You’ll notice that I did not say anything about 2012. LSU fans never had such fun until they experienced the E-ticket ride provided by its current head football coach. Chances are they would be unwilling to sacrifice the excitement by sharing him with the rest of the country in the next presidential sweepstakes. By the way, the youngsters among you think of e-tickets as the document you print after making online air reservations on your computer. Back before you were a gleam in your parents’ eye, an E-ticket was the flavor of ducat least numerous in a book of Disneyland tickets and was what you needed to enjoy Space Mountain and other high-thrill amusements in the Magic Kingdom. That was in the day before day passes. I still have my first book of tickets from Walt’s enterprise, and I’d show you an E-ticket if I had any left. One other qualification regarding Disney nomenclature: They claim to be “happiest place on earth,” but obviously have not been in Death Valley on the right autumn day. I’m thinking their yard doesn’t taste nearly as good as the one marked by the Eye of the Tiger. Do you need proof? Les and his boys just won a big one, and no one in the sports media came forward with any quotes from a Tiger saying they were going to Disneyland.
Let’s get back to presidential talk. Think about it. Our federal government keeps falling short of what we want. Football coaches live with that. Their fans always want them to win the championship. More of them fail in that pursuit than the other way around. Even Les doesn’t ring the bell every time. Sometimes it seems that he has angered the spirit of John Cameron Swayze and in so doing caused the Timex to keep on ticking at the wrong time. (Yep, I’ll lose the youngsters on that one, too.) What Les does do more often than not is make decisions that will give victory every possible chance. Wouldn’t it be nice if our politicians in government service would do that? We should know that they won’t. They never tell us anything of substance in their campaigns. The only thing you’ll hear from them is platitudes and whatever flavor of nothing that sounds most like what they think people want to hear.
Les sets the example he wants his boys to follow. You know he tells those guys to extend their arms as far as they can to cross the plane of the goal line. He shows them how to do it every time he goes for it on fourth down, fakes the field goal, fakes the punt, or runs that end-around reverse. Most coaches play it safe. Les plays to win. There are no Pat Dye genes in Les Miles. (Bless Pat’s heart, though, you gotta love how he raised all that money for Auburn by autographing and selling all those ties people sent to him. As you may have noticed, I sometimes digress.) Each time Les embarks on one of those courageous paths, he’s saying to his charges, “Boys, I believe in you.” Filling the minds of those young athletes with belief is a powerful thing. Do you need proof again? Just take a look at LSU’s 2007-2008 highlight film. That was the year that LSU became the only team to ever win the BCS title with two losses. Take away just one of the gutsy decisions Les Miles made that year and history might be deficient a little of its purple and gold.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Having Fun Leaving Bodies at Lighthouses
It has been a little while since I posted here, so I thought I should stroke out a few words to prove that I still live and breathe. The process of preparing By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide for publication as a Kindle e-book has begun.
The first step was to listen to the current manuscript all the way through on my Kindle. It was not the first time I have listened to it. I did it the first time back in February. Listening to one's own work of novel length is an interesting experience, one I enjoyed immensely. This time through I was listening with an ear for planning a strategy to rewrite the parts I want to change. It was still enjoyable but not as much.
My New York editor, Hillary, suggested two significant changes in the storyline. The read-through was fruitful, as I was able to envision how I wanted to implement her suggestions.
She also suggested a name change for one of the key characters. Her premise was that readers might not understand the intended pronunciation from the spelling I used, so I changed the spelling. A singular change for this character was not sufficient. Her first name is Irish, as is her maiden name. Her married name was not Irish. It is now, as I decided that a good Irish first name deserved a fitting Irish last name. It seems to be fashionable to go green these days, so I did.
A very talented author from upstate New York, Chris, told me that my use of Bond as the surname of the lead male character would rub 007 fans the wrong way. Since he is just such a fan, I took his advice and changed the name.
Once I was down in the ditch with all of the names, I decided to change a few for my own reasons. There was one minor character who I originally called Betsy. I changed her name to Carrie as a nod to my mom's sister, who passed away recently, and to my paternal grandmother. Each of them had two names, and both of them primarily used their other name rather than Carrie. Regardless, they were in my heart when I made this change.
A key supporting character was originally named Calvin, Cal for short. When Kindle reads to you in text-to-speech mode and Cal's name occurs at the end of a sentence terminated with a period, Kindle says "California," mistakenly thinking that Cal-period is an abbreviation for the Golden State. Calvin/Cal has been changed to Randall/Rand. Using the find and replace functions in Word was a piece of cake for all of my other name changes. Cal was different. It required case sensitivity to avoid turning a word like magical into magirand. I started out with Cal followed by a space, but that didn't take care of everything. It was necessary to also find Cal followed by periods, commas, apostrophes, and question marks. Ultimately, I balanced back to all 138 Cal usages in the manuscript.
The reading device has some other amusing habits. For instance, if you write "mmmmm" as an expression of enjoyment of a morsel of food, Kindle likes to say, "em em em em em." There are others that are sometimes hard to avoid. The generic Ms. that can do double duty for either Miss or Mrs. reminds Kindle of milliseconds, and that brings to mind another oddity. If you refer to a woman as Miss at sentence end with a pesky period behind it, Kindle likes to talk about the Magnolia State.
All of these name changes were really the easy part. I am a little over a third of the way through the final polish and rewrite process. After that, I'll do another read of my own. Additionally, some of my original readers have volunteered to read the modified novel. I'm honored that they want to do that and will probably take some of them up on their offers.
Out there in the wings, my artist daughter, Erin, is working on sketches for my cover art. I'm looking forward to seeing what she creates for me. Her talent can only be a help to her old dad.
I'm getting excited about going public with my story and anxious to see how Kindle readers will review it. Soon. Soon. My fingers will be so crossed.
The first step was to listen to the current manuscript all the way through on my Kindle. It was not the first time I have listened to it. I did it the first time back in February. Listening to one's own work of novel length is an interesting experience, one I enjoyed immensely. This time through I was listening with an ear for planning a strategy to rewrite the parts I want to change. It was still enjoyable but not as much.
My New York editor, Hillary, suggested two significant changes in the storyline. The read-through was fruitful, as I was able to envision how I wanted to implement her suggestions.
She also suggested a name change for one of the key characters. Her premise was that readers might not understand the intended pronunciation from the spelling I used, so I changed the spelling. A singular change for this character was not sufficient. Her first name is Irish, as is her maiden name. Her married name was not Irish. It is now, as I decided that a good Irish first name deserved a fitting Irish last name. It seems to be fashionable to go green these days, so I did.
A very talented author from upstate New York, Chris, told me that my use of Bond as the surname of the lead male character would rub 007 fans the wrong way. Since he is just such a fan, I took his advice and changed the name.
Once I was down in the ditch with all of the names, I decided to change a few for my own reasons. There was one minor character who I originally called Betsy. I changed her name to Carrie as a nod to my mom's sister, who passed away recently, and to my paternal grandmother. Each of them had two names, and both of them primarily used their other name rather than Carrie. Regardless, they were in my heart when I made this change.
A key supporting character was originally named Calvin, Cal for short. When Kindle reads to you in text-to-speech mode and Cal's name occurs at the end of a sentence terminated with a period, Kindle says "California," mistakenly thinking that Cal-period is an abbreviation for the Golden State. Calvin/Cal has been changed to Randall/Rand. Using the find and replace functions in Word was a piece of cake for all of my other name changes. Cal was different. It required case sensitivity to avoid turning a word like magical into magirand. I started out with Cal followed by a space, but that didn't take care of everything. It was necessary to also find Cal followed by periods, commas, apostrophes, and question marks. Ultimately, I balanced back to all 138 Cal usages in the manuscript.
The reading device has some other amusing habits. For instance, if you write "mmmmm" as an expression of enjoyment of a morsel of food, Kindle likes to say, "em em em em em." There are others that are sometimes hard to avoid. The generic Ms. that can do double duty for either Miss or Mrs. reminds Kindle of milliseconds, and that brings to mind another oddity. If you refer to a woman as Miss at sentence end with a pesky period behind it, Kindle likes to talk about the Magnolia State.
All of these name changes were really the easy part. I am a little over a third of the way through the final polish and rewrite process. After that, I'll do another read of my own. Additionally, some of my original readers have volunteered to read the modified novel. I'm honored that they want to do that and will probably take some of them up on their offers.
Out there in the wings, my artist daughter, Erin, is working on sketches for my cover art. I'm looking forward to seeing what she creates for me. Her talent can only be a help to her old dad.
I'm getting excited about going public with my story and anxious to see how Kindle readers will review it. Soon. Soon. My fingers will be so crossed.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Elated About E-Books
After I finished writing By the Light: A Novel of Serial Homicide, I embarked on an odyssey. No longer would I need to settle on a traditional hobby by becoming a numismatist or a philatelist. The former is the study or collection of coins and other forms of money, while the latter is the study or collection of stamps. I’m not so sure about the second one. Say it out loud. Doesn’t it sound less like it is about stamps and more like it is about naughty sex? Anyway, trying to persuade literary agents to crash the gates of publishing on my behalf became my new hobby, pastime, obsession, and curse. Over time, I sent out about 80 query letters. Four of the agents requested my complete manuscript. The first such request came from the Sandra Dykstra Agency, which represents Amy Tan of Joy Luck Club fame. I’ve read that only five query letters in 200 prompts a full read. Another dozen or so of my letters yielded requests for partials of 50 or more pages. I’ve read that if you are not getting positive results from 20 percent of your query letters, you need to work on you querying skills. Though I am happy with my number of full requests and percentage of play, I still do not have a professional advocate to champion my product to the Grand Poobahs of publishing.
In most areas of life, neophytes are naïve and idealized. When I was a young college student during the Vietnam era, I had my liberal leanings. It was the liberals who were most vocal about ending the Asian war. I was in favor of that happening before Country Joe and the Fish’s "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag” became less about being an entertaining protest song and more about being my swansong. My foray into the publishing world also had a decidedly idealized perspective. People would ask me why I didn’t self publish. I would answer that I did not want pay my own freight through a vanity press. Affirmation from an agent and a publisher was the brass ring. I wanted to be told that the product of my pen is worthy, and I wanted to be told by people who make their living “worthifying” written works. Nothing else would do.
Make no mistake about it. I do not regret the process as I have experienced it. When I write posts for this blog, I enjoy myself. There are lots of agents, editors, writers, educators, and others who also blog, and I’ve selected a stable of them whose commentary is a source of daily enjoyment, enlightenment, and inspiration. From time to time, I’m compelled to contribute comments to their daily installments. Writing tweets for Twitter and six-word memoirs at Smith Magazine are other forms of marrying creativity and words. Honing my skills in writing query letters, as with almost all writing I’ve done in my life, has been a pleasurable learning experience.
This brings you up to date with how I got to this moment, this moment of discovering that the world has changed. This change is a publishing world in a state of flux the likes of which has not been seen since Guttenberg invented his printing press. E-book is change’s name. Amazon and Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Nook, the Sony Reader, and !!!boom!!! Apple and iPad are fueling the metamorphosis. I am poised to benefit from the transformation, poised with a book to be published behind the letter e and a hyphen.
One of the agents whose blog I read religiously is Nathan Bransford. He also occasionally writes for The Huffington Post. The title of one of his HuffPo contributions was “The Rejection Letter of the Future Will Be Silence (And Why This Is a Good Thing).” That post spoke of the paradigm of heretofore, to filter and then publish. In contrast, it considered a paradigm borrowed from the Reverend Leroy Jenkin’s (Flip Wilson) “Church of What’s Happening Now.” To publish and then filter is the new gospel. In other words, agents and publishers attempt to identify the works that have literary or commercial legs and publish them. In the new digital world, authors can self publish an e-book through Amazon’s Kindle Store and other outlets for nothing or close to it, and the public can either say “yes, I’ll buy that” or dispatch a rejection in the form of silence. Of course, there will still be hardbacks and paperbacks. Otherwise, Nathan would not be saying the future he described is a good thing, what with him being an agent and all. It does appear that there will be room for additional players in the game.
Other recent articles and posts that I have read tell of a very near future in which only 20 percent of books will be sold in brick-and-mortar outlets. Accounting for this includes the vast majority of physical books being sold through the Web and e-books usurping a substantial share of the book market. Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon, recently said that e-books have outsold hardbacks nearly three to two in the last three months and almost two to one in the last month at amazon.com. In one of his posts, Bransford points out that the price of and reading experience from e-readers will continue to improve in leaps and bounds, and he predicts that this will only fuel the fire for e-books.
Another source of recent information that has helped me form my thoughts about self-publishing by e-book is material posted by J.A. Konrath in his blog, “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.” He is the author of an array of print books and e-books, including a series of detective novels featuring Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. All of the books in the series have cocktail names, such as Whiskey Sour. Konrath details his experience with offering his print books as e-books, as well as books he wrote specifically as e-books, at Amazon’s Kindle Store. According to him, the difference between what an author earns for each $25.00 ($2.50) hardback sold compared to the author’s share for each e-book sold at $2.99 ($2.04) under the new pricing model adopted by Amazon’s Kindle Store is 46 cents.
I already believe and Konrath specifically mentions that if a book is not good enough it will get bad reviews and will not sell. That’s okay by me. To get feedback from readers will be a welcome change from getting rejection letters from agents. Until someone finally agrees to represent you, even full reads ultimately result in a rejection. I understand, even when they’ve asked for a complete manuscript or a substantial partial, agents generally do not have time to provide meaningful feedback. Most of them barely have time to simply read all of the query letters they receive. If I have missed my guess and readers blow my story out of the water, I’ll take heed of their comments, remove the e-book from the market, and do what I’m already doing: write new stuff with benefit of all that I have learned.
So, with a little tweaking here and there, I plan to soon put that baby out there. My hope is that a few folks will like it and that I can make some pocket change. I won’t be allowing vanity to jeopardize my pocketbook. Rather I’ll be offering readers a story for a reasonable price. Another neat thing makes this exciting for me is that I have my artist daughter, Erin, working on cover art for me. It is our first creative collaboration. It is bound to bring me luck. We’ll see how it goes.
In most areas of life, neophytes are naïve and idealized. When I was a young college student during the Vietnam era, I had my liberal leanings. It was the liberals who were most vocal about ending the Asian war. I was in favor of that happening before Country Joe and the Fish’s "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die Rag” became less about being an entertaining protest song and more about being my swansong. My foray into the publishing world also had a decidedly idealized perspective. People would ask me why I didn’t self publish. I would answer that I did not want pay my own freight through a vanity press. Affirmation from an agent and a publisher was the brass ring. I wanted to be told that the product of my pen is worthy, and I wanted to be told by people who make their living “worthifying” written works. Nothing else would do.
Make no mistake about it. I do not regret the process as I have experienced it. When I write posts for this blog, I enjoy myself. There are lots of agents, editors, writers, educators, and others who also blog, and I’ve selected a stable of them whose commentary is a source of daily enjoyment, enlightenment, and inspiration. From time to time, I’m compelled to contribute comments to their daily installments. Writing tweets for Twitter and six-word memoirs at Smith Magazine are other forms of marrying creativity and words. Honing my skills in writing query letters, as with almost all writing I’ve done in my life, has been a pleasurable learning experience.
This brings you up to date with how I got to this moment, this moment of discovering that the world has changed. This change is a publishing world in a state of flux the likes of which has not been seen since Guttenberg invented his printing press. E-book is change’s name. Amazon and Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Nook, the Sony Reader, and !!!boom!!! Apple and iPad are fueling the metamorphosis. I am poised to benefit from the transformation, poised with a book to be published behind the letter e and a hyphen.
One of the agents whose blog I read religiously is Nathan Bransford. He also occasionally writes for The Huffington Post. The title of one of his HuffPo contributions was “The Rejection Letter of the Future Will Be Silence (And Why This Is a Good Thing).” That post spoke of the paradigm of heretofore, to filter and then publish. In contrast, it considered a paradigm borrowed from the Reverend Leroy Jenkin’s (Flip Wilson) “Church of What’s Happening Now.” To publish and then filter is the new gospel. In other words, agents and publishers attempt to identify the works that have literary or commercial legs and publish them. In the new digital world, authors can self publish an e-book through Amazon’s Kindle Store and other outlets for nothing or close to it, and the public can either say “yes, I’ll buy that” or dispatch a rejection in the form of silence. Of course, there will still be hardbacks and paperbacks. Otherwise, Nathan would not be saying the future he described is a good thing, what with him being an agent and all. It does appear that there will be room for additional players in the game.
Other recent articles and posts that I have read tell of a very near future in which only 20 percent of books will be sold in brick-and-mortar outlets. Accounting for this includes the vast majority of physical books being sold through the Web and e-books usurping a substantial share of the book market. Jeff Bezos, the founder and head of Amazon, recently said that e-books have outsold hardbacks nearly three to two in the last three months and almost two to one in the last month at amazon.com. In one of his posts, Bransford points out that the price of and reading experience from e-readers will continue to improve in leaps and bounds, and he predicts that this will only fuel the fire for e-books.
Another source of recent information that has helped me form my thoughts about self-publishing by e-book is material posted by J.A. Konrath in his blog, “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.” He is the author of an array of print books and e-books, including a series of detective novels featuring Lt. Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels of the Chicago Police Department. All of the books in the series have cocktail names, such as Whiskey Sour. Konrath details his experience with offering his print books as e-books, as well as books he wrote specifically as e-books, at Amazon’s Kindle Store. According to him, the difference between what an author earns for each $25.00 ($2.50) hardback sold compared to the author’s share for each e-book sold at $2.99 ($2.04) under the new pricing model adopted by Amazon’s Kindle Store is 46 cents.
I already believe and Konrath specifically mentions that if a book is not good enough it will get bad reviews and will not sell. That’s okay by me. To get feedback from readers will be a welcome change from getting rejection letters from agents. Until someone finally agrees to represent you, even full reads ultimately result in a rejection. I understand, even when they’ve asked for a complete manuscript or a substantial partial, agents generally do not have time to provide meaningful feedback. Most of them barely have time to simply read all of the query letters they receive. If I have missed my guess and readers blow my story out of the water, I’ll take heed of their comments, remove the e-book from the market, and do what I’m already doing: write new stuff with benefit of all that I have learned.
So, with a little tweaking here and there, I plan to soon put that baby out there. My hope is that a few folks will like it and that I can make some pocket change. I won’t be allowing vanity to jeopardize my pocketbook. Rather I’ll be offering readers a story for a reasonable price. Another neat thing makes this exciting for me is that I have my artist daughter, Erin, working on cover art for me. It is our first creative collaboration. It is bound to bring me luck. We’ll see how it goes.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Places to Go, Things to Do, People to Meet
As far back as I remember, I was always easily enticed by dictionaries, encyclopedias, and almanacs. Well, guess what. The Web is a crossbred animal containing the steroid-megadosed genes of all three with an abundance of extra stuff that native Louisianans, influenced as we are by our Cajun brethren, like to call lagniappe.
When I cracked open a Merriam-Webster in search of a word as a schoolboy, it was a sure bet that I would discover 10 to 20 other words on my journey. Looking in the rearview mirror, I’ve concluded that I subconsciously started these word trips at points I knew were far from where my destination word would be located. In so doing, I afforded myself more pages through which to wade before terminating my travels at my originally desired word. My odysseys through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the World Almanac and Book of Facts were also island hops from one morsel of information to another.
Exercising one’s wanderlust in actual bound reference volumes can while away an hour. In virtual travels on a Web surfboard one can ride a wave or sequences of waves for days. Over the course of a profusion of excursions, I have found some interesting places. Some of them have to do with my love of words. Like everyone, I have a favorite dictionary and thesaurus. Mine is Merriam-Webster. Here’s a humorous stumbled-upon site that provides a humorous take on my lexophilia. The place I like to use for encyclopedic information is Wikipedia. Recognizing that it is a sort of commune taking contributions from widespread sources, at least to a degree without immediate editorial oversight, I pull out my imaginary scales of justice to work in tandem with the seat of my pants to judge personal believability. What you get is usually correct, but there have been some high profile cases of questionable, even cow manure (you know what I mean), content. In those cases, I use my IE homepage, Yahoo, to search for the Internet presences of the actual printed encyclopedias.
In conjunction with my love for taking in and understanding words and their sources, I also love spewing them out in printed form, which you already know if you have read my profile or have been here very often. These characteristics of mine lead me to sites about the writing life. One of these is Smith Magazine’s page, which is good place for writers to occasionally hang out. Once there, a fun thing to do is peruse the six-word memoirs readers compose and drop off for the enjoyment of all. They get so many of them that they compile collections of the best ones and publish them in books. They also have a Facebook presence that has an endless supply of memoirs. The idea for these shortest of literary pieces was inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote what he professed was the world’s shortest novel. The six words he wrote were: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
I’m thinking that most readers here will already know about another favorite haunt of mine, which is IMDB. It stands for Internet Movie Database and is the place to go for anything you want to know about movies and television and the people who perform there. There is a similar site, IBDB, for anything Broadway.
One of my absolute favorite sandboxes on the Web is NNDB, which stands for Notable Names Database. Here’s where to go to get the basic facts and some of the smut regarding anyone who is famous or infamous. They list their most important criterion as “persons for whom the public has demonstrated a permanent interest.” One of the things in the pages for a person you look up is sexual orientation. Sometimes I have found information in that regard that surprised me, such as for John Travolta they say “matter of dispute.” If you click on those words on his page, it will provide you with a list of everyone else for whom they list that sexual orientation. They also provide the names of parents, siblings, spouses, and other acquaintances under the headings, boyfriend, girlfriend, and slept with. For instance, Janis Joplin’s page includes three boyfriends, one girlfriend, and nine slept withs. Under the latter heading, there is one girl. One of the guys listed as a slept with is Dick Cavett. They used to have Janis listed as a slept with on Dick’s page, but it has been altered to include only a mother, a father, and a wife. There are some Cavett interviews of Joplin on YouTube (You can hunt for the interview with Joplin and Cavett. This link will actually take you to an early and rare recording of Me and Bobby McGee. I identify with the Kristofferson song, as I also started out "busted flat in Baton Rouge.") in which they seem to exhibit way more than passing familiarity with each other. Who knows? Anyway, information and smut abounds at NNDB. It is interesting to note that NNDB is produced by Soylent Communications. The underlying content of NNDB and soylent green (green wafers made from euthanized corpses and used to feed the overcrowded masses in the eponymous 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston) is people.
If any of these addresses along the Information Superhighway bring you joy or enlightenment, praise Jesus. Since the coin of the realm today is Web sites of interest, I’ll mention in closing that I have added a link to the collection on the right side of my Blogspot page. It is the address at which my cousin, Johnny Barbato, sells his CD, “No Pain, No Gain.” I suppose a lot of folks would classify his music as Southern rock, but what comes through most for me is the grit of the blues. People who can do that well, and I think John is among them, have scratched hard for what they have. Johnny is an Alabama boy now, but he was born and raised in Louisiana. He spent some time in Baton Rouge and New Iberia before he cut his musical teeth in New Orleans, a place where they never talk about a “day the music died.” The name of his band is the Lucky Doggs, which might naturally remind you of the rolling hot dog stands that are found throughout the French Quarter in NOLA. You can click on samples of each cut on the album. Give John a listen. You might just find you’ll want to do some commerce with my cuz.
When I cracked open a Merriam-Webster in search of a word as a schoolboy, it was a sure bet that I would discover 10 to 20 other words on my journey. Looking in the rearview mirror, I’ve concluded that I subconsciously started these word trips at points I knew were far from where my destination word would be located. In so doing, I afforded myself more pages through which to wade before terminating my travels at my originally desired word. My odysseys through the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the World Almanac and Book of Facts were also island hops from one morsel of information to another.
Exercising one’s wanderlust in actual bound reference volumes can while away an hour. In virtual travels on a Web surfboard one can ride a wave or sequences of waves for days. Over the course of a profusion of excursions, I have found some interesting places. Some of them have to do with my love of words. Like everyone, I have a favorite dictionary and thesaurus. Mine is Merriam-Webster. Here’s a humorous stumbled-upon site that provides a humorous take on my lexophilia. The place I like to use for encyclopedic information is Wikipedia. Recognizing that it is a sort of commune taking contributions from widespread sources, at least to a degree without immediate editorial oversight, I pull out my imaginary scales of justice to work in tandem with the seat of my pants to judge personal believability. What you get is usually correct, but there have been some high profile cases of questionable, even cow manure (you know what I mean), content. In those cases, I use my IE homepage, Yahoo, to search for the Internet presences of the actual printed encyclopedias.
In conjunction with my love for taking in and understanding words and their sources, I also love spewing them out in printed form, which you already know if you have read my profile or have been here very often. These characteristics of mine lead me to sites about the writing life. One of these is Smith Magazine’s page, which is good place for writers to occasionally hang out. Once there, a fun thing to do is peruse the six-word memoirs readers compose and drop off for the enjoyment of all. They get so many of them that they compile collections of the best ones and publish them in books. They also have a Facebook presence that has an endless supply of memoirs. The idea for these shortest of literary pieces was inspired by Ernest Hemingway, who wrote what he professed was the world’s shortest novel. The six words he wrote were: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”
I’m thinking that most readers here will already know about another favorite haunt of mine, which is IMDB. It stands for Internet Movie Database and is the place to go for anything you want to know about movies and television and the people who perform there. There is a similar site, IBDB, for anything Broadway.
One of my absolute favorite sandboxes on the Web is NNDB, which stands for Notable Names Database. Here’s where to go to get the basic facts and some of the smut regarding anyone who is famous or infamous. They list their most important criterion as “persons for whom the public has demonstrated a permanent interest.” One of the things in the pages for a person you look up is sexual orientation. Sometimes I have found information in that regard that surprised me, such as for John Travolta they say “matter of dispute.” If you click on those words on his page, it will provide you with a list of everyone else for whom they list that sexual orientation. They also provide the names of parents, siblings, spouses, and other acquaintances under the headings, boyfriend, girlfriend, and slept with. For instance, Janis Joplin’s page includes three boyfriends, one girlfriend, and nine slept withs. Under the latter heading, there is one girl. One of the guys listed as a slept with is Dick Cavett. They used to have Janis listed as a slept with on Dick’s page, but it has been altered to include only a mother, a father, and a wife. There are some Cavett interviews of Joplin on YouTube (You can hunt for the interview with Joplin and Cavett. This link will actually take you to an early and rare recording of Me and Bobby McGee. I identify with the Kristofferson song, as I also started out "busted flat in Baton Rouge.") in which they seem to exhibit way more than passing familiarity with each other. Who knows? Anyway, information and smut abounds at NNDB. It is interesting to note that NNDB is produced by Soylent Communications. The underlying content of NNDB and soylent green (green wafers made from euthanized corpses and used to feed the overcrowded masses in the eponymous 1973 movie starring Charlton Heston) is people.
If any of these addresses along the Information Superhighway bring you joy or enlightenment, praise Jesus. Since the coin of the realm today is Web sites of interest, I’ll mention in closing that I have added a link to the collection on the right side of my Blogspot page. It is the address at which my cousin, Johnny Barbato, sells his CD, “No Pain, No Gain.” I suppose a lot of folks would classify his music as Southern rock, but what comes through most for me is the grit of the blues. People who can do that well, and I think John is among them, have scratched hard for what they have. Johnny is an Alabama boy now, but he was born and raised in Louisiana. He spent some time in Baton Rouge and New Iberia before he cut his musical teeth in New Orleans, a place where they never talk about a “day the music died.” The name of his band is the Lucky Doggs, which might naturally remind you of the rolling hot dog stands that are found throughout the French Quarter in NOLA. You can click on samples of each cut on the album. Give John a listen. You might just find you’ll want to do some commerce with my cuz.
Monday, July 26, 2010
A Nod to the Passing of a Southern Lady and a Pistol
Two Fridays ago when I was preparing to head home for the weekend, very sad news came my way. My mom’s sister, Carrie Louise Lawson Barbato, had left us to meet her maker and rejoin her husband, Joe. Though I liked her first name, she was not so happy with it and would, if she could, spank me for using it here. My dad’s mom was a Carrie Lottie, so precedence existed. It’s really a moot point, as she will always reside in my heart as Weezie.
My mom had her hands full with this rambunctious son and my little sister. From 14 months until her passing at age 39, Kathy was by the ravages of encephalitis left in a persistent vegetative state. My folks cared for her in our home for all of those years. Each summer, thanks to Weezie and Uncle Joe, I was treated to a week in their home to romp and play with my three cousins and attend Joe’s youth golf clinic. For a woman with three active boys of her own, that was a brave and generous act. She made it seem like two fun weeks were crammed into that one. Ask anyone who knew Weezie. She made fun happen that way.
Since Dad passed on in 1998, Mom has not been an adventurous traveler. In 2003, when Suzie and I married up here in Kansas, Weezie signed on to be Mom’s travel companion to make it possible and enjoyable for her to participate in our joyous event.
When Mom had to go through knee replacement surgery several years ago, the procedure was performed in Mobile so Weezie could help her through the first post-surgical weeks. My aunt was notorious for leaving when doctors made her spend too much time in their waiting rooms, so when the wait got a little lengthy she tried to get Mom to leave without seeing her surgeon for her one-year checkup. Not being quite the pistol her big sister was, Mom said, “Louise, I can’t just leave. I came all the way from Baton Rouge for this appointment.”
Anyway, I just thought I should give Weezie a nod of love and respect by remembering her here. The newspapers charge exorbitantly for obit lines, so instead of relisting her passing in the Advocate in Baton Rouge after it had already appeared in the Mobile paper, I decided to do it here. With the luxury of free space, I have shuffled and expanded what was written in Alabama. I also have the advantage of penning this after the memorial service, enabling me to mention touching moments provided by family members who contributed to the celebration of a great woman’s life. Here’s my offering:
Louise Lawson Barbato - A beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, Louise Lawson Barbato passed away in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, July 16, 2010. Her life was celebrated by relatives and friends in a memorial service at Mobile Memorial Gardens Funeral Home on the following Monday. Her middle son, Johnny Barbato, honored his mother by playing and singing “Mama Told Me,” a song of his writing about their relationship. Mary Catherine Barbato spoke about the joy, wonder, and inspiration she experienced first as a granddaughter and later as a dear pal of Louise.
Louise and her surviving sister, Jimmie Peterson of Baton Rouge, lost their parents in early childhood and were raised in the Good Samaritan Home and the Baptist Orphanage in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to Baton Rouge in their late teens to live with a great aunt, Ruth West Barlow. Louise started a career at Standard Oil, where she met her late husband, Joe. They married in 1949. She raised their three surviving sons, James Joseph, John David, and Jack Lawson, while Joe pursued a career as a golf professional at country clubs in New Iberia and Harahan, Louisiana, before moving to Mobile to operate the Azalea City Golf Course side by side with Louise.
Louise loved cooking and dancing, and excelled in both. Her mastery of the arts of conversation and fun are among many reasons she will forever remembered and sorely missed by those who loved her.
Others who survive her include Jack’s wife, Cathy Watson Barbato and grandchildren Sari Labatut of New Orleans, Jessica Louise Barbato of Virginia Beach, Brittany Danielle Barbato of Jacksonville, FL, and Jessie Jeff Barbato, Jamie Barbato Chance, John David Barbato, and Joseph Eugene Barbato, all of the Mobile area, as well as three great grandchildren.
Finally, I have to mention how deeply moved I was to see how profoundly pained Weezie’s grandson, Joseph, was in his loss and the emotion of the service. To him I say, tread courageously and purposefully through life from this day forward, as the force called Weezie will accompany you always.
My mom had her hands full with this rambunctious son and my little sister. From 14 months until her passing at age 39, Kathy was by the ravages of encephalitis left in a persistent vegetative state. My folks cared for her in our home for all of those years. Each summer, thanks to Weezie and Uncle Joe, I was treated to a week in their home to romp and play with my three cousins and attend Joe’s youth golf clinic. For a woman with three active boys of her own, that was a brave and generous act. She made it seem like two fun weeks were crammed into that one. Ask anyone who knew Weezie. She made fun happen that way.
Since Dad passed on in 1998, Mom has not been an adventurous traveler. In 2003, when Suzie and I married up here in Kansas, Weezie signed on to be Mom’s travel companion to make it possible and enjoyable for her to participate in our joyous event.
When Mom had to go through knee replacement surgery several years ago, the procedure was performed in Mobile so Weezie could help her through the first post-surgical weeks. My aunt was notorious for leaving when doctors made her spend too much time in their waiting rooms, so when the wait got a little lengthy she tried to get Mom to leave without seeing her surgeon for her one-year checkup. Not being quite the pistol her big sister was, Mom said, “Louise, I can’t just leave. I came all the way from Baton Rouge for this appointment.”
Anyway, I just thought I should give Weezie a nod of love and respect by remembering her here. The newspapers charge exorbitantly for obit lines, so instead of relisting her passing in the Advocate in Baton Rouge after it had already appeared in the Mobile paper, I decided to do it here. With the luxury of free space, I have shuffled and expanded what was written in Alabama. I also have the advantage of penning this after the memorial service, enabling me to mention touching moments provided by family members who contributed to the celebration of a great woman’s life. Here’s my offering:
Louise Lawson Barbato - A beloved mother, grandmother, great grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend, Louise Lawson Barbato passed away in Mobile, Alabama, on Friday, July 16, 2010. Her life was celebrated by relatives and friends in a memorial service at Mobile Memorial Gardens Funeral Home on the following Monday. Her middle son, Johnny Barbato, honored his mother by playing and singing “Mama Told Me,” a song of his writing about their relationship. Mary Catherine Barbato spoke about the joy, wonder, and inspiration she experienced first as a granddaughter and later as a dear pal of Louise.
Louise and her surviving sister, Jimmie Peterson of Baton Rouge, lost their parents in early childhood and were raised in the Good Samaritan Home and the Baptist Orphanage in McComb and Jackson, Mississippi, before moving to Baton Rouge in their late teens to live with a great aunt, Ruth West Barlow. Louise started a career at Standard Oil, where she met her late husband, Joe. They married in 1949. She raised their three surviving sons, James Joseph, John David, and Jack Lawson, while Joe pursued a career as a golf professional at country clubs in New Iberia and Harahan, Louisiana, before moving to Mobile to operate the Azalea City Golf Course side by side with Louise.
Louise loved cooking and dancing, and excelled in both. Her mastery of the arts of conversation and fun are among many reasons she will forever remembered and sorely missed by those who loved her.
Others who survive her include Jack’s wife, Cathy Watson Barbato and grandchildren Sari Labatut of New Orleans, Jessica Louise Barbato of Virginia Beach, Brittany Danielle Barbato of Jacksonville, FL, and Jessie Jeff Barbato, Jamie Barbato Chance, John David Barbato, and Joseph Eugene Barbato, all of the Mobile area, as well as three great grandchildren.
Finally, I have to mention how deeply moved I was to see how profoundly pained Weezie’s grandson, Joseph, was in his loss and the emotion of the service. To him I say, tread courageously and purposefully through life from this day forward, as the force called Weezie will accompany you always.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Three Rs: Random and Reminiscent Rambling
We all have comfort zones, comfort foods, comfortable clothes, personal senses of style, quirky behaviors, favorite activities, beliefs, faith, and opinions. I know I have mine. Suzie says that I get grumpy when I’m forced out of my routine. Out of my routine might be defined as a circumstance in which particular ones or multiples of the things enumerated above are unavailable to me.
The most comfortable place in the world for me to be, I think, is in the study in our home. There is way too much stuff in there, especially since other than bathrooms and closets it is the smallest room in the house. That’s where we watch television and movies and diddle on our laptops. I sit at my roll-top computer desk, and Suzie sits in a blue leather recliner that has as many miles on it as an Apollo mission. I used to blog, read and comment on the blog posts of others, read fiction, write fiction, write agents and hope to persuade them to represent my fiction, and search the Web to satisfy my curiosity about a myriad of things, important and not. I still do those things. The difference is that my routine now includes an additional pastime.
In the last year and some, I have become a Facebooker to keep up with friends from past chunks of my life. Many of those folks are the people with whom I grew up. I used to bump into some of them before I moved from Baton Rouge to Fairway, Kansas, in 1992, and some of them I did not. A number of my “bumpees” had bumped into “bumpees” I had missed, which still enabled me to keep track. Rediscovering so many of them and learning what interesting people they turned out to be has been a joy.
The best thing in the study is Suzie, but she comes and goes, being mostly a nocturnal studier. She reads, journals, e-mails, shops the Web for shoes (Her weakness for footwear is the reason I sometimes refer to her as the Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.) and peruses it for recipes (I encourage this behavior.), watches the tube with me, plays Scrabble with me, tells me I snack too much, and generally lights up my life. She is a wonderful woman even though she was born in the Yankee state of Illinois. I’m trying to train her in Southern, having even taken her to Graceland once. It took forever to get her to say y’all correctly, but praise Jesus, she picked up on Louisiana cooking right quick.
The other things in there are manifestations of my likes. There are paintings and miniatures of lighthouses. There are paintings and miniatures of ducks and pelicans. There are renderings of crawfish and of fleurs-de-lis. We’re surrounded by bookshelves populated with stuff and books. There’s a putter, five golf balls, and one of those practice holes to shoot at across the adjacent dayroom, so named for the daybed that is its central content.
If I had to describe our study, a serious work of comfort zone-ness, in terms of food, it would be a bowl of tomato soup with a side of grilled cheese sandwich, a red beans and rice sandwich (stacked as bread, butter, red beans and rice, butter, bread), or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In terms of clothes, it would definitely be one of those pairs of jeans you finally get worn down to cheesecloth softness for the maximum feel-good experience.
Our patio and backyard are, with the exception of sometimes being too hot or humid (I’m spoiled to Kansas weather so I have lower standards for the temperature and water content of my air now.), pure heaven. Suzie is a masterful gardener, and as such paints lush beauty on the canvas of my life, also known as the space outside our backdoor.
Other places that provide good feelings are Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia, golf courses just about anywhere, and lighthouses and their surroundings. Baton Rouge will always be special to me. I like simply riding around seeing what still is, discovering what has changed, and paying homage to good things that were but are no more. Enjoying the old stomping grounds with family and friends is good. Sharing my roots with Suzie is special. The same thing holds true when she shares Alton, Illinois, her town on the Mississippi (across from St. Louis) with me. That reminds me of an additional comfort
I’ve shown my hand a bit on comfort foods, but there are still a few things to mention. I like shrimp and redfish Creole like that from the kitchen of Copeland’s of New Orleans. The red beans and rice from ZEA Rotisserie & Grill will, as they say, make you slap your mama, and it is just considered a side soup there. The split order of white and red cannelloni and the arancini from Gino’s in Baton Rouge can make you believe you just got off the boat in Sicily.
It was always difficult pole vaulting and playing basketball against Mike Anderson when I was young. (It was even harder to play football against him, but I had the wisdom to avoid that.) Ever since he turned the old Red and White College Town Grocery into an eponymous seafood eatery, I have found it quite easy to partake of the victuals that find their way out of his kitchens.
I was raised to love many things from Piccadilly Cafeteria, but in particular, they have some of the best crawfish étouffée that can be had. (They do the shrimp up here but not very often the crawfish.) Like many people from Baton Rouge, I’ve been eating with them since they had one location in the world on Red Stick’s Third Street. Many a tray was carried to my table by the congenial and venerable Percy Brown. A cafeteria with classy waiters, how elegant is that? Oh, yeah. Thank God for communitycoffee.com. You can find coffee here that is nearly as good as a red bag of Louisiana’s state coffee, but it costs half again or twice as much. I’m making converts. If only we had a CC’s Community Coffeehouse here.
When it comes to comfortable clothes, the soft jeans I mentioned earlier generally are for home, since the deteriorated condition that makes them special also presents the possibility of arrest if terminal failure occurs in public. That’s where shorts come in. They provide the legal ultimate in coolness. In my Southern opinion, they actually even work for me during most, though not all, of the cold weather here in America’s Heartland. You can add balance in the fall and winter by coupling them with long sleeves or even sweaters.
My personal style signatures are sweater vests and striped socks. The latter just make you feel better. The only socks I have that are not fully striped are the little short white ones I wear with sneakers or my golf shoes (when I’m wearing shorts). I’m converting friends and relatives one guy at a time. Many of my lady friends and relatives have become much more striped-sock prone, too. My collection is over 80 pair strong. Sadness occurs when I finally have to retire a set.
Suzie will attest that I have quirky behaviors. Starting the striped-sock religion is just one. She believes that I hum or sing all the time. I believe that music brings joy to the heart. I don’t mean to drive her crazy with it, but like breathing, I do it without even thinking. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked by passing coworkers what that tune is because they like it. She totally does not understand how I can fall asleep more readily with lights and a TV on than in bed. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can fall asleep on a schedule by simply laying head on pillow. Most of that wishing occurs in the dark with my head on a pillow waiting for sleep to come. It also baffles her as to why I talk to inanimate objects and other drivers when they don’t behave as I think they should. These are the utterances in which I make my best use of my bad words.
My lovely wife will tell you I am not active enough, and she is right. The activities I enumerated when telling you about our study make my life interesting and relaxing. I frequently tell Suzie that eating out with her is my favorite thing. What’s not to like? There’s Suzie, food, most often coffee, and every now and then dessert, and we neither cook nor clean up behind it. The fun, relaxing, and enriching stuff we do when we go to Tybee and Savannah or Folly Beach and Charleston are top of the list things to do. A bad day on a golf course is better than any day in an office. Riding beaches, trails, and roads on bicycles with Suzie does it for me, too.
I believe I am blessed to have Suzie, our combined daughters, my mom, other kinfolk near and far, and many friends scattered along the timeline of my life. I have faith that my God will afford me some years to have and enjoy them.
If you’ve been here before, you already know I have opinions. Why, I’ll share one with you now. Obama is the dog, and we are the fire hydrant. When you convert four years into dog years does it constitute a term limit?
The most comfortable place in the world for me to be, I think, is in the study in our home. There is way too much stuff in there, especially since other than bathrooms and closets it is the smallest room in the house. That’s where we watch television and movies and diddle on our laptops. I sit at my roll-top computer desk, and Suzie sits in a blue leather recliner that has as many miles on it as an Apollo mission. I used to blog, read and comment on the blog posts of others, read fiction, write fiction, write agents and hope to persuade them to represent my fiction, and search the Web to satisfy my curiosity about a myriad of things, important and not. I still do those things. The difference is that my routine now includes an additional pastime.
In the last year and some, I have become a Facebooker to keep up with friends from past chunks of my life. Many of those folks are the people with whom I grew up. I used to bump into some of them before I moved from Baton Rouge to Fairway, Kansas, in 1992, and some of them I did not. A number of my “bumpees” had bumped into “bumpees” I had missed, which still enabled me to keep track. Rediscovering so many of them and learning what interesting people they turned out to be has been a joy.
The best thing in the study is Suzie, but she comes and goes, being mostly a nocturnal studier. She reads, journals, e-mails, shops the Web for shoes (Her weakness for footwear is the reason I sometimes refer to her as the Imelda Marcos of the Midwest.) and peruses it for recipes (I encourage this behavior.), watches the tube with me, plays Scrabble with me, tells me I snack too much, and generally lights up my life. She is a wonderful woman even though she was born in the Yankee state of Illinois. I’m trying to train her in Southern, having even taken her to Graceland once. It took forever to get her to say y’all correctly, but praise Jesus, she picked up on Louisiana cooking right quick.
The other things in there are manifestations of my likes. There are paintings and miniatures of lighthouses. There are paintings and miniatures of ducks and pelicans. There are renderings of crawfish and of fleurs-de-lis. We’re surrounded by bookshelves populated with stuff and books. There’s a putter, five golf balls, and one of those practice holes to shoot at across the adjacent dayroom, so named for the daybed that is its central content.
If I had to describe our study, a serious work of comfort zone-ness, in terms of food, it would be a bowl of tomato soup with a side of grilled cheese sandwich, a red beans and rice sandwich (stacked as bread, butter, red beans and rice, butter, bread), or meatloaf and mashed potatoes. In terms of clothes, it would definitely be one of those pairs of jeans you finally get worn down to cheesecloth softness for the maximum feel-good experience.
Our patio and backyard are, with the exception of sometimes being too hot or humid (I’m spoiled to Kansas weather so I have lower standards for the temperature and water content of my air now.), pure heaven. Suzie is a masterful gardener, and as such paints lush beauty on the canvas of my life, also known as the space outside our backdoor.
Other places that provide good feelings are Tybee Island and Savannah in Georgia, golf courses just about anywhere, and lighthouses and their surroundings. Baton Rouge will always be special to me. I like simply riding around seeing what still is, discovering what has changed, and paying homage to good things that were but are no more. Enjoying the old stomping grounds with family and friends is good. Sharing my roots with Suzie is special. The same thing holds true when she shares Alton, Illinois, her town on the Mississippi (across from St. Louis) with me. That reminds me of an additional comfort
I’ve shown my hand a bit on comfort foods, but there are still a few things to mention. I like shrimp and redfish Creole like that from the kitchen of Copeland’s of New Orleans. The red beans and rice from ZEA Rotisserie & Grill will, as they say, make you slap your mama, and it is just considered a side soup there. The split order of white and red cannelloni and the arancini from Gino’s in Baton Rouge can make you believe you just got off the boat in Sicily.
It was always difficult pole vaulting and playing basketball against Mike Anderson when I was young. (It was even harder to play football against him, but I had the wisdom to avoid that.) Ever since he turned the old Red and White College Town Grocery into an eponymous seafood eatery, I have found it quite easy to partake of the victuals that find their way out of his kitchens.
I was raised to love many things from Piccadilly Cafeteria, but in particular, they have some of the best crawfish étouffée that can be had. (They do the shrimp up here but not very often the crawfish.) Like many people from Baton Rouge, I’ve been eating with them since they had one location in the world on Red Stick’s Third Street. Many a tray was carried to my table by the congenial and venerable Percy Brown. A cafeteria with classy waiters, how elegant is that? Oh, yeah. Thank God for communitycoffee.com. You can find coffee here that is nearly as good as a red bag of Louisiana’s state coffee, but it costs half again or twice as much. I’m making converts. If only we had a CC’s Community Coffeehouse here.
When it comes to comfortable clothes, the soft jeans I mentioned earlier generally are for home, since the deteriorated condition that makes them special also presents the possibility of arrest if terminal failure occurs in public. That’s where shorts come in. They provide the legal ultimate in coolness. In my Southern opinion, they actually even work for me during most, though not all, of the cold weather here in America’s Heartland. You can add balance in the fall and winter by coupling them with long sleeves or even sweaters.
My personal style signatures are sweater vests and striped socks. The latter just make you feel better. The only socks I have that are not fully striped are the little short white ones I wear with sneakers or my golf shoes (when I’m wearing shorts). I’m converting friends and relatives one guy at a time. Many of my lady friends and relatives have become much more striped-sock prone, too. My collection is over 80 pair strong. Sadness occurs when I finally have to retire a set.
Suzie will attest that I have quirky behaviors. Starting the striped-sock religion is just one. She believes that I hum or sing all the time. I believe that music brings joy to the heart. I don’t mean to drive her crazy with it, but like breathing, I do it without even thinking. There have been occasions when I’ve been asked by passing coworkers what that tune is because they like it. She totally does not understand how I can fall asleep more readily with lights and a TV on than in bed. I wish I was one of the lucky ones who can fall asleep on a schedule by simply laying head on pillow. Most of that wishing occurs in the dark with my head on a pillow waiting for sleep to come. It also baffles her as to why I talk to inanimate objects and other drivers when they don’t behave as I think they should. These are the utterances in which I make my best use of my bad words.
My lovely wife will tell you I am not active enough, and she is right. The activities I enumerated when telling you about our study make my life interesting and relaxing. I frequently tell Suzie that eating out with her is my favorite thing. What’s not to like? There’s Suzie, food, most often coffee, and every now and then dessert, and we neither cook nor clean up behind it. The fun, relaxing, and enriching stuff we do when we go to Tybee and Savannah or Folly Beach and Charleston are top of the list things to do. A bad day on a golf course is better than any day in an office. Riding beaches, trails, and roads on bicycles with Suzie does it for me, too.
I believe I am blessed to have Suzie, our combined daughters, my mom, other kinfolk near and far, and many friends scattered along the timeline of my life. I have faith that my God will afford me some years to have and enjoy them.
If you’ve been here before, you already know I have opinions. Why, I’ll share one with you now. Obama is the dog, and we are the fire hydrant. When you convert four years into dog years does it constitute a term limit?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Kindling for Thought
I love my Kindle. My reading pace has increased by two and a half to three times since Suzie gave the reading device to me for my birthday in February. You can change to a larger font or fewer words to a line, which comes in handy when you have tired eyes. My favorite feature is text-to-speech which enables the Kindle to read to me in a computer voice. It allows me to progress through my book of the moment when I am getting ready for work or driving in my car. As I have told Suzie numerous times since I hit three score years, my Kindle is one of the most treasured possessions I have ever had.
Kindling, though a joyful experience, is not grumble-free. Shortly after I became a Kindler, Apple started cutting its deals with the major publishers in anticipation of its rollout of the iPad. Amazon had been keeping a cap on the price of e-books at $9.99. It was loss-leader pricing, as they were paying the publishers about $12.50 for books so capped. The Apple pricing model generally capped them at $14.99 with nearly $10.50 passing to the publisher. A majority of major publishers, wanting to maintain more control over pricing and hoping to prevent cannibalization of hardcover sales, would rather take $2.00 less per book. Amazon capitulated after an almost indiscernable holdout.
Another tactic some publishers are using to protect their hardcover sales is to delay the rollout of the Kindle version of their new releases. I don’t like that. Neither do I like the fact that some Kindle users are giving one-star Amazon ratings to books so delayed. That penalizes the author and potential buyers, and they are not the problem.
The text-to-speech feature is disabled for many books offered for sale at Amazon’s Kindle Store. This is another ill-conceived publisher tactic intended to punish that part of the public evil enough to actually purchase these reading devices that have so inconveniently upset their comfy status quo.
Here are a few points I believe the publishers should consider:
• I might not be the only Kindle user who is buying two and a half to three times as many books as before.
• My Kindle copy of a book cannot be endlessly shared with every friend and relative I have as can Joe Blow’s version in hard cover.
• I will not buy a book for which the text-to-speech feature is disabled. This self-inflicted punishment yet necessary marketplace vote will be waived for books by Pat Conroy, Greg Iles, and John Grisham.
• My desire to bridge my reading sessions with text-to-speech listens is just that: a bridge. It does not mean that I am stupid enough to purchase a $40.00 unabridged audio book for this purpose.
• I do listen to audio books. I get them for free from the library.
• The pricing thing on top of the delayed releases on top of disabling the text-to-speech feature is overkill. Be nice to your Kindle customers. We might just be your future.
Kindling, though a joyful experience, is not grumble-free. Shortly after I became a Kindler, Apple started cutting its deals with the major publishers in anticipation of its rollout of the iPad. Amazon had been keeping a cap on the price of e-books at $9.99. It was loss-leader pricing, as they were paying the publishers about $12.50 for books so capped. The Apple pricing model generally capped them at $14.99 with nearly $10.50 passing to the publisher. A majority of major publishers, wanting to maintain more control over pricing and hoping to prevent cannibalization of hardcover sales, would rather take $2.00 less per book. Amazon capitulated after an almost indiscernable holdout.
Another tactic some publishers are using to protect their hardcover sales is to delay the rollout of the Kindle version of their new releases. I don’t like that. Neither do I like the fact that some Kindle users are giving one-star Amazon ratings to books so delayed. That penalizes the author and potential buyers, and they are not the problem.
The text-to-speech feature is disabled for many books offered for sale at Amazon’s Kindle Store. This is another ill-conceived publisher tactic intended to punish that part of the public evil enough to actually purchase these reading devices that have so inconveniently upset their comfy status quo.
Here are a few points I believe the publishers should consider:
• I might not be the only Kindle user who is buying two and a half to three times as many books as before.
• My Kindle copy of a book cannot be endlessly shared with every friend and relative I have as can Joe Blow’s version in hard cover.
• I will not buy a book for which the text-to-speech feature is disabled. This self-inflicted punishment yet necessary marketplace vote will be waived for books by Pat Conroy, Greg Iles, and John Grisham.
• My desire to bridge my reading sessions with text-to-speech listens is just that: a bridge. It does not mean that I am stupid enough to purchase a $40.00 unabridged audio book for this purpose.
• I do listen to audio books. I get them for free from the library.
• The pricing thing on top of the delayed releases on top of disabling the text-to-speech feature is overkill. Be nice to your Kindle customers. We might just be your future.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Tonight, Tonight
Jay Leno is getting a bum rap. He was atop the ratings when NBC announced his future replacement by Conan O’Brien. He was atop the ratings when the Tonight Show finally passed from his to Conan’s hands. The headcount for Jay’s primetime audience was roughly equal to what he had on Tonight and greater than that of either Conan or David Letterman in the post-news slot.
I was amazed at how many of Hollywood’s elite professed allegiance to Team Conan and expressed enmity toward Leno on the red carpet and at the podium at the Golden Globes. Jay did not create the current environment. NBC did. The cost to move O’Brien and his staff from California to New York must have been astronomical. The amount they are going to have to pay to extract themselves from the dilemma they created is staggering. As an aside, I must admit that it is impressive that Conan squeezed the suits for another 11 or 12 million for his staff, even though the network had already negotiated severance for them.
I’m not a Leno groupie by any stretch. It struck me as unfair when they picked him to succeed Johnny Carson, the real king of late night. Now I’ve read that Jay was a team player willing to go to the ends of the earth for affiliate relations and that NBC’s experience with Dave had been less than desirable in that regard. But still, Letterman had earned his spurs. As we have learned in the ensuing years, Carson thought that was a raw deal, too.
There have always been strong opinions about who should tuck America in at night. When in my youth Carson was chosen as the Tonight successor, there were many who said that no one could replace the great, sensitive, and eccentric raconteur, Jack Paar. I was one, and all of us had to eat our words somewhere along the course of the next 30 years. I remember the night that Paar was the sole guest on the Pat Sajak Show. Vanna’s buddy unabashedly admitted that Jack had been his idol throughout his career. On that night, Paar proved that he still had it. He basically took over the show and provided Sajak with one of his most enjoyable nights ever.
Like Paar though I did, Johnny won my heart years ago. He cemented his place there the night I was lucky enough to sit on the first row in Burbank and watch him work his magic in person. In addition to the king, all of the key players were there that night: Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, Freddy DeCordova (a piece of showbiz history unto himself), and Tommy Newsom. I give much of the credit for the enduring memory to John, but I must admit that Brooke Shields’ presence on the couch that night helps the recollection adhere to its assigned brain cell ever so much more securely.
When the shenanigans of today’s pretenders fail to keep me amused, I can always pull out my recordings of Johnny’s 25th Anniversary Show and his entire last week. They never fail to satisfy.
I was amazed at how many of Hollywood’s elite professed allegiance to Team Conan and expressed enmity toward Leno on the red carpet and at the podium at the Golden Globes. Jay did not create the current environment. NBC did. The cost to move O’Brien and his staff from California to New York must have been astronomical. The amount they are going to have to pay to extract themselves from the dilemma they created is staggering. As an aside, I must admit that it is impressive that Conan squeezed the suits for another 11 or 12 million for his staff, even though the network had already negotiated severance for them.
I’m not a Leno groupie by any stretch. It struck me as unfair when they picked him to succeed Johnny Carson, the real king of late night. Now I’ve read that Jay was a team player willing to go to the ends of the earth for affiliate relations and that NBC’s experience with Dave had been less than desirable in that regard. But still, Letterman had earned his spurs. As we have learned in the ensuing years, Carson thought that was a raw deal, too.
There have always been strong opinions about who should tuck America in at night. When in my youth Carson was chosen as the Tonight successor, there were many who said that no one could replace the great, sensitive, and eccentric raconteur, Jack Paar. I was one, and all of us had to eat our words somewhere along the course of the next 30 years. I remember the night that Paar was the sole guest on the Pat Sajak Show. Vanna’s buddy unabashedly admitted that Jack had been his idol throughout his career. On that night, Paar proved that he still had it. He basically took over the show and provided Sajak with one of his most enjoyable nights ever.
Like Paar though I did, Johnny won my heart years ago. He cemented his place there the night I was lucky enough to sit on the first row in Burbank and watch him work his magic in person. In addition to the king, all of the key players were there that night: Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen, Freddy DeCordova (a piece of showbiz history unto himself), and Tommy Newsom. I give much of the credit for the enduring memory to John, but I must admit that Brooke Shields’ presence on the couch that night helps the recollection adhere to its assigned brain cell ever so much more securely.
When the shenanigans of today’s pretenders fail to keep me amused, I can always pull out my recordings of Johnny’s 25th Anniversary Show and his entire last week. They never fail to satisfy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)