary. If I have the foresight to pack a shovel in the trunk of the van, they won't have that much work to do after the picnic is over and there won't be the depressing travel back home, right?

Of course, that is ghoulish to the extreme.

So . . . I guess there isn't a perfectly good answer to the question. More than anything, I think I should spend time with Lynda, Sarah, Grace, and Hannah making them adjust to the fact that I won't be there anymore. I need to spend time making sure they know that I love them and will miss them. I should tell each of them individually how special they are and in specific detail how they have improved my life. I need them to come away from the loss with a sense of happiness and security. Where that takes place is less important than the fact that it needs to happen.

So, that's my answer.

Thanks for asking?

Ask me anything

What advice would you give to bloggers who are inclined to return to their published blogs to edit them for grammatical errors or remove embarrassing info?

I would council against both impulses.

Regarding the most important part of the question--the second part--you initially wrote that "embarrassing" info for a reason. And even though the Internet is not permanent in any sense, you should honor the original impulse behind why the statement in question was created. To go back and edit yourself later calls into question the reason for the writing in the first place.

(I also don't think you should go back and rip pages out of diaries or journals or notebooks. I have written embarrassing things in the past and they are still in existence in pages. I just do my best to keep them out of the reach of my children, who aren't at an age to understand it--or even need to understand it. And it is instructive to me to go back now and then and say hello to that former self, to read what he was thinking and gain some perspective on what has been going on in my life since then.)

Now, as to the question of correcting grammatical errors . . . that's probably not a big deal. Certainly, I am guilty of many, many such mistakes. And in my daily work, it is something of my job to avoid letting such things become part of the final product. But that is in a final product that is being sold for profit and (therefore) demands a higher standard of quality than a personal blog that I write, that no one has to read, and is being thrown out there for free.

Of course, when I describe my electronic writings in such a way, it's no wonder I've been writing for over five years with no noticeable increase in viewership. But I guess I'm a bit too honest about the quality of what I'm doing. I'm NOT producing something for sale or for any REAL permanence. It is a collection of momentary thoughts that are thrown together in between kids baths, meals, TV shows, and any other time that I have fifteen minutes to spare and feel an urge to be creative.

Such are the quotidian impulses of my blogging lifestyle. But it IS the honest truth.

If you aspire to make something out of your blog; to make it something that has lasting, permanent value. If you want it to be useful, then maybe you can go back and edit your past.

But, if you do that . . . then you're no better than George Lucas.

Anyway, there is my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

Is it better to love and lost, than to never have loved at all?

I say yes.

Experiencing love is a difficult thing. It opens us up to enormous vulnerabilities. But at the same time, it opens us up to new sides of themselves that might never be realized without the challenge of love to push us in new directions and new perspectives.

If we never have the chance to love, we live in a world that is more selfish and more limited. While it is potentially hurtful and heartbreaking to experience love and either have it unreturned or to have it fade away, a person who has loved is no longer the same as they were before.

So, I say, push yourself. Acknowledge the possibility of more for yourself and the one you love. And don't be let fear of what might happen become so overwhelming that it precludes the chance to risk.

(Admittedly, this sounds super-great coming from secure, mature, 38-year-old me. Teenage me, college me would never, never, NEVER be so confident as to throw this down.)

But, really, that is part of what I'm talking about here. Those earlier, more scared, less mature, less loved versions of me are NOT who I am today. And it is age and love and relationship that have put me here.

I also realize that I am extremely lucky to have found someone to love that loves me back and that we don't disagree on important things--or at least when we disagree, we adjust what we think is important in service of that love. I haven't had my love go wrong. So, I guess I don't truly know what it means to have loved and lost.

But I do know that having loved successfully and seeing how it has changed me, I don't think I would want to miss out on that experience.

Anyway, that's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

Has there ever been a technological wonder that you thought would just be a passing craze and then it ended up being something big?

I have been struggling to answer this question for a good while. And I guess the best answer that I can come up with is the Nintendo game system.

I grew up when Atari was brand new. We even had the first model and I promptly played Space Invaders and Breakout and Combat so much that I broke the first set of joysticks. And then, when Pitfall came around, I played that a lot as well. So, I was around when video games in the home became a "thing."

I tell you this to help establish my credentials. And perhaps that helps further establish the fact that when I didn't later embrace the Nintendo system it helps answer the question that this was a technological wonder that I didn't jump on quickly. You see?

But the truth is that we didn't (nor have I a history of) have tons of video games when I was a kid. My family didn't upgrade and/or replace the Atari over time. Other friends has the Intellivision and any of the other systems to come after, including the original Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega, and whatever else. When Ninetendo and the original Mario Brothers game came out, I was alrady out of the gaming scene. And when I did try to play, I was easily frustrated and definitely beaten by young punks half my (then) age of 14 or so. And it was this missed connection with the Nintendo (and a sort of frugalness that comes with being a high schooler/college student with little money) that kept me out of the burgeoning video game system phenomenon in the late 1980s and 1990s that stil continues today.

Now, we do have a Wii and I and the kids play it. But it is a different thing now. I'll always feel that the most important period of videogaming history--other than the orignal period--passed me by.

So, there is my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

Boxers or briefs? Or other?

As a kid . . . briefs.

In college . . . boxers.

These days . . . boxer-briefs.

The lesson?

Never forget who you were, but always be ready to embrace the new.

That's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

What is the most delicious thing you've ever eaten?

I once said during lunch at the office cafeteria that I didn't care that much about how food tasted. What I meant was that I didn't find myself able to distinguish the finer naunces about whether something had paprika in it or cardomom or too much cayenne and not enough all spice. In short, I'm not a "foodie." I can and do care if food is palatable or disgusting and I can tell if something has too much salt for my liking. Well . . . I think you get the idea.

But, how then do I answer this question?

I guess I go back to food that have been memorable to me, for whatever reason. And the first one that comes to mind in that regard is a random series of memories I have from childhood about a restaurant that we sometimes went to in Albany, Georgia.

Albany is about 45 minutes west of Tifton, where I grew up. Mostly I visited Albany to a.) experience a real Mall with lots of stores and restaurants inside the Mall (something Tifton never could provide, even in the best of years) b.) visit my orthopedic doctor/surgeon on a semi-regular basis. But I can remember a few times when we went to eat at this restaurant. I wish I could remember its name, but it registered as a fancy place. (It had white tablecloths on the tables and cushiony, leathery type chairs to sit in.) We probably only went there a few times in my childhood because my Dad had gotten a salary bonus or something kind of unexpected and he was treating us to something special . . . not that I would have known that at the time or even paid much attention to it if it was said out loud. But that was likely the circumstances for it.

ANYWAY . . . what made this restaurant special to me was the salads they served before the meal. It was something about the dishes the salads came on, or the way that the different dressings came not in bottles but in smal individual bowls all carried in a metal caddy. (I distinctly reember the caddy.) But above all of that was . . . bacon. I remember crumbled up bacon on the salads. Honest-to-goodness bacon that had just recently been cooked crumbled and put on my salad just before it came out to my seat. It was still warm and slightly chewy. It wasn't Bac'n Bits from a bottle. It was warm, REAL bacon.

I still carry a faint trace of that culinary surprise, even if I can't piece together much more than that.

*****

What since childhood? Well, there were many good restaurant experiences during our honeymoon in Charleston, South Carolina. I remember the red beans and rice that I ate our first night after driving into town from Savannah. I remember the she crab soup I ate during a lunch stop one day at a small restaruant tucked away in a neighborhood of Charlestonian row houses. I remember the fancy pasta that we at at the only restaurant I remember by name (The Library at Vendue) and especially the salads we ate that night . . . because it consisted mostly of greens--funkily shaped leaves the likes of which I wasn't used to in my salads from childhood or salad bars or college. But mostly I remember that we consciously spent more on food during our honeymoon than most anything else. We ate well (for recently being in college) and we really liked it.

*****

When I was in Hawaii many years ago, I remember eating a piece of pork tenderloin that had been marinated in soy sauce for a long time and it was tender and flavorful and really, really good.

*****

I remember the first dinner entree I made for Lynda in our first aparatment, when she came home from her first day of professional work. (Skillet fried chicken fingers I cut myself from chicken breasts, accompanied by a homemade honey mustard dip)

*****

Come to that, I remember one of the first meals we ever ate at a couple after the honeymoon, lving in the Town Terrace in Tifton, eating early morning cereal and drinking coffee from our newly washed wedding china.

*****

There are lots of random food memories over the years. But what is the most delicious thing out of these memories and many, many more?

I guess I don't have a very good (or completely satisfactory) answer to that question. Because I remember more about the people and some of the circumstances of the eating than I do the food itself. Maybe that means I just haven't eaten anything truly exceptional. Maybe that will come later in life. Or maybe I'm back to where I started this post. Maybe I just don't care enough to come up with the correct answer.

But anyway, that IS my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

Are you a cat person, or a dog person?

I am a cat person. When I was a kid, the only pet that was mine was a calico cat named Dutchess. However, the main pet of my childhood was my brother's pug dog named Shorty. His name came from his stub of a tail . . . which wasn't always so short and stubby.

You see, Shorty used to have a longer, curly tail. But after an unfortunate driveway incident (no . . . not THAT kind my lunch companions) in which my mom backed over Shorty's tail . . . well, it had to be amputated. And his tail was forever after a stub of a thing.

None of that has anything to do with my preference of cats over dogs. (All of the Shorty driveway incident happened either before I was born or when I was an infant.) I just happen to like cats over dogs, mostly because I think they are more self sufficient. Cats don't need to be walked, thought you do have to clean out their litter boxes for them.

I guess I just prefer
1.) indoor pets

that

2.) can curl up in your lap

and

3.) I think of "DOG" as a larger animal not suitable for lap curling. (Smallish lap dogs . . . I guess they should just be cats.)

So . . . I'm exposing all sorts of vital, critical information about my inner personality. And I'm sure to be alienating a wide swath of my loyal reading demographic in the process.

So, I'm sorry. But that's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

Ask me anything

The ban on texting while driving just passed. What kinds of things do you think should be banned? (serious or silly)

I don't like banning things--unless it is something like passing a law such as the texting while driving ban. That seems sensible and necessary. Most often in my experience, however, when I think of banning eforts it regards censorship of art or books. I remember when I was in college and we were reading "The Last Temptation of Christ" by Nikos Kazantzakas. This was around the same time that the Willem Dafoe movie was being banned by the Catholic Church. But I don't know if the work ever ended up denting the people that would have gone to see the movie in the first place. It seems that doing so doesn't truly stem the desire to do the thing being banned. Rather, it makes the thing being banned more desirable.

In recent years, I have heard about Banned Books Week (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/bannedbooksweek/index.cfm), where authors who have had their books banned by (most often conservative) protestors who find the book's content objectionable.

Because I follow a few authors via Twitter and YouTube, I've heard the arguments of banning from the point of view of those being banned. So, I suppose my opinion is one-sided. But . . . I'm not in favor of banning things. I do monitor the things that my children watch, because I feel that is my responsibility as a parent to them. But eventually they will grow up enough to make those content decisions for themselves. And in the meantime, I'm not in the business of telling other kids what they should or should not do. As a result, I don't work to ban books.

To hear an author's position on book banning--as well as the opinion of the official Nerdfighter wizard, read this blog post by YA author (and Nerdfighter) Maureen Johnson. She wrote this and posted the YouTube video a few years ago when participating in the Brotherhood 2.0 project with John and Hank Green. While the video might be a bit dated, the mysterious views of this Central Park wizard is more entertaining than anything I could write right now.

So, there is my answer.

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to know spoilers or not to know spoilers?

A good question.

Oddly enough, I have already provided an answer to it a few months ago.

You can read it via this link to Why Won't You Grow?!:

http://www.whywontyougrow.com/2010/03/spoiler-policy.html

So, that's my (previously created) answer.

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Notwithstanding his association with the "Prince of Persia" flick, what's your beef with Jake Gyllenhaal? And, if I may, do you dislike Maggie Gyllenhaal?

I'm jumping out of order on this one . . . AND I'm answering more than one in a day. (My "Blogging for Success" book says you have to develop a relationship with your readers . . . so I am accommodating YOU trustworthy questioner!)

So . . . what is my beef with Mr. Gyllenhaal? Well, mostly it stems from his constant comparisons Tobey Maguire back ten years ago. At the time they were both up-and-coming young actors. Both has large doe-y eyes. And they both a.) were supposedly in the running for Spiderman and b.) dating Kristen Dunst.

(So much so that when Maguire was rumored to be out of the Peter Parker role for Spiderman 2, there was strong opinions that Gyllenhaal would step right in.)

Andbutso, the point is, I've always thought Maguire was the better actor. I first loved him in Pleasantville, and really, really loved Spiderman and especially Spiderman 2. And I liked The Ice Storm and thought he did a fine job in Seabuscuit. Meanwhile, Gyllenhaal was in stuff like The Day After Tomorrow, etc. (Though I really did enjoy Donnie Darko.)

And there were always these persistent rumors that Maguire was a bit pretentious and a bit Too Much. But at least he never had The Bubble Boy on his resume.

So, while I was in the throes of my love for Spiderman and Spiderman 2, I became (willingly) associated around my office friends as a lover of all things Tobey. And to help bolster that definition, I sort of adopted a (kind of irrational) dislike of all things Gyllenhaal. And it helped that another of my work friends was willing to play along and support Gyllenhaal in opposition to me.

But that has mostly died off at this point. If pressed, I'd say that Tobey deserves an Academy Award before Gyllenhaal's pecs get nominated for one. But I'm willing to live and let live as I get older.

*****

As to Maggie, I don't dislike her at all. I enjoyed her just fine in The Dark Knight, squirmed my way through two-thirds of Secretary, didn't realize she was in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, need to watch Donnie Darko again, and keep getting her mixed up in my head with Zooey Deschanel.

But, no. I have no beef whatsoever with Maggie Gyllenhaal.

So, there's my answer.

Thanks for asking.

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