What Sister Ray Said

At the Republik, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 03:46:00 +0000

There's a couple of places in A Special Education where the historian in me is forced to take a little nap. I talked earlier about the Wagbeard concert being a few years too early, something I'll probably change, but there are others that will remain. For example, I remember wandering around downtown Calgary during my first summer as a parking lot attendant and seeing gig posters for Nirvana at the Westward Inn (although its the Republik that Jack and Isabel visit). Nobody knew who they were at the time, and I think it was rumoured that twelve people showed up. I know two guys who claimed to have been there, and they say they only came to see Dave Grohl who they admired from his time in Scream.

I have a moment where Jack takes Isabel to go see a local band she's been dying to meet. They're opening for Nirvana and the place is empty. The teens are there to meet the local band during sound check and when they arrive, everyone is ignoring Nirvana.

I once read an interview with Bob Mould in which he said the first time he saw Nirvana was in Canada, as they "unleashed Endless Nameless on an unsuspecting audience", so in my mind, this is the song the band is warming up with as Jack and Isabel arrive.

The Party Scene, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:06:00 +0000

It's odd, I'll admit. I was never a big fan of the Smashing Pumpkins when they first came out. More neutral than anything else. However, one night back in 1997 I came home from a late night working in the parking lot and this video was on. I immediately sat down and wrote "Labellypock", my first short story in a long, long time. It wasn't meant to describe what happens in the video, it's just there was a lot of overlap between what I saw, and what I had experienced with my friends in junior high and high school. Set in pre-boom Calgary, with most of the city still mired in recession, "Labellypock" was about a kind of fin-de-siecle party featuring the "naked and the bored". It ended up winning me a small writing contest in university.

Fourteen years later, this video is still as evocative for me. The excerpt from A Special Education that I posted awhile back, which features it's own take on my early nineties party scene, once again leaned on the Smashing Pumpkins to help unlock those memories and experiences.

The Long Road Back, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 05:10:00 +0000

In my younger days, I made the 12 hour drive from Calgary to Vancouver to watch bands play many times, often in considerably less time. Usually I stayed with family and visited for a few days, but one time we drove in to see Radiohead and stayed out at the Jericho Beach hostel, hoping to avoid all family since our turnaround time was pretty quick.

The idea for the trip that Isabel, Jack and company actually take came from a former student of mine. The first high school I taught at did take the senior physics class on an overnight trip to West Edmonton Mall, and one of the girls in my homeroom went skiing instead.

Since the kids happen to run into the mysterious Mr. Sinclair at the Pixies concert they've traveled to see, here's a song I imagine he would have enjoyed the most:

This particular song doesn't actually feature in A Special Education at all:

But it did encourage me to watch this movie, which did lead to a tellingly moment as the kids make their way back to Calgary.

On the Lam, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 04:40:00 +0000

There's a moment in A Special Education where the kids have run away to go see a rock concert. The morning of the show Isabel and her friend are standing on the beach and she whispers a secret to him that was inspired by this song.

Isabel's Theme

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:38:00 +0000

The early 1990s saw a surprisingly large increase in violent crimes perpetrated by girls.This is part of Isabel's milieu.

Despite the numerous fights she gets into herself, the guitar part in this particular song always seemed to me to be the sound of Isabel laughing.

You can hear and buy more from Superchunk here.

Local songs, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 04:02:00 +0000

(I believe you can download all of this stuff from the Calgary Cassette Preservation Society in one form or another.)

With music playing such a pivotal role in my writing process, it should be no surprise that A Special Education is awash in it. In fact, one of the very first interviews has a character reference his fear of getting beaten up by punks on his way to and from school, a fear that many kids on my block had, largely because of the influence of bands like Beyond Possession.

I love this gritty video of them performing in the neighbourhood of Pembroke, not far from where I (and Isabel) grew up. It's also just north of where Jack and Isabel's classmate Chris was from, a place called Forest Lawn, the same community I saw my first concert in the park, featuring three of Calgary's pre-eminent bands of the early 1990s, Wagbeard, Field Day, and Primrods. It's a similar version of this concert (except at the more genteel location of Prince's Island Park) that Jack, Isabel, and Chris first meet each other, although they don't really know it.

Here's an imaginary set list for that concert:

Piece of trivia: Isabel's math class on her first day of high school is drawn almost entirely from my own, with one little exception. Whereas the character of Chris arrives wearing a D.E.D. Souls t-shirt (from which Wagbeard emerged but not until a few years after A Special Education begins so that reference might change), I believe my friend on whom I based Chris in this scene (and who later went on to develop guidance systems for missiles, or so I'm told) wore an AC/DC "Raising Hell" t-shirt on the first day, and a D.O.A. shirt on the second. The D.E.D. Souls came third.

Bonus: A Special Education ends with a line stolen from a split Wagbeard/Primrods 10" from this era.

(Again, I believe you can download all of this stuff from the Calgary Cassette Preservation Society in one form or another.)

Jack Thomas, A Special Education

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:47:00 +0000

As much as Isabel felt that her old life was threatening to swallow her up at the end of junior high, I had always intended for Jack to feel the opposite. While Isabel feels compelled to use her potential to escape her friends, Jack is looking for ways to fit in with the kids around him without realizing that its the same gifts keeping him apart from everyone. When Jack and Isabel meet, part of what attracts them to each other is their background, and videos of late 1980s Fugazi always helped me keep this in mind. Jack wants to be a part of the aggressive crowd. He wants to be the one with his shirt off, body-surfing. Isabel is attractive to him because she's one of the few girls in the audience, and one of the only ones not standing in the back of the room.

"Waiting Room" was a good song for Jack because he also oscillates between these quiet brooding periods of sensitive reflection, and seemingly spontaneous explosions of emotions. Plus, early on, I imagined that it would be Jack who got the job in the parking lot as a means of "toughening" himself up, and this was also one of the songs that I listened to lot while working there myself. Luckily, my wife suggested switching that particular plot point around while the novel was still in the planning stages, yielding a far more interesting story.

Songs for Isabel Walker

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 16:36:00 +0000

I'm not sure who came first, Isabel or Jack, but it's Isabel who ends up dominating much of A Special Education. Since a lot of the book is based on my own experiences growing up in NE Calgary, as Isabel does, there's been quite a bit of interest in the inspiration for this rough-and-tumble girl in the St. Jude's honour class. One of the earliest scenes I wrote featuring her takes place on the last day of school at her junior high. We see Isabel throwing a temper tantrum in her room, for no particular reason, and then shaving off her hair. She knows she's the only one from her school going to St. Jude and really wants to feel like she's leaving everyone else behind with a new future in front of her.

The inspiration for this scene came from my memories of watching Sinead O'Connor perform and the Grammies, right around the time A Special Education takes place. O'Connor's character in "The Emperor's New Clothes" is also trying to navigate a whole new lifestyle and set of expectations, coupled with a fair amount of underlying and unresolved anger. This is very much like Isabel, who enters high school with much promise and hope. As the my writing progressed, I switched this scene with Jack, primarily because the tension Isabel feels between her old neighbourhood and her new one, the conflicting advice she receives from different authority figures as to how to make good on her potential, all became important themes that run throughout A Special Education.

Feist

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 13:41:00 +0000

I think it's no secret to anyone that I listen to a lot of music. I believe I've even shared that Stars' album "In Our Bedroom After The War" was a significant influence on the story of Jack and Isabel, my two main characters for A Special Education and its planned sequels. In fact, most of the ideas that came to me while listening to that particular album are actually for the last book and it took me a whole year to figure out how to begin the first one.

But begin I did and I thought over the holidays I would share some of the music that helped me along the way. Generally speaking, particular songs help to unlock specific scenes; the music creates mental sequences that I try to capture on paper. Letting my imagination drift away was one of the things I used to love about seeing live music.

However, the writing is usually after the fact. I hear the song and then write the scene. Usually with the song on repeat again and again. Today though, I wanted to share something that was a happy coincidence. One of the themes of this particular set of novels is the relationship between my two main teen characters, Jack and Isabel. in A Special Education it looks, for all intents and purposes, like a love story. As things play out over the next two novels, we find that's not necessarily the case, and it surprised me to hear this new Feist song, as it appears to predict where I wanted to go with them.

Christmas Wishes

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:59:00 +0000

My daughter played "Silent Night" on her violin during her school Christmas Concert last week and I was very proud of her. Of course, there was a moment or two where this old Tom Waits' version crept into my head:

Lines I Wish I'd Written

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:23:00 +0000

It broke my heart to leave the city,
I mean it broke what wasn't broken in there already

A Special Education (excerpt)

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:21:00 +0000

I know that things have been pretty quiet in these parts for some time, but only because I've been hard at work on my latest novel, A Special Education, and I thought I'd share a small piece of it. If you've been around my blog a bit then you've probably seen me make reference to this one as A Saturday Afternoon By The Slurpee Machine - back when the story dealt primarily with my own experiences growing up in Calgary's Northeast. Once I started writing though, things went off on a different direction. It focused more on high school. A mysterious religion teacher committed suicide and a bearded guidance counselor in red clogs showed up to interview the kids. Two of them go missing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

12:41 PM, May 31, 1994 Interview #20

Molly examined the guidance counselor. Her first impression was not to like him. He reminded her too much of her father. The thought prompted her to sit up straighter and cross one leg over the other while folding her hands in her lap. The school official watched all of this over the edge of his clipboard as he ticked off the necessary demographic information on the student profile form.

“How are things at home, Molly?” he asked in a soft voice.

“Shitty,” she grinned, “But you knew that already, so why don’t you go ahead and ask me the real question you’re trying to build up too?”

The guidance counselor smiled. “I just meant how have things been lately? There is a note here in your file that your home life has been difficult, in general, over the last few years, but I was wondering about the last few days?”

“No worse than usual,” she answered curtly.

“I understand you’ve been living with your mother for the last year?”

“The crazy bitch? Yes.”

“Why do you call her that?” he asked calmly.

Molly appeared a little taken aback by the question, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m just surprised you asked that, but I guess it doesn’t really say in your little folder there and you just assumed I was exhibiting some vestige of teenaged aggression towards my mother for driving my father away,” she chuckled and then assumed an exaggerated matter-of-fact air, “But you’d be wrong. I called my mother a crazy bitch, because that’s what you call a woman who has to go to psychological counseling for emotional and anger management therapy, isn’t it?”

“Hmm,” the guidance counselor added the new information to his chart, “Were you close to Mr. Sinclair?”

Molly shook her head, but the older man noted her red-rimmed eyes suggested otherwise. “Have you been crying?”

The girl paused. A crack appeared in her demeanor and he noticed that her lip twitched almost imperceptibly before she recovered. “No one was close to Mr. Sinclair,” she said, “but he listened. You could go and talk to him. He’d listen to you and be non-judgmental about you but totally judgmental about your situation. If you asked him, he’d walk you through how to weigh your decisions. It often didn’t really go the way you wanted it to go, and if you complained, he just kind of looked at you in a way that wasn’t really non-judgmental but not critical either. Like it was neutral, or impassive, but it was the worst look in the world because he knew you knew what you needed to do and you knew he knew you just wanted someone to say you didn’t have to do it. That look just kinda froze my soul, every time.”

“Sinclair was the one who reported you were drunk at school, wasn’t he?”

She nodded but then also shook her head, “Yes but, technically. I was only technically drunk at school. I wasn’t drinking at school. I only showed up to school drunk, or rather, I showed up still drunk and he had me sent home.”

“Yes,” he affirmed “I have that here. Apparently you were adamant about that fact, even then. This was the long weekend incident you and the other students referred to as ‘the alcoholocaust’?”

“Yes,” Molly answered, looking at the floor.

“Can you describe it to me please?”

Molly laughed sarcastically, “Only what I remember.”

“Who was there?”

“I don’t remember. People were coming and going and I never bothered to keep track.”

“Who did you invite then?”

“Everyone,” she shrugged. “Honours kids, jocks. People I knew from choir. Even those crazy Irish kids that play hurling and ultimate Frisbee in the park.”

“What about Jack and Isabel?”

Molly shrugged again and began describing how Isabel arrived late to the party. The other girl’s shift hadn’t ended until close to 11:00 PM, and it took her awhile to get to Molly’s house by transit. It was now after midnight, and it only worried Isabel slightly that people might have already begun to make their way home. She had come for Jack. Only the dust screen on the front door separated the street from the party. Music wafted loudly into the night air as she stepped inside and over the mountain of shoes. A long flight of stairs led immediately from the front entrance, up onto a second level, emptying out into some kind of area that wasn’t a living room or a study. She cast about for Jack. The room had couches, on which some of the chattier honours girls sat holding pink bottles of wine coolers. The room had no television or books; only a few photographed mementos of mountain hikes, sailboats, and one of Disneyland. Isabel wasn’t exactly sure what one did in such a room. A hallway extended to her right, full of closed doors, the first of which appeared to be a child’s bedroom. She opened the door slowly and saw Lawrence and his girlfriend making out on the bed, next to a pile of jackets. Isabel could never remember the girl’s name, only that Lawrence had met her in his non-honours mathematics class. When she wasn’t around, he constantly made fun of her for still reading R. L. Stine novels. Next, she ran into Dorothy as the girl was emerging from the bathroom and was about to ask if she had seen Jack, but was caught off guard when Sebastian also bumped into her as he too tried to leave the washroom. Noticing their flushed cheeks and rumpled clothes, Isabel tried to dismiss the awkward moment with a laugh, but neither of her two classmates made any eye contact with her, or each other, as they beetled their way back down the hall. The next two doors Isabel discovered revealed more bedrooms in a similar state of intimacy. Frustrated, she retraced her steps back to the stairs and finally recognized a sliding door at the other end of the passage. Initially, she had thought it a linen closet, but discovered it led to the kitchen. Molly was there, standing barefoot on the counter, pouring shots of peppermint schnapps onto a tray of tiny glasses.

“Oh, hi Izzie! So glad you could come. Can I get you something? Do you you want to put something in the fridge?” Molly finished preparing the drinks then turned her back to Isabel, putting the bottle of liqueur away on a high shelf in an open cupboard. Isabel said no, and watched Molly try to negotiate her way off the counter. She counted the number of empty bottles that had collected by the sink and whose presence was causing the blonde-haired girl a degree of difficulty. Isabel calculated that if everyone from the honours programme was at the party, they each would have needed to be on their second or third drink to account for all of the empty bottles. Finally on the ground, Molly blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and then looked at Isabel, “Not drinking? You’ll want to avoid the punch then. Let’s take these downstairs.”

The stairs to the basement were tucked into the back corner of the kitchen and twisted slightly as they descended. Having come up stairs at the front of the house, Isabel tried to make a mental map to account for the seeming fact that the so-called ‘basement’ was simply a ground floor with a glassed-in rear exit to the backyard. She immediately noticed that the music was much louder. Groups of students clustered around each other, yelling over the noise from the stereo, a few on the various couches distributed around the room, others by a pool table standing in the far corner. Another larger group had gathered around the open space in front of the television and appeared to be playing some kind of drinking game. A steady stream of people moved from the basement to the backyard where a fire pit gave off a brilliant and smoky orange light.

“Where’s Jack?” Isabel asked.

“Oh,” Molly replied, offering her tray of drinks to random people, “I think he’s out back on the roof. Sure I can’t get you anything?”

Isabel shook her head again and Molly continued to pass out the rest of her drinks before leading Isabel outside. One side of the backyard, near the fence, had an old wooden playhouse. Despite clearly having had a few drinks she showed the other girl how it was possible to use the playhouse’s window frame to climb onto its roof and from there balance on the fence. Watching her move nimbly in the dark, Isabel remembered that Molly was supposedly some kind of dancer. She also noticed that the fence wasn’t really a fence at all, but a decorative concrete retaining wall wide enough to allow them to walk across it back to the main house and then pull themselves up onto the roof. Isabel saw Chris and Jack halfway up the roof, talking and drinking beer.

“What are you two doing up here?” Isabel asked as each girl took a seat next to either boy.

Jack turned his head quickly to smile at Isabel and she could tell this was not his first beer. “We wanted to go someplace quiet to talk and Molly said there was no place quieter than the roof so up we came. It’s totally a lovely view, don’t you think?” He waved his arm out above the yard. The rear of Molly’s house faced a canyon, below which stood the dense forested canopy of Fish Creek Park. The unlit nature preserve gave off very little light, leaving the only sources of illumination the hundreds of stars visible above them and the small scattering of new residential developments on the far south side of Fish Creek, their distant lights indistinguishable from the pale dots overhead. Jack found it very calming to focus intently on one or two of the stars and feel himself drawn deeply into the surrounding darkness. With the alcohol bubbling through his veins, he could sense himself floating off into the void, the noise of the other kids, the party, the gritty feeling of the roof, would all fall away and it seemed to him like he was drifting alone with only the sound of Chris’ voice to anchor him to the world..

“Yeah, sure, pretty,” Isabel agreed, noticing that Molly had snuggled in close to Chris as if for warmth. She suddenly had the urge to do the same with Jack. Instead she asked, “What are you guy’s talking about?”

“Nothing,” Jack laughed, blinking, trying to re-focus on the stars...

Chris smiled, “Yeah, you know, just life, the universe, everything.”

Molly ran a hand along Chris’ thigh. “I don’t know how you two managed to stay up here so long. I’m freezing. Chris, can you help me inside please?”

Jack and Isabel watched the other two negotiate their descent back onto the grass and inside. Within moments, they were alone. A handful of students sat around the bonfire, throwing miscellaneous items into the fire and drinking. Jack had noticed that they paid no attention to him and Chris, nor did they appear to see the coming and going of Molly, neither with Isabel, nor with Chris. He knew that a lot of his classmates were inside, the alcohol helping them to unleash their pent up hormones. That was one of the reasons Jack had come outside, to avoid the temptations within. He was fairly certain that a more than slightly inebriated Dorothy had made a pass at him and he had no desire to go through another such awkward situation with a girl again. Instead he had spent the last two hours trying to avoid the girls altogether as he waited for Isabel to arrive. Now that she had, what he desired most of all was to reach across and hold her hand, but a large part of him was too afraid to move. A smaller part yelled and called him a coward and urged him to action. Jack and Isabel sat alone together on the roof, staring out into the quiet reaches space, Isabel for her part, enjoying the moment, while Jack engaged in his endless internal debate. He wondered how the stars made her feel. Did she long to join them the way he did, as if they could offer him a form of companionship no else could?

“Are you drunk?” Isabel asked casually, hoping to break the awkward silence that had arisen between them.

Jack lifted his leaden hand and placed it on Isabel’s knee, a move he would have been impossibly afraid to try two years ago out of fear of doing the wrong thing, of misinterpreting her looks her or remarks. He felt rewarded when she put one of her hands on top of his. He smiled, “Yes. I am. Indeed.”

Isabel shook her head, ‘Why?”

“Don’t know. Why not?” He shrugged and swayed a little, “You never drink do you? Why not?”

“My father drinks. My mother drinks. My sister drinks. My neighbours drink. It’s like drinking is a part of where I live and I don’t want to live there anymore.”

Jack nodded. “That sounds about right then.”

“So, why are you out here getting drunk with Chris? I thought you two didn’t like each other.”

“Nope.” Jack laughed. “I get along with him just fine. It’s you that doesn’t get along with him. He’s kinda like me. We get along. We have these little parts inside us that won’t shut up, but we both agreed tonight that drinking helps to quiet the dull roar in our souls.”

“Dull roar in your souls? Which one of you poor misguided poets came up with that line?” Isabel laughed. Jack looked hurt.

“It’s just there’s a part of me that wants to do all these things, but there’s another part that keeps holding me back, too nervous to do anything. So there’s this gulf then, between these two sides, and it feels like they’re inside yelling at each other all the time. Except when I drink. Then everything seems to quieten down.”

“Hmm.” Isabel nodded and held his hand, considering his words. “I usually just punch someone or something when I feel like that. Makes me feel way better,” she stood up and tried to pull Jack to his feet. “But we should get down from here and probably go. It’s a long enough bus ride to the train station already and we don’t want to get stranded.”

Back inside, Jack and Isabel looked for Molly to say their good-byes. She wasn’t in the basement, nor did they find her in the kitchen, where Molly’s choir friend, Ciaran, was busy drunkenly washing dishes. Similarly, while the chatty girls from English class seemed to have multiplied in the awkward sitting room, their hostess was not among them. Jack looked down the hallway and Isabel gripped his hand.

“Nothing but love nests down there,” she warned him with a cautious laugh.

Jack looked pained, his indecision visible. “We should say good-bye. We can’t just disappear. People would be worried or upset.”

“It’s your call then.”

He sighed and swung their joined hands towards the hall, “Onward.”

Isabel shook her head and led him down the darkened corridor. She guessed that if Molly had taken refuge with Chris behind one of the closed doors, she would have chosen the largest room, the one at the end of the hall. She paused before knocking. Molly’s voice answered without hesitation,

“Entrez-vous.”

Isabel pushed the door open and motioned for Jack to enter first. He stopped short, barely past the threshold, causing her to bump into him. She peered over his shoulder, before moving around to a better position. Molly and Chris lay in the large bed, apparently naked, the grey sheets tucked under their armpits and their pale skin contrasting with the dark wooden headboard. Molly looked very relaxed, her hair spreading out on the pillows like an angelic nimbus. Chris barely noticed his friends as he stretched towards the nearby nightstand, fumbling for some cigarettes. He placed one towards his lips, but Molly gave him a playful slap.

“Don’t you dare smoke in my parent’s bed. That’s rude.” She looked at Jack and Isabel and then pretended to yawn, stretching her arms above her head, thrusting her breasts forward. She flipped a section of the covers to reveal the delicious length of her leg and thigh. “I take it you’ve either come to join us, or announce your departure from our little soiree.”

“No thanks,” Isabel answered sternly. Jack remained immobilized by the sight of them. “We’re leaving.”

Cigarette dangling unlit from his lips, Chris raised an eyebrow, “Jackie?”

All the other boy could manage was an astonished, “You smoke too?”

Chris shrugged, “We all need to peer into the abyss from time to time.”

“Let’s go,” Isabel grabbed Jack by the hand and took him from the room.

Molly blew them a kiss, “Thanks for coming.”

“That’s pretty much all I remember,” Molly said, looking at the clock behind the guidance counselor. He stared at Molly the blonde girl. She could tell he had a question in him and decided to head it off.

“Yes, I was drunk when I slept with him. I assume we had sex at any rate since I woke up naked. No, I don’t remember if we used anything in terms of protection, and yes I recognize that would have been a risky and unsafe behaviour to have indulged in, but apparently I didn’t get pregnant so all is good, and no, it’s not something I’m particularly proud of so you can spare me any parental or moral concern you might have.”

“That wasn’t going to be my question, actually.”

“Oh,” she said, somewhat taken aback, but continued with an air of defiance. “Well then, let me just say that I think I continued drinking the rest of the weekend in an attempt to forget about the whole episode. People seemed to know all about it anyways, so I think I just hoped that if I pretended to forget about it, I could pretend it never happened.”

“Why is that?”

“I think some part of me knew it was wrong, that’s why.”

“What was wrong?” he made a mark with his pen. He judged her apparent antagonism as an attempt to defuse her own sense of self-loathing. “You don’t strike me as someone overly concerned about the sin of premarital sex.”

She took a deep breath. The guidance counselor took it as a sign to look for the nearest source of tissues. “It just seemed that Chris was this good kid and I ruined him. I’d never seen him drink or smoke or anything like that before my party. Maybe he wasn’t a virgin, maybe he and Annabel fooled around, I don’t know, but I do know that I woke up the next morning and he was gone. My house was a disaster. The whole thing looked like a film set debauchery and I was the one who had organized it all. I just remember seeing him there that night and I wanted him, like maybe if I had a little part of him inside me I wouldn’t feel this way all the time,” she started crying and the old man passed her the tissue box.

“Feel what way?”

“He just seemed so calm all the time and I wanted a piece of that. I wanted to feel something other than the anger I felt. At my parents, at myself, like I’m just this thing that my parents pass back and forth and show off at parties. I hate them. I hate them both. They make me feel like I’m nothing without them. I’m graduating this year and I’ve no idea what I’m going to do. All the other kids here know where they’re going and what they’re going to do. My mother wants me to study dance, my father wants me in business and I’ve no clue what it is I want,” she shook her head, “Chris just seemed like nobody ever told him where to go, like he had it all figured out on his own. He looked like he had a plan and that’s what I wanted, a plan.”

“Interesting,” he paused and scratched at his neck. “I can tell you based upon my professional experience that you’re not the only one who feels that way, even among your honours class peers. I’m not sure if you’ll believe me, but it’s true. Anyway, you say he had a plan? At any point during your, ah, time together, did he talk to you about this plan of his?”

She lowered her eyes and whispered, “No.”

“Did he give you any indication that he was about to drop out of school?”

“No.”

“Have you heard anything from him since?”

“No.”

“Do you know where Jack and Isabel are?”

“No,” she sniffed, tears abating.

“Would you tell me if you did?”

Molly raised her head and looked at him, her eyes viper black and glistening. The guidance counselor was taken aback by the suddenness and intensity of the blonde-haired girl’s anger. Yet despite her obvious resistance, she calmly and casually tossed her hair, flashing him a sweet venomous smile. He knew her answer even as her lips formed around the single word,

“No.”

What time is love?

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 02:55:00 +0000

Sometime ago I entered that magical part of the year in which time loses all sense of meaning. Weekends blur into weeks bleed into months. I'm in full on summer vacation mode and that means movies, beverages, and most of all writing.

Shortly after arriving back in town from my cousin's wedding in Las Vegas, I vowed to begin writing Novel #2, tentatively titled A Saturday Afternoon By The Slurpee Machine (it will probably change by the time I'm done). I've been collecting ideas for it over the last three years, but really started jotting things down after Christmas when I went to Las Vegas (again, of all places) for the Consumer Electronic Showcase. My goal was to "finish" a first draft by September first - basically the same goal I set for the first draft of Games of Chance last year, with "finish" being defined as roughly 300 pages or 75, 000 words. Games of Chance hit that marker after the long weekend (Sept. 4) but really didn't finish until a week later, tripping the scales at 92,00 words and basically hovering there ever since.

When I got back from Vegas I had only a basic outline of key events and the idea that I wanted to set this up as a trilogy. I'd toyed with the idea of Games of Chance being a trilogy, but haven't really figured out how it would move from one book to the next (in fact, this has led me to put the book down for a bit while I make up my mind). Slurpee Machine however was (at this stage anyways) a much smoother process and the three books will follow the ups and downs of two young Calgarians, Jack and Isabel as they meet and fall in love during their high school years, set during the early 1990s and the massive student walk-out of 1993 (though in the novel I set in spring of 1994). Subsequent books track their ups and downs through university and beyond.

At the time I posted for the Champions League final, I hadn't really committed myself to the process of starting on Slurpee Machine. I had some friends offer to read Games of Chance and so spent some time on that (thanks for all the feedback, btw!). Coming back from Vegas, I had calculated that I needed to average 500 words a day to make my self-imposed September 1 deadline. My game plan was simple, as it always was: wake up at 6:00 AM and try to write as much as I could over coffee before waking my daughter up at 7:30. By the end of June, I had something like 20,000 words down and was way behind on my average.

Luckily, these lazy days have been most conducive to writing and I find myself having crossed the 50,000 words threshold this weekend. Almost 70% of the way towards my target, I'm now making 522 words a day, and this week has been given over to taking taking stock, organizing plot points, amalgamating minor characters, and seeing what still needs to be done (one of the drawbacks of writing in a non-linear fashion is that it's easy to miss things along the way).

I'm looking forward to introducing Jack and Isabel to some of you by the end of summer, so stay tuned.

Manchester United v. Lionel Messi

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sat, 28 May 2011 18:31:00 +0000

My daughter and I are settling in to watch the Champions League Final pitting Manchester United and FC Barcelona. It's a match that has divided my household as Lionel Messi, Barcelona's star striker, is my daughter's favourite player (since he and she are both quite small). While Manchester United is not my favourite team per se, their two Champions League victories are among my two favourite soccer memories. The Final in Moscow affected me so strongly that I wrote it into Games of Chance.

More importantly though, today's game is a warm-up to our watching the Women's World Cup of Soccer this summer, an important milestone in helping share my love of soccer with my daughter.

Gil Scott-Heron, RIP

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sat, 28 May 2011 04:27:00 +0000

The internet is abuzz with the passing of legendary poet Gil Scott-Heron, one of my favourite poets and musician. In no particular order, here are my top five GSH songs:

Jose Campos Torres (From the Mind of Gil Scott-Heron): it's the way he utters "the dogs are in the street" that grips me still.

Running (from We're New Here, also from I'm New Here [one of my favourite albums last year]):

H2Ogate Blues (from Winter in America):

Whitey's On The Moon (Mixing pop and politics, he asks me what the use is, I offer him embarassment and the usual excuses)

and yes, first and always

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (from Small Talk at 125th and Lexington)

Primrods, Live at the Legion

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Mon, 16 May 2011 00:06:00 +0000

Down with dreams!

The Primrods, One Night Only

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sun, 15 May 2011 04:07:00 +0000

Yes! The Primrods! Legends! One night only! At the Legion. Secret show. I should be there. I want to be there. Check me in five minutes and I'll be there. Half of my radio friends are already there! It'll be like old times. Lemme just bust out this old Chixdiggit shirt.

I'm not going.

I want to be there. I even knew about the show a week or so ago, but I'm at home auditioning for the role of Father of the Year. Tomorrow is my daughter's First Communion and something like sixty members of my family are coming over to celebrate. It's an early morning affair, sure to bring with it lots of photographs, aunts, cousins, nieces, nephews, the whole army of Italian relatives. Once upon a time I might have been a scenester and sometimes I still get to pretend I'm a music journalist, but tomorrow I need to be an Italian-Canadian dad and I want that more.

So, instead of heading out to rock n' roll into the wee hours, I'm at home, writing - which is kinda fitting, since that's really how it mostly happened all those years ago anyways.

Away we go?

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Fri, 06 May 2011 04:01:00 +0000

Gearing for a family wedding this weekend. Shenanigans sure to follow. Bachelor party already in progress - will I arrive to hear tales to rival these?

Song of the Day: Timber Timbre, Black Water

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 16:47:00 +0000

Because here in Calgary, underneath all this snow, we haven't seen the sun in days.

Song of the Day: Kid Koala, Moon River

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Once upon a time, long ago, I had Kid Koala on my radio show, and he was a lot of fun. He blew my mind when Scratchhappyland came out, and this afternoon, he's doing it again.

Songs of the Day: Holy Fuck, Frank Turner

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:38:00 +0000

I'm sitting all alone in my office this morning, totally rocking out to this little ditty:

Here's a bonus:

Oh, and did you notice that guy in the crowd with the Frank Turner t-shirt? Yeah, I picked up his First Three Years compilation this weekend and it's been getting some heavy heavy rotation on my ipod. I picked out this particular youtube video because he picks up on a theme that I used to dwell on back in my radio days, namely that the real costs of Ralph Klein's erosion of social supports for young people will only makes itself truly known once these people are older. The Klein generation is just finishing coming of age now, and all those comments about their rampant apathy? Where do you think that came from? Frank Turner explains:

Slainte to all you Irish girls and boyos!

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:25:00 +0000

1. When I was a kid, I thought Brendan Behan was a total bad ass. I was defenseless against his charm and specifically his wanton, drunken, supposed irrationalism. That he’d been jailed for revolutionary activities with the IRA only added to his allure. He was the perfect antidote to my rigid and very intellectual high school education. Behan's behaviour, like Jackie Gleason's, was largely irresponsible and self-destructive, but when I was young I just wanted to be that bold, though all my education trained me otherwise.

2. I’m about as Irish as Wayne Gretzky’s Belarussian, maybe even less so, but growing up I wanted to be Irish. I wanted it real bad. I guess it’s to be expected with an Irish first name, but I also wanted to be a writer. I was inspired by reading James Joyce’s Ulysses to write my first novel, at age 18. It dealt with parking lot attendants, Calgary’s run-down Victoria Park neighbourhood, and took place, like Ulysses, within a 24 hour time frame.

3. I was once given an opportunity to go to the local Fine Arts school for acting, but turned it down in favour of my crushingly academic path, so that it’s Jackie Gleason in the photo below doesn’t hurt. That his family, like my own, hails from Cork, is even better.

4. The Pogues’ song about the Irish-American experience, “The Body of The American” has always and immediately reminded me of my own past growing up as an Italian-Canadian, perhaps indicating just how much the two immigrant experiences overlapped.

5. So in typical Brendan Behan fashion, let's all disappear for an hour or so and then reappear only to act opposite to whatever state we were in, charming everyone in the process.

Slainte!

Bookcase Fort

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 03:21:00 +0000

Yeah, if this was around when I was 10, I don't think you would have seen me for days...

For the full story, check out Oddee.

Straight to Hell Returns

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 03:05:00 +0000

Hmm. No sooner do I reminisce about Alex Cox's Straight to Hell than I discover it's been re-released (with extra footage to perhaps straighten out that narrative).

Here's the trailer. Looks way better than that grainy VHS copy I had, gorgeous in fact.

You can also check out a brief interview with Alex Cox talking about the new version.

Black Keys v. The Pogues

noreply@blogger.com (Wenzel) — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 04:07:00 +0000

Take a moment to gander at one of the latest musical offerings from The Black Keys.

Yes, it's an homage to grindhouse films, but more importantly, it's a wink and a nod to one of my favourite films, Alex Cox's Straight to Hell featuring the likes of Joe Strummer, Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper, Courtney Love, and famously, the Pogues as t

he deadly McMahon Clan. It's a great little film (though you mustn't let a little thing like a narrative keep you from enjoying it).