Steven Paul Leiva's This 'n That

SCIENCE IS NOT A FROG: Don’t Dissect It Before You Appreciate It

2012-02-19T12:49:00.000-08:00

I have just published a science fiction novel, Traveling in Space,

and there is a bit of an irony in that. When I was in high school and college I was lucky to achieve even a D in science courses, and to this day any math beyond the four basics — addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division — puts me into a cold sweat. Even the four basics would bother me if some kind strangers had not invented the hand held electronic calculator.

Granted there is no hard science in my novel and the only math is the word count, but still — a science fiction novel? I mean, any dummy can write a mystery, just create an amateur sleuth who has the same profession you have (so you can “write what you know”) and throw a dead body in their path. But science fiction? Shouldn’t the writer at least know how to do an equation?

Not necessarily, I have to say in self-defense, because although science in my formative years would often make me sick to my stomach (and not just because I was dissecting a frog),

in my adult years the idea of science and its rational method, and the history of science and its incredible achievements in pushing upward the Homo sapiens species, have been the most delightful and important memes to meander joyfully in my mind. I date this conversion from watching Jacob Bronowski’s 1973 BBC series, The Ascent of Man (broadcast in America over PBS).

In this 13-part documentary series Dr. Bronowski presented his personal view of the flowering of human intelligence, especially through science, in an engaging and compelling manner that must have made his lectures in classrooms standing room only — as opposed to my science classes which were sleeping room only.

The Ascent of Man excited me about where humankind had come from and, more important, about where it might go. I began to understand the value of science and its method, not just in leading to technological toys we all enjoy and benefit from, but leading to an expansion of what we know and a maturation of our shared self. After Bronowski I discovered Carl Sagan, especially his early books such as The Cosmic Connection,

and went on from there to enjoy the great science writing we’ve had for the past forty years by such authors as Francis Crick, Paul Churchland, Robert Wright, Jonathan Weiner, Steven Pinker, Brian Green, Natalie Angier, Edward O. Wilson, Antonio Damasio, and, of course, Richard Dawkins, among others. Although the Ascent of Man and these books certainly include specific facts and data, what they really convey is the general personality of science, the overall thrust of what its method of inquiry can achieve, and the sense of wonder that the exploration and growing awareness of the universe around us — and within us — can engender.

I’ve been thinking about all this recently while listening to conversations about public school education, especially two of the more interesting ones. One is cultural centering on the teaching of evolution and the proposed teaching of what I can only refer to as counter-evolution.

The other concerns the pragmatic push to turn around our country’s poor performance in high school science and math scores,

so we will have the required scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and technocrats to keep America competitive in the future. Certain participants in the first conversation seem to propose that we teach little or no science to anyone as it may offend someone; contributors to the second feel we should require more science for everyone in the hope that we can create many someones who will brilliantly make America economically strong again. Neither, it seems to me, is ideal. The first, not teaching science or teaching all theoretical comers — as if science was a democracy — is too absurd and silly a debate to need a comment from me. The second, required, intense, heavy on the details, math and science courses, sounds fine but I believe such requirements turn more students off than on, because, let’s face it, learning just the dry facts and details of science is hard going and many students, indeed most, might spend their time in class experiencing the same cold sweats I did, or, worse, a hateful indifference.

And yet, science education in this country needs improvement, not just so we can leap ahead of Europe and Asia in money making technology, but so we can have an informed population who, like it or not and for some time to come, will face ballot measures asking them to make general decisions on such subjects as abortion, stem cell research, sexual preferences and the rights desired or denied in such preferences, genetic modification, climate and energy issues, and other subjects that are best considered by an electorate with some science literacy. They will also be asked to elect candidates who will be tasked to make many specific decisions requiring more than a basic understanding of science. But how can the electorate judge a candidate’s level of understanding if they have little or none of their own?

I would like to propose an idea. This idea comes not only from my own history of cold sweats in science classes, but from the warm glow I felt in classes in the arts. First, we should stop requiring for high school graduation courses in several of the major sciences, rigorously testing students on their understanding of very specific details and minutia of biology, physics, geology, etc. These classes should be elective and only for those students who truly want to study a particular science. I suggest this, though, only if what is required for graduation are two other courses: Science Appreciation and the History of Science. These should be taken within the first two years of high school, and maybe previewed in middle school. For what is the use of leaning facts and data and details of individual sciences, and never learning what science, at its essence, truly is. Is it a philosophy, a modern religion, something only geeks care for, a mystic understanding of the fabric of the universe, or just a very boring set of dull and deadly facts?

Science should not be treated like a frog in formaldehyde — it should be understood and appreciated before you pull its guts out.

I have obviously taken this idea from long established art and music appreciation and history courses. Just as not everyone can draw or play music, not everyone is going to become a scientist, engineer or mathematician — no matter how badly the country might need them. And just as life is richer if you have an appreciation for art and music, our country and society would be richer if everyone had an appreciation of science — what it is and does and how it has spurred on, in Bronowski’s wonderful phrase, the Ascent of Man.

Science scares people. A knowledgeable understanding that science is simply a well-honed method of inquiry into, and discovery of, the laws of nature that discourages in its conclusions prejudices, biases and subjectivity, and thus can better reveal, and revel in, the true awe and wonder of the universe, is the best way to alleviate the fear, far better than the thud-thud-thud of facts to be memorized. Good science appreciation and history courses taught by enthusiastic instructors will open and inform minds among the majority of students, and inspire some of those students — maybe more than one might think — to pursue with vigor careers in science and its related fields. Those are the students for the specific science classes of details and facts, and, well motivated, they will not sit in those classes suffering cold sweats.

TRAVELING IN SPACE HAS BEEN KINDLED!

2012-01-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

Traveling in Space from Blüroof Press is now available in a Kindle Edition for $2.99

Traveling in Space A unique science fiction first contact novel from the aliens' point-of-view; a 21st Century "Gulliver's Travels" with Homo sapiens as the Lilliputians. Includes three interior illustrations.

Literary legend Ray Bradbury says: "Steven Leiva not only promises, but delivers!"

Actor-comic and Showtime’s “GREEN ROOM” host Paul Provenza says, "Leiva’s immense gifts are matched only by his wry, biting wit"

Ken Kragen, legendary Hollywood producer/manager says, "Wry humor, intellectual insight and terrific story telling are the consistent signatures of Leiva's work." — Ken Kragen, legendary Hollywood producer/manager.

Russell Blackford in his review in Neworld Review says, Traveling in Space is "...a satirical story in the tradition of books such as Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land... The book's satirical force is... downright funny.... I'm sure thatTraveling in Space will play on my mind for some time to come."

http://www.amazon.com/Traveling-In-Space-ebook/dp/product-description/B0070S2314/ref=dp_proddesc_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&n=133140011&s=digital-text

CHEERS TO THE MOTION PICTURE ACADEMY FOR NOT HAVING AN ANIMATED "TINTIN" EAR

2012-01-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

Anybody who read my commentary in the Los Angeles Times last June will know that I am very pleased that THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN did NOT receive a nomination for Best Animated Feature for this year's Oscars. The Academy can hold its head up high for maintaining some dignity in regard to the aesthetics of film, whereas the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and the Producers Guild ought to hold their heads down in shame. The commentary can be found online here: http://articles.latimes.com/print/2011/jun/05/entertainment/la-ca-animation-20110605 and I reproduce it below.

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Perspective: An animation producer says performance capture is not true animation. Steven Spielberg has made it known that he would like his upcoming 'The Adventures of Tintin' to compete in the Academy Awards' animated film category. But it doesn't conform to basic definitions of animation, writes Steven Paul Leiva.

June 05, 2011|

By Steven Paul Leiva, Special to the Los Angeles Times

It seems that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is in a quandary. Steven Spielberg, a not inconsequential member, wants his upcoming performance capture (or motion capture, as it's sometimes known) film, "The Adventures of Tintin," to compete in the best animated picture category for next year's Academy Awards. That's understandable; there's less competition, and it's doubtful that an adventure film based on a European comic book would be nominated by the academy for best picture. Not that it might not deserve it, but it's unlikely given academy history.

The academy's quandary is also understandable. As much as it might like to accommodate Mr. Spielberg, it is not quite sure that performance capture is animation, and so there seems to be an internal debate on the question. There is, though, no need for debate. Performance capture is not animation.

The great French philosopher Voltaire, who participated in a few debates in his time, famously said, "If you are going to argue with me, define your terms."

The New American Oxford Dictionary defines "to animate" as "bring to life." The late, great animation director, Chuck Jones, with whom I worked off and on for several years, often defined animation as, "To breathe life into the lifeless." Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of Disney's Nine Old Men, called animation — and titled their book on the subject — "the illusion of life." And many animators define animation simply as "frame-by-frame filmmaking."

None of the above definitions can be applied to performance capture, which, as its name implies, captures and documents a real motion or performance in real time by a live actor and does not create the illusion of that motion or performance through frame-by-frame filmmaking. Robert Zemeckis' "Beowulf" and "A Christmas Carol," are recent examples, as is "Monster House," which was executive produced by Zemeckis and Spielberg.

So wherein does the confusion lie in Mr. Spielberg's head, not to mention the heads of critics, reporters and fans?

In my early days in animation, I promoted and publicized the art form. I can't tell you how many reviews of animated films included this line: "The animation was great, the backgrounds were beautiful." Note that between the two thoughts is a comma and not a period. This is the crux of the confusion. If people see any film that is not standard live action and has an illustrative look, even if fairly photo realistic, they tend to think that automatically makes it animation. But this is only looking at the surface of the screen.

It does not take in the deeper aesthetic qualities of a truly animated film, the core of those qualities being the simple fact that film animation is not a fine or graphic art but is, rather, a performance art. Animation's real home among the arts is with acting, choreography, dance and music, not with painting, drawing or sculpture. The latter three are obviously aspects of an animated film, whether hand-drawn, stop-motion or computer-generated, but no more so than production design, set decoration, costume design and makeup are aspects of a live-action film. These aspects serve the performances of the film as the performances serve the story.

In 1979 I produced a program for the Los Angeles International Film Exposition called "The Animator as Actor." I screened 10 animated shorts from the 1930s and '40s that featured really fine animation performances and followed the screening with a panel consisting of Thomas, Jones and Richard Williams, all masters of the art form. They illuminated the idea that the character animator was a performing artist whose art was created incrementally in a sequential series of poses (a pose is but a frozen moment of movement), deeply thought about and considered, which when presented at 24 frames per second created the illusion of a living character expressing a thought, action or emotion.

In a short essay in the program book I put it more abstractly: "As you view the classic character animation in this program, realize that what you are seeing are not drawings that move and act, but rather, movement and acting that is drawn."

Performance capture does none of this. In performance capture you document a preexisting life; you do not create the illusion of it. You then overlay an illustrative look. That overlay on the surface is not the performance; the live actors contributed the performance and they did not do it frame by frame. That overlay is nothing but a special effect that incorporates production, character and costume design.

The frame-by-frame creation and manipulation of the illusion of life, of action, thought and emotions, is an incredible and intensely thrilling art form. In true animation, whether it be the vaudeville fables of the Looney Tunes, the fairy-tale romances of Disney or the deeply human performances in Pixar's "The Incredibles" and "Up," life is created literally from scratch — the scratch of a pencil on paper — and should not be confused with the embellished documentation of life preexisting.

To include a performance capture film in the category of best animated picture would be a mistake; for it to be nominated and win would be a travesty. It can only diminish the true art of animation and further confuse the audience about what animation really is and, worse, delay even longer a true appreciation for this art form, which still, I believe, has not been achieved.

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Leiva spent more than 20 years programming, promoting and producing animation. He was the director of animation development for producer Gary Kurtz, the president of Chuck Jones Productions and a producer on "Space Jam" starring Bugs Bunny and Michael Jordan. Currently a novelist, his next book, "Traveling in Space" will be published this fall by Blüroof Press.

THE JOY OF READERS

2012-01-22T09:05:00.000-08:00

One of the joys of being an author in this era of online shopping and the dominance of Amazon in book selling, is that every now and then a reader’s review pops up on your book’s Amazon page reminding you that your book may just not have falling into a black hole of obscurity and that someone out there is indeed reading the words you so gleefully wrote. Of course the joy is quickly diminished if the review is bad and the criticism is stinging, but as I have fortunately -- so far -- not had that experience, I just happily pretend it never happens.

Spending so much time promoting my new novel, Traveling in Space, I had not looked in on the Amazon pages for my two Fixxer novels in a while, but did so over the weekend and was thrilled to read two very enthusiastic reviews -- one for each of the Fixxer novels -- posted within the last month from someone known only as DJP. I have no idea who this is, but he or she has posted 76 reviews on Amazon, so she/he is a dedicated reader. I told my wife that if I could find DJP I would divorce her and marry him (where legal) or her!

What thrilled me about DJP’s comments is not just the kind things said, but the fact that DJP’s incisive comments indicates that he or she “got” what I set out to achieve in these novels. That is fully connected communication, a clear channel, no static irritating the reception, and a joy for an author to experience.

Because I’m like a parent thrilled to share any complimentary comment about my children to everyone I meet, I’ll share DJP’s reviews here, exactly as written.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Witty and sharp - brilliant!, December 20, 2011

DJP - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blood is Pretty: The First Fixxer Adventure (Paperback)

In Hollywood, if you need something sorting, if you have a problem, if nobody else can help - you call Fixxer (not the A-Team), Marital problems, career slip-ups, personal situations - Fixxer solves all for a fee. Cool, intelligent, suave and most of all determined - with a network of contacts and friends who can supply whatever he needs, Fixxer and his sidekick Rooee make sure it all goes right.

So, when called upon to sort two little jobs: pay off some two-bit movie critic over a treatment he wrote, and help out a rising Actress with a seedy pursuer in the industry - it all sounds too easy.

Sure enough - enter a megalomaniacal Film Executive, a Reality Dream program that is too real to be safe, and a bunch of European guns for hire and Fixxer finds himself trying to unravel a kidnap plot, several murders, terrorism, blackmail and arrange a budding romance for himself.

With dark humour that takes a scalpel to the glitzy façade of Hollywood pretension, a Bond-like collection of plots, gadgets and villains, crackling wit and focused morals from Fixxer, and righted by the practical help and concern of his friends; Blood Is Pretty is a thrill a minute look at the crazy goings on in Tinseltown.

5.0 out of 5 stars

Brilliant follow up in the Fixxer series, January 20, 2012

DJP - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army (The Fixxer) (Kindle Edition)

...and I thought `Blood Is Pretty', the first Fixxer adventure, was great...

Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army knocks the spots off the previous instalment of the Hollywood-based Thriller; with more than a hint of noir, plenty of intrigue, death and power, and a few knowing comic winks to the reader.

Shamelessly dissecting and satirising the folly of Tinseltown Power and the machinations that occur, Fixxer and his helpful crew return for another round of morally superior revenge, dangerous traps, derring-do and a few broken hearts. Moving on from events of the first novel, Fixxer once again embroils himself in dastardly plots with a selflessness that answers only to his desire for justice (and just possibly, to see how good he really is).

With even more sharp wit and craft than the last book, Mr Leiva has honed the cunning and confidence of Fixxer to a razor sharp focus; long asides that thoroughly detail the corrupt heart of power and misguided ventures stand side by side with daring action perpetrated by the familiar cast of well-paid assistants in the cause: Rooee, The Captain, Petey, Newsstand Mike, as well as some fresh new faces.

Unputdownable, I alternately laughed and gasped as Fixxer took me to a place of surreal brilliance, and dearly hope for more in the future.

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If DJP has intrigued you at all you can find these, and my other books, on my Authors Page on Amazon at: http://www.amazon.com/Steven-Paul-Leiva/e/B001JS27EO/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

BLOOD IS PRETTY - $2.99 e-book $17.14 Audio Book

HOLLYWOOD IS AN ALL-VOLUNTEER ARMY $3.99 e-book

Acknowledging a Gentleman Publisher -- Emphasis on Gentleman!

2012-01-04T12:26:00.000-08:00

I’ve been wanting to write a blog about what a great experience it was working with my publisher, Dave Doody of Blüroof Press, on my new novel, Traveling in Space. But with the holidays and all, and the piece I wrote for the Los Angeles Times I never got around to it. Then I realized that I had, in essence, already written it in the Acknowledgements section of TIS. So, if I may be so lazy, I will put the text of the Acknowledgement below and hope it suffices in expressing my sincere gratitude to Mr. Doody, a gentleman of “universal” qualities.

AUTHOR’S ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR TRAVELING IN SPACE

Writing a novel is an adventure, or certainly should be. If you like to write — and I’ve never understood those writers who proudly declare that they hate to write — it’s one of those wonderful adventures full of fun, self-revelations, and good times, if not always good food. An adventure you’re likely to enjoy but one that wouldn’t in itself, ironically enough, make a good story. Modern publishing of the major metropolitan variety is also an adventure. However, it can be, so I’ve heard, so full of danger, villains, near-death experiences, disappointment, and extreme regret, that it would make a cracking good yarn, although the writer might not come out the hero, that being reserved for some corporate functionary in charge of a bottom-line.

Dave Doody

It is in consideration of the above that I must acknowledge and thank the publisher of this work, Dave Doody of Blüroof Press, who spends his day-job as a Caltech employee at JPL/NASA, guiding the journeys of our robotic Lewis & Clarks to the planets.

His dear sister Mary Kay Doody who died last year was a publisher. Dave, though, is new to publishing but not to books, as an author and of course a reader.

I met him through a mutual friend. After a couple great conversations about his work and our shared love of science,

Dave showing me around JPL

and before he ever thought to become a publisher, I asked him to read the manuscript of Traveling in Space to check my “take” on scientists, who, both human and alien, figure in my novel’s story. If anyone could tell me where I might have got it wrong about scientists it would be Dave, who works in the wheelhouse of real rocket-ships full of real scientists. So to speak.

Later, he came to tell me how, as an engineer and a lover of the art of typography, he became fascinated with the new technologies of on-demand publishing and e-books, and that he was publishing his second book himself (his first was published by Springer, 2009).

He asked would I mind if he helped me publish my book. I was, firstly, flattered, and secondly, curious. Then you are becoming a publisher? I asked. No, no, he said, I just love books and want to see if I can help works I admire see the light of day. Oh, I said, so then you are becoming a Gentleman Publisher! He didn’t know what I meant, but he said the reader is the whole reason.

And so Blüroof Press has been born. It is in the hands of man who is applying twenty-first century technologies to an old world idea: the discovery and passionate publishing and promotion of books the publisher cares about. This Blüroof does not cover a huge, corporate entity whose endowment is “protected,” heaven forbid, from decisions made by artists and authors. Rather, this Blüroof shields an author from downpours of decisions by the controller-accountant side of some corporate mansion. If Dave profits from this venture — and I truly hope he does — he’s likely to consider it his reward, not his due.

Working with Dave has been a joy.

Dave and I at the West Hollywood Book Fair 2011

His delight in our endeavor (if Dave had a dollar for every time he has turned to me and said, “This is fun,’ he would already be in profit), his encouragement, and his very accurate eagle editorial eye has made the publishing of Traveling in Space an adventure as wonderful as writing it — even if it wouldn’t make a good story to amuse the masses.

I would also like to thank Todd Cronin

Todd Cronin by Todd Cronin and copyright by todd Cronin

for the wonderful cover he has created for Traveling in Space, not to mention the three interior illustrations he drew for us.

One of the three interior illustrations by Todd Cronin
Copyright by Todd Cronin

It was important to me that this book would feature interior illustrations, to link it to a love I’ve had for years for books published when interior illustrations were the norm. It is another measure of Dave’s passion that he did not hesitate to say yes when asked if this might be possible. And it is a measure of Todd’s talent that he delivered such fine accompaniments to the story.

I thank Alex Filippenko, Professor of Astronomy at UC Berkeley,

Add caption

(and a member of the team of scientists who discovered that our universe’s expansion is accelerating, and for which several members have received the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics) for answering some questions I had, the answers to which were of great help in imagining a key aspect of the aliens’ home world.

Many writers seem to thank their spouses for putting up with them, as writers are rarely low-maintenance. All I can say to my wife, Amanda, the daughter of a writer, is that you knew the job was dangerous when you took it. And that I love you more each day for not letting that deter you.

My wife, Amanda, who I hardly deserve

A FAN SKETCHES THE HEROINE OF TRAVELING IN SPACE

2011-12-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

Before publication of Traveling in Space, my publisher at Blüroof Press, Dave Doody, made an offer to forum members on various websites to give them a free PDF e-book of the novel if they would give us some feedback. Some enthusiastic people accepted the offer, including Nate Perigny on the Rapid Response Squad website. Nate’s rapid, and very positive, response was very much appreciated especially as he said about Traveling in Space, “This book is bloody brilliant!”

But we were even more appreciative — not to say delighted — when he emailed a sketch he did of the book’s heroine, She, Our Assistant Leader, or Sheila as she becomes known after her name metamorphosis. Nate was challenged by the idea that Sheila was not only an alien, but is, as the president of the United States says, “Fucking gorgeous!” This gorgeousness comes from both genetic enhancement by the alien’s Master Provider, who had a particular feel for aesthetics. Nate speaks to the details of his challenge below, but with no further ado, here’s Nate’s version of Sheila —

"You’re fucking gorgeous!" -- On the Drawing of Sheila

from Steven Paul Leiva’s Traveling in Space

by Nate Perigny

The idea of a genetically enhanced unusually gorgeous human had me intrigued, what would that look like? What would we look like after hundred thousand years or more of medical and genetic advancement? A hundred thousand years ago we looked very different. I imagine the look and proportions of such a being would be shocking to us, the same way a Homo erectus male would be shocked if he saw Anna Kournikova in person, his jaw would drop. Looking through the eyes of Homo erectus at Anna was the way I looked through my own eyes at what could be an enhanced human, and filled in the gaps. I wish I had more time to do a realistic portrait style and not a sketch, even with some colour but I’ll try to describe what I was going for.

The first thing I did was stretch the body, she has an extra 4-5 inches on her torso, 6 inches on the legs, 2 inches on her much thinner neck, all with an impossibly small waist in proportion to height and natural breast size. Very defined collar bone, shoulders, and cheek bone. Her eyes are massive about 35% larger than normal, and her iris is about the size of a quarter. The colour in here eyes would be so bright and layered, and so perfectly clear and reflective they would shine like headlights. If she looked directly at you, you’d freeze for a second. Her face is perfectly symmetrical with no lines, wrinkles, or blemishes of any kind. The curve of her body is impossible, only made possible by her advanced more concentrated muscle tissue. The woman in this drawing would be about 6ft 2-3, and wouldn’t weigh more that 115lbs if that, she would fall to the ground if she were human, but she is not human she is very strong and athletic. Her hair is layers of lights and darks, she grows beautiful highlights and layers naturally all the time as set in her genetic makeup. Her hands and fingers are longer and thinner with tiny wrists. When she walks, it is like she is floating.

The first thing guys say to this drawing is “she’s HOT, but she’s too bony,” and that is the point, her proportions are impossible and a little odd to us. They are from a scientifically advanced society with millennia of genetic enhancements in their past. They have slowly tweaked their look, and there is much variation in their species, but in general I would guess they would look odd at the same time as incredibly gorgeous to us.

Well, I tried to do the concept justice, although I think any illustration would fall short.

As a side note, take a look at Nate's portraits of some screen legends. I’m particularly fond of his Audrey Hepburn.

ALL DRAWINGS COPYRIGHT NATE PERIGNY.

Many thanks to Nate. I'm honored he was inspired and took the time to visualized a character I created. It's a great complement to receive.

My Novel, TRAVELING IN SPACE, Banned by Microsoft!

2011-11-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Christine Bell, co-owner of Mystery & Imagination Bookshop

sent out an email announcing the book signing I did there

yesterday for Traveling in Space. The email included one of

the loglines:

a 21st Century Gulliver's Travels with Homo sapiens as the

Lilliputians.

She found out a whole bunch of the e-mails never made it to

their intended destinations as she learned when she got this

bounce back from Microsoft:

Microsoft Forefront Security for Exchange Server has

matched a filter.

Filter name: "KEYWORD= sexual: homo"

State: Purged

Some times you have to wonder about the state of

intelligence in America today.

Oh, well, gave an added meaning to the sign Christine

attached to my book in her window display!

RUSSELL BLACKFORD, gentleman, scholar, and philosopher, reviews TRAVELING IN SPACE

2011-11-14T15:32:00.000-08:00

Australian philosopher and literary critic, Russell Blackford has posted a review of Traveling in Space on his very popular blog, Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.

Russell is the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology, an on-line, peer-reviewed journal, and Conjoint Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. He is the co-editor of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists

and the forthcoming Freedom of Religion and the Secular State

You can find his blog (always interesting!) here: http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2011

Currently reading - Traveling in Space

I've been reading Steven Paul Leiva's new novel, Traveling in Space - a book that I'm enjoying a lot. In form, it's a science fiction narrative, but not one that presents space-opera-style battles or one that aims at verisimilitude in the manner of hard sf.

Instead, we're given a satirical story in the tradition of books such as Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land,

with which it shares something of a common sensibility, or even Gulliver's Travels.

Look for elements of Menippean satire, such as a fragmented narrative, philosophical debates, and pervasive mockery of both sacred and "commonsense" ideas.

Menippus, by Velázquez

Traveling in Space is sufficiently sprawling and complicated to require a list of dramatis personae to help sort out its characters: see here, on Steve Leiva's blog, where you can find out quite a bit more about the book and its author.

The book's satirical force is generated by contact between two mutually- baffled intelligent species: a bunch of extraterrestrial aliens traveling in space far from their home world; and human beings here on Earth, whom they encounter and try to understand. This opens up all sorts of possibilities. The aliens are not bug-eyed monsters, but humanlike beings from a vastly older, technologically superior civilisation. They immediately strike Earth men and women as physically gorgeous and fascinating. For their own part, they find us equally fascinating ... though physically repulsive.

Many of the aliens' encounters with human beings are downright funny. They see the idiocy of many of our institutions and practices, whether it be religion, war, or prudishness about the body. As the narrative continues, however, and they are confronted by the facts of race hate and genocide, the satire takes on a different tone. The aliens still struggle to understand what they're seeing, but the denunciation grows more bitter (even when the horrors are filtered through the perceptions of the aliens, who examine human conduct in a rather clinical way).

All of this is familiar, of course - many authors have used contact with earthly or extraterrestrial aliens to satirise the ways of human beings - but Traveling in Space takes on an extra layer of complexity as the aliens themselves change, in one way or another, in response to their interactions with us ... and as some aspects of their civilisation are also shown to be corrupt, unjust, and unsavoury. If, as readers, we started out thinking that the aliens were a noble, uncorrupted people who make humans seem like yahoos by comparison, we soon learn that the situation is not at all so simple.

Both species have something to learn from contact with each other, as it turns out, and the most important learning takes place on the aliens' side. Complications such as these give us much to think about, and I'm sure that Traveling in Space will play on my mind for some time to come.

DARAMATIS PERSONAE FOR TRAVELING IN SPACE

2011-11-10T09:31:00.000-08:00

Just before the text to Traveling in Space was finalized, my publisher at Blüroof Press, Dave Doody, asked me to provide brief descriptions of the characters in my novel, providing a Dramatis personae that he could place in the front of the book. As I've always loved, and found helpful, such lists in books, I quickly set to the task.

Of an on, for several years, I worked with the great American animated cartoon director, Chuck Jones, and Chuck always maintained that in storytelling, "Character is everything! If you know who your characters are, the plot will follow because you'll know how they must react to the situations your throw at them." I don't know if that's actually a universal law, but I've followed it more often than not and it has never let me down. So I have a great fondness for my characters and it's a pleasure to introduce them to you in this way.

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Dramatis personæ

Life: Persons from The Living World, a contingent of whom travel in space in their huge lifeship, The Curious, finding facts, never to return home. They believe(d) themselves to be the only life in the universe. Each has a name that reflects a physical or personal attribute, or their position in society. When either change they undergo a “name metamorphosis.” They swear a lot.

Life Seeder (name metamorphosis Leif): The narrator of our story. His task on the lifeship is to look for a planet suitable for life so that the factfinders can eventually settle on it and plant their seed. A task disturbingly interrupted when a planet is discovered not only suitable for life but already teeming with it.

She (name metamorphosis Sheila): The owner and manager of a fieldfloat sports team (her vocation) and one of the finest pleasurepals (her advocation) on the lifeship. Both vocation and advocation are dispensed with when she is given the task to study the strange Otherlife institution of marriage.

Our Leader (name metamorphosis — it’s better you don’t know that right now): The leader of the lifeship and of the Life within. Gruff, insulting, bold and, worse, bored with traveling in space.

The Large Man (Member, Lifeship Council; name metamorphosis Angel Voice): Sublimely superb in the composition and performance of hums. He has an ego as outsized as his body.

The Very Small And Delicate Woman (Member, Lifeship Council; name metamorphosis Venus): Supremely intelligent factfinder even among all the other factfinders who are, of course, supremely intelligent. She would rather keep her eyes on the stars than stick her feet into the mud of the Otherlife’s planet.

The Very Ugly Man (Member, Lifeship Council; name metamorphosis The Nurturer): Interpreter of the laws as they were perceived and created by The Master Provider. He likes to see things grow.

The BT Maker (Member, Lifeship Council): He makes Brain Teasers and Brain Ticklers, and all his communications bubbles are flashy and multicolored.

The Lanky Gentleman (Member, Lifeship Council; name metamorphosis Argus): The lifeship’s expert on ignorance and hate, and is therefore given the task to study ignorance and hate among the Otherlife. It is a daunting task.

The Large Handed Woman (Member, Lifeship Council): The lifeship’s expert in mental states who is given the task to study the odd Otherlife phenomenon of religion.

The Pilot: He pilots the lifeship, keeps to himself, and loves to look at the stars.

The Life Seeder’s Assistant (name metamorphosis Life Seeder): Happy in his position but still bearing a racial grudge millennia old. Upon the discovery of the Otherlife, he is forced to grow and find a creativity in himself he did not know he had.

The Tenpercenters: As dictated by The Master Provider, ten percent of all births result in an ignorant. Collectively known as the Tenpercenters, they are cared for responsibly by their parents who hate them deeply, as does all of Life’s society. Represented in the story by the Life Seeder’s Assistant’s son, a particularly puerile and putrid pocket of puss.

Otherlife: They’re human — what else do you need to know?

President Crowell (Otherlife): Until the arrival of the Life in the lifeship, he had been the United States Speaker of the House. However as the previous president dies of a stroke, and the vice president quickly resigns, he finds himself in the Oval Office with aliens from outer space. A classic pol from the old school, he is a bit intimidated by statesmanship.

General Millikin (Otherlife): A very grounded professional soldier who discovers the power of zero gravity.

Michael Torme (Otherlife): Ex-TV star and owner of Michael Torme’s Honeymoon Paradise Resort. He knows that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.

Stan and Mary (Otherlife): A young honeymoon couple. She’s pregnant and he’s delighted.

Josh and Rachel (Otherlife): An old honeymoon couple. Jewish, they fell in love while singing Sunrise, Sunset.

John and Carole (Otherlife): A Christian honeymoon couple. God was the Matchmaker, so who are they to argue?

Margaret Cleveland (Otherlife): Works for the International Genocide Project. Wise beyond her years — and she’s ninety-five years old.

Patricia Barks (Otherlife): White House intern charged by the president with the task of helping the Life understand Otherlife religion. She fails.

Joseph Gillette (Otherlife): Owner of the Atlantis Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. Thinks the Large Man as Angel Voice will be a giant in the entertainment business.

Stuart (Otherlife): A loving father down on his luck in Vegas. Convinced Angel Voice can take him to heaven, he starts a riot.

David (Otherlife scientist, name metamorphosis Bushface): Studies quantum physics, he believes science and religion can coexist.

Andrew (Otherlife scientist, name metamorphosis Sharp Chin/Sharp Nose. A biologist.

Sara (Otherlife scientist, name metamorphosis Bright Smile): An astronomer and astrophysicist.

Adrian (Otherlife scientist, name metamorphosis Angel Hair): A neurobiologist, he thinks Bushface has his thumb up his bum.

Sally (Otherlife scientist, name metamorphosis Tits): A well-endowed paleontologist who knows how to make a mean Bone Diggers Delight.

Pope Peter II (His Otherlife Holiness): Previously the Archbishop of Canter- bury who effected a reconciliation between the Church of England and the Catholic Church, and now is determined to bring all other religions under the vast dome of the One True Church. He wants his “Children from the Stars” to help.

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READ THE PREFACE TO TRAVELING IN SPACE

PREFACE TO TRAVELING SPACE

2011-10-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Earth-bound first contact or alien encounter stories have become quite a tradition in Science Fiction literature and films. They usually fall in two broad categories: The visitors from outer space are here to conquer us or they are here to uplift us. They are here to steal our resources, probe our bodies, have sex with our women, possibly eat us;

or they are here to make us good citizens of the Galaxy in a sort of cosmic Big Brother program

to stop our wars, mediate our petty bickering, reverse the environmental damage we have wreaked, and end talk radio (which has been polluting the airwaves of outer space) as the first step towards an enlightened intelligence. The former began, I suppose, with H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds,

and continues on to this day, being particularly popular in film and television.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke is a major example of the latter in literature,

as Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still

and Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind are major examples in film.

This portraying of aliens from outer space as either naughty

or nice

(as if they were kids on Santa’s list), leads one to believe that they are but stand-ins or metaphors for either deep human fears of the “other” and the unknown, or a deep human yearning for salvation from ourselves at the hands of a greater power, our hands being so small and inadequate. If you are looking for either one of those two sub-genres of a sub-genre of a genre — then you are holding the wrong book in your hands.

It has always seemed to me, given the vastness of the universe, that aliens from outer space consciously deciding, for whatever reason, to come to Earth, which orbits a rather backwater sun in an unexceptional galaxy,

is so highly unlikely as to be absolutely improbable if not completely impossible. If it ever happens it’s much more likely to be a matter of pure chance, a not-happy accident as spacefaring aliens just stumble upon us, as one stumbles upon a rock sitting inconveniently in the middle of a trail. It is the latter case that forms the basis for Traveling in Space. If I had chosen the former case, Traveling in Space wouldn’t exist and you would probably now be holding in your hands yet another novel about a galactic empire, a dastardly villain, and a stalwart hero.

The aliens in Traveling in Space are neither nasty nor particularly nice. What they are is curious. They are factfinders, what we call scientists, on a mission of discovery and a search for knowledge, which is their greatest passion next to a deeply held love of Life. Not their individual, personal lives, but Life itself in all its manifestations, especially their own sentient, cognizant Life. This primary passion dictates their secondary mission, which is to seed their life onto any suitable planet they happen to find. Lest you suddenly think Traveling in Space will become a novel of conquest by either war or sex, put your worries aside. The mere fact that they find Earth already occupied makes it unsuitable for them — a true mark of their alien nature.

The aliens in Traveling in Space simply call themselves Life, the planet they come from they call The Living World, and the huge starship they travel in is referred to as a lifeship. This nomenclature is quite understandable when you consider that these aliens are under the impression that they are the only life in the universe and thus are the matrix of Life. It is an impression rather rudely shattered when they “stumble” upon the Earth and its occupants, which they dub, “Otherlife.”

What happens after this stubbing of their collective consciousness is the story of Traveling in Space. It is a story told completely from the point-of-view of the aliens, a “people,” if I may use that term, not perfect, but perfectly situated and full of perfect curiosity to study the Otherlife; to observe and comment on them and their “alien” nature and culture, which includes such strange things as marriage, intoxicating drinks, weapons of minor and mass destruction, the gleeful inhaling of toxic substances, two-parent families, layered language, genocide, non-nude bathing, and — the strangest thing of all — religion.

For alienness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Steven Paul Leiva

Los Angeles, CA

October 17, 2011

TRAVELING IN SPACE -- THE COMPLETED COVER

2011-10-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

Blüroof Press, has been asking members on certain internet forums to preview and read “Traveling in Space.” The first response was so great, that he has asked the member who posted it if Blüroof could feature his comment on the back cover of the book. The member kindly said, “Yes,” and so....

Which I think is neat -- plus I’m a sucker for alliteration!

New Clothes for Shakespeare and Sondheim or: THE ARROGANCE OF IGNORANCE

2011-09-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Charles Darwin

“There are only two things in the universe worth hating, The Master Provider said, death and ignorance, ignorance and death. One is inevitable, the other need not be.”

From Traveling in Space

I was once driving around with a colleague, an actor of sorts who I will call Harry Hotdoggen, when the subject of William Shakespeare came up.

William Shakspeare

“Shakespeare is the ‘Emperor’s New Clothes,’ Harry said in a statement so definitive that I thought I could perceive the stone tablet he was burning the words onto.

“What?” I said, never really liking stone tablets.

“Everybody thinks he’s this great writer, but his plays are really crap,” Harry said, happy to elucidate. “You know, it’s just that English teachers and intellectuals tell you Shakespeare is great, so everybody has to believe it, when, really, his plays are crap, I know, I’ve done some Shakespeare, I’m telling ya, ya can’t understand what the hell he’s taking about.”

“What?” I said again thinking maybe some carbon monoxide had leaked into the car and I was just imagining this conversation.

Stephen Sondheim

“And Sondheim too, he’s also the Emperor’s New Clothes. The only people who like his musicals are effete snobs, and they don’t really like his work, they’re just pressured to say they do, refusing to admit that his tunes are not singable — they’re awful.”

I love Sondheim. I love Shakespeare. I would have said,

“What?” again, but What? was the use?

Harry Hotdoggen is an actor with a particular talent—some might call it a peculiar talent—and what he does he has wanted to do from a very early age, and he has known success doing it. Because he was convinced from that early age that he would achieve this success, he paid little if any attention in school, did not achieve any academic standing at all (and is proud of it), and has never considered for a minute wasting time suffering “higher” education—except that which he could achieve through AM talk radio. William Shakespeare has been judged the greatest writer of the English language, and possibly any language; Stephen Sondheim is considered by his fellow professionals and devoted fans as the greatest composer and lyricist of the last fifty years of musical theater. But the ill-educated Harry, a man and talent with his own fans to be sure, but one not destined, I would be willing to wager, to go down in history; Harry, with unshakable conviction in his assessment; Harry has spoken the Word: Both Mister Ss are nothing but frauds and shams.

Harry Hotdoggen’s greatest role may be as a stand-in for the Great American Anti-intellectual. He is the perfect example. I do mean anti-intellectual, not nonintellectual; there are people who are nonintellectual but not, necessarily, willfully ignorant. The Harry Hotdoggens of the world are not the type who, when confronted with a complex idea or a challenging work of art, say, “Wow, that’s hard for me to get my head around, I’ll have to give that some thought, but, jeez, interesting if nothing else.” Harry Hottdoggens are the type who immediately resent the idea or work of art. I have known Harry (and Harriet) Hotdoggens who take other people’s intelligence as a personal insult, as if they (the intelligent) have passed through their (the anti-intellectuals) lives only to diminish them by example. Which, if you think about it, is a bit of a backhanded compliment.

Harry Hotdoggens don’t see it that way, of course, their egos—as strong, individualistic, and inward directed as all of our egos are—will not allow such vision, nor allow that those more intelligent than they may truly be intelligent. The Harry Hotdoggens are not saying, If you can’t say something stupid, then don’t say anything at all; they are saying, If I don’t get it, it ain’t got nothing worth getting.

This arrogance of ignorance is especially true if an idea, some knowledge, a few well-established facts, or an intellectually rigorous conclusion goes against a deeply held belief, either social or religious. This arrogance of ignorance rests at the core of the proponents of Creationism and Intelligent Design, and gives spines of steel to homophobes defining marriage as only the type they have or wish to have; shouters for small government who still happily cash their unemployment, disability, and social security checks; climate change deniers who stand in the storm like a million, mad Lears and shout, “It’s not our fault!” It is the arrogance of ignorance displayed by all those who would rather take the revelations of ancient, antique, antiquated and inadequate, supposedly written-in-stone, yet much too open to interpretation “sacred” texts, rather than the most current understanding of the workings of the universe that we have wrestled from nature by the scientific method, which is not open to interpretation, but always open to refinement and even — if new data justify it — falsification.

This arrogance of ignorance leads to ideology not ideas; madness not method; hate not the humane.

Really, Leiva? All this from not liking Shakespeare and Sondheim? Yes, for that is but a symptom of a greater problem.

We talk often about how America is divided between the Right and the Left, the Red and the Blue, the Conservative and the Liberal. But is that the true divide that is doing us harm—if it is doing harm and is not just a reflection of a division in human nature? Could the real harm possibly be coming from the divide between the ignorant and the knowledgeable?

I am not implying by placement that all Red Right Conservatives are ignorant and all Blue Left Liberals are knowledgable; neither ignorance nor knowledge discriminates, especially regarding specifics. Certain conservatives may reject the facts of climate change; certain liberals may reject the facts of the benefits of animal experimentation. I have very consciously not used the words “Stupid” and “Smart.” Stupid and Smart come with each individual’s biological territory. Ignorance and knowledge come from actions taken and not taken; effort, or the lack thereof, is the telling factor here.

By ignorance I mean the willful ignoring of facts. By knowledgable I mean quite specifically, as I indicated above, that which we have learned by the application of the scientific method.

I’m specific in the type of knowledge I’m speaking about here because not all knowledge is equal, although all knowledge comes from experience. I can best illuminate this point by defining the difference between information and knowledge, which are not the same thing, as information comes from the outside and knowledge is born on the inside. For example: When you tell your young child that the stove is hot and that if she touches it she will burn her fingers, she now has that information. But it is not until she, despite having the information, touches the stove and burns her fingers that she has the knowledge. Information, though, can be wrong—you could be lying to your child, or be misinformed yourself. And knowledge can be subjective and biased—the stove may only be warm, but the child may have a low threshold of pain, or desire the sympathetic soothing of a parent, and therefore reports a burn where none has occurred.

Jacob Bronowski

In his book of essays, The Identity of Man, Jacob Bronowski speaks about self-knowledge or, better said, knowledge of the self, and how such knowledge can be engendered by each of us living with (experiencing) our own consciousnesses, and, interestingly, through art, whether music, pictorial or, most ideally, literature. For art is, after all, nothing but manufactured and manipulated experience that, if it is honest and true, can speak to us by allowing us to share the experiences it provides, giving us a possibly more refined, if generalized, knowledge of ourselves, although rarely, if ever, particular and actionable knowledge of the world around us. But if that art is either difficult (Shakespeare, writing in an English that is now archaic, can be extremely difficult upon first reading), or challenging (Sondheim made a career of challenging the conventions of musical theater), then it can, if no effort is made to appreciate the art, be a bad experience that leads to no knowledge of the self but does become a highly biased knowledge of the work of art itself. Unfortunately such knowledge is often expressed as an opinion that demands to be taken as fact — and so the artist is “crap” and wears the Emperor’s new clothes.

This is just that way things are concerning us as individual selfs with our individual tastes, and it may always be this way.

While it really does no harm for people to have their personal biases regarding art, in the larger context, in a world we all share as members of the same species, and in communities we share, from townships to cities to states to nations, toxic ignorance, false information, and highly subjective and biased knowledge can do much harm both locally and globally.

"This boy is ignorance."

To stave off ignorance (and to combat it when we haven’t) it’s not just information we need, but accurate information; it is not just knowledge we require, but knowledge as objective and true as we can achieve. Such information and knowledge can only be derived from the scientific method, which, like art, manufactures experience, but unlike art, does not or should not, ever, manipulate it. This is true because this method of inquiry (through observation, exploration, and experimentation) into reality, into nature, into, as Douglas Adams put it, Life, the Universe and Everything, guards against false information and is intolerant of biased and subjective knowledge. It is a method that reveals information and knowledge that, unlike ancient, antique, antiquated and inadequate information and knowledge revealed in “sacred texts,” are revelations that beg to be questioned, challenged, put on the spot, and tested. Science does not look for sacred truths, but elegant truths that effortlessly fit the facts no matter what one may prefer the truths to be.

The scientific method is not arcane, even if it takes much hard study to master the details of any one science, and a great deal of patience, thought, attention to details, and often mind-numbing, even back breaking grunt work to rigorously apply the method.

Here’s an explanation of the method from the website Science Made Simple (http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scientific_method.html):

The steps of the Scientific Method are:

Observation/Research

Hypothesis

Prediction

Experimentation

Conclusion

The observation is done first so that you know how you want to go about your research. The hypothesis is the answer you think you'll find. The prediction is your specific belief about the scientific idea: If my hypothesis is true, then I predict we will discover..... The experiment is the tool that you invent to answer the question, and the conclusion is the answer that the experiment gives.

In the search to understand Life, the Universe and Everything, this is a method that has proven over the last three hundred or so years to work remarkably well. Our understanding of L, U and E has grown rapidly if not exponentially, the highly technological world we live in being only the obvious manifestation of that growth, the one most happily embraced. The copious number of successes science has had in unlocking Nature’s secrets has made it worthy of a high degree of confidence, in contrast to strictly opinion-based belief systems or philosophies, and certainly to the irrationality of faith, whether in the tenets of one of the three major Abrahamic religions, or any of the many smaller religions that dot the face of our planet.

When faced with such advocacy for the scientific method over belief systems or faith, people often accused the advocate of being, “Just the same as us, you just believe in science; you just have a faith in science.” But the hallmark of science and the method that makes it strong is neither belief nor faith, but trust. Science relies on dispassionate and objective (as far as it is possible) evidence and proofs and therefore has proven itself. Beliefs and faith rely only on the passions of their adherents. As passions can and often do differ, no one belief or faith has universally proven itself, even if certain beliefs and faiths may claim they have simply by the number of their adherents.

Since the core of beliefs and faith is opinion and not an evidence seeking method, any strength they have can come from only one thing: authority. In most of human history authority has been derived from either one of two methods, or often a combination of both: Convincing people that you are tapped into the mind of the Divine, or demonstrating for them the strength of your armies. Emperors, popes, priests, monarchs, dictators, and the self-deified have relied on these two methods for millennia. In recent history a third way has been added, authority derived from “the people.” Democracy, it is called, although it has never really been pure, and so we have constitutions to codify and politicians to execute that authority, relying on a majority to keep it intact. The good or bad exercise of that authority, then, depends on the quality of the majority. The quality of the majority relies on the information and knowledge it has. If the majority consists of Hotdoggens, the willfully ignorant—for false information and biased and subjective knowledge amounts to the same thing as ignorance—then the exercise of that authority has a good chance to be bad. But if the majority has information and knowledge that can be trusted, because it has come from a method that can be tested, then the exercise of that authority has a much better chance of being good. To put it another way: Information and knowledge should not come from authority; authority should come from information and knowledge.

It seems simple. Reliable and workable information and knowledge could, I suppose, come from a biased and objective “authority,” but it is not likely. Information and knowledge that can be trusted because it has come from a rigorous method that has no room for biases and will not tolerate subjectivity, seems much the better basis for an authority and the decisions it needs to make, especially in this world of ours that is currently facing so many obstacles. And yet, so often, the Harry and Harriet Hotdoggens of the world seem to rule it.

Why? The arrogance of ignorance.

What can be done about it? Now there is a question to contemplate.

THE TOP TEN FUNNIEST HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS OF ALL TIME!

2011-09-11T20:03:00.000-07:00

In 1991 I was asked by the good people at the Juste pour Rire/Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal, Canada if I could produce an event for then that would feature animation. I immediately proposed an evening of the funniest Hollywood cartoons ever made. Great they said, we’ll run it for a week, what are they? Damn if I know, I said, it’s probably a matter of opinion, so how about I poll some people who might have interesting opinions about what are the top ten funniest Hollywood cartoons. Great, they said, go to it. So I did, polling such people as filmmakers, both live action (Martin Scorsese) and animation (Richard Williams), comedians (Richard Belzer), and journalists (Tom Shales). All responded with enthusiasm and strong opinions. I gathered the votes and ranked the films by the number of votes each one got and came up with the list. I helped the Festival book the films, and the festival rented the wonderful Rialto Theater, a classic old movie house, which I hope is still there.

On opening night of The Top Ten Funniest Hollywood Cartoons of All time we had a line around the block to get in and a full house. I introduced the show, somehow being daring — or stupid — enough in a town crawling with the best standup comedians in the world, to try a little standup routine myself. I did not, as the saying goes, “kill” but I didn’t do that bad either. My biggest laugh came when I was talking about other top ten lists, giving examples, one of which was: The Top Ten Canadians Wines. If you know anything about Canadian wines you’ll get the joke. I told the audience that the number one Canadian wine (whine) was, What do you mean we’re out of beer?

Fortunately for subsequent audiences of the show I only did the introduction on the opening night. The show was so popular, the Rialto ran it for three weeks after the festival was over.

I returned to the festival the next year with The Top Ten Toons in Tune, a show of musical cartoons with Tom Kenny (now the voice of Sponge Bob Square Pants) doing the standup on opening night, and I continued to produce shows for Just for Laughs until 1996, including one on The Simpsons, and a tribute to producer-director Ivan Reitman. But that first show was the best.

I wrote a short essay on the show for the Rialto’s in-house paper, and you’ll find it below as well as the list of advisors and, finally, the list itself —

THE TOP TEN FUNNIEST HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS OF ALL TIME!!!! As of 1991, at least.

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Okay, just how do you chose the ten funniest Hollywood cartoons of all time? I mean, who would be so stupid as to suggest that such a subjective assessment can be made? Especially one that would make everyone happy? Well, not me, that’s for damn sure. Although I can come up with the idea of producing this show - and am happy to take all credit for it - I turned over the actual choosing of the ten films to a panel of expert advisers through a polling of their personal choices, thus deflecting all the blame to them (clever enough to be a politician aren’t I?). So if you don’t like or agree with any or all of the films on the list, you go talk to Martin Scorsese!

But why chose them at all? To make a point. Comedy! Comedy, folks, is what Hollywood animation has always been about. Comedy! Not - really, I swear this is true - not fairy tales or furry tails, but comedy!

Comedy: that glorious genre that the Just For Laughs Festival celebrates.

Comedy: honored by Aristotle, practiced by Shakespeare.

Comedy: currently big bucks in show biz.

And what is comedy? How the hell should I know? But I do know that timing is involved and a sense of the ridiculous. Also understanding of the frailty of human nature. And truth is usually best reached not through a realistic rendition of a story, but through an exaggeration of it, and that exaggeration can range from slightly subtle to broadly outrageous. Given the above, can you think of any form of storytelling more suited to comedy than animation? Look, in animation we can control the timing to one twenty-fourth of a second. We can get as ridiculous as the human mind can imagine, and we can exaggerate on a scale that reaches from the incredibly subtle to the inhumanly broad.

Animation is the perfect medium for comedy.

These ten films demonstrate my point perfectly. Their display of human greed, the fickleness of luck, the capriciousness of gods, the horrors of the sex drive, the destructiveness of family life, the pain of addiction, the prevalence of crime, the torturing of the weak by the strong, the madness of arms escalation, and the ever present threat of death through gravity is a virtual laundry list of the funny.

As Daffy Duck is wont to say, “It is to laugh.”

THE TEN FUNNIEST HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS OF ALL TIME!!! LIST OF ADVISORS:

Martin Scorsese - Film director of such films as TAXI DRIVER, AFTER HOURS, GOODFELLAS, and, of course, KING OF COMEDY.

Joe Dante - Film director of such films as GREMLINS, INNER-SPACE, and GREMLINS II.

Paul Fusco - Television producer/writer/director and creator of ALF.

Chuck Jones - Three time Academy Award winning creator of the Coyote and Road Runner; co-creator of Bugs Bunny and one of the top directors of now classic Warner Bros. Cartoons.

Mike Lah - Animator on the Tom and Jerry shorts.

Shamus Cullhane - Animator of such characters as Popeye, Betty Boop, and on the Disney feature PINOCCHIO.

Cordell Baker - On staff at the National Film Board (Manitoba), director of Academy Award nominee THE CAT CAME BACK.

Richard Williams - Animation director on WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT, Academy Award winning director of A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

Darrell Van Citters - Director of the first new theatrical Bugs Bunny short in years, BOX OFFICE BUNNY.

Rebecca Rees - Directing animator on THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER, member of Disney Animation Story Department.

Kelly Asbury - Member of the Story Department at Disney Animation, Art Director on ROLLER COASTER RABBIT, the second roger rabbit short.

John Musker - Co-director of Disney's THE LITTLE MERMAID and the upcoming BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.

Michael Giamio - Production designer for Warner Bros. Cartoons on the first new Bugs Bunny short in years, BOX OFFICE BUNNY; character design instructor at the California Institute of the Arts.

Mark Kausler - Animator at Disney Animation, animation historian.

Jay Cocks - Writer screenwriter. Knows both Martin Scorsese and Stefan Kanfer personally. Prevailed on Chuck Jones to baptize Michigan Jay Frog with his middle name.

Stefan Kanfer - Critic, Senior Arts Editor for TIME MAGAZINE, author of numerous books including JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEARS.

Tom Shales - Pulitzer Prize winning television critic for the WASHINGTON POST.

John Canemaker - Animator and animation historian biographer of Winsor McCay, author of FELIX: THE TWISTED TALE OF THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS CAT.

Tom Kenny - Standup comic, the new host of NBC's FRIDAY NIGHT VIDEOS, and a cartoon is his own right.

Richard Belzer - Standup comic, author, actor, semi-regular on THE FLASH.

Robin Budd - Director at Nelvana productions in Toronto on the animated BEETLEJUICE.

Brad Caslor - On staff at the National Film Board (Manitoba); director of GET A JOB and creator of Bob Dog.

THE TEN FUNNIEST HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS OF ALL TIME

One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones - Warner Bros.)
Bad Luck Blackie (Tex Avery - MGM)
Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones - Warner Bros.)
Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery - MGM)
Bear For Punishment (Chuck Jones - Warner Bros.)
Birds Anonymous (Friz Freleng - Warner Bros.)
The Great Piggy Bank Robbery (Bob Clampett - Warner Bros.)
Quiet Please (Hanna-Barbera - MGM)
King Size Canary (Tex Avery - MGM)
The Clock Cleaners (Ben Sharpsteen - Disney)

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And that's how it stood -- up to 1991. Can anyone think of a Hollywood short cartoon made since then that might qualify to join this list?

I want to thank my daughter, Miranda, for her assistance in preparing this blog entry.

JUST RELEASED -- THE BACK COVER COPY FOR TRAVELING IN SPACE

2011-09-08T10:19:00.000-07:00

TRAVELING IN SPACE

by Steven Paul Leiva

A unique science fiction first contact novel from the point-of-view of the aliens. a 21st Century Gulliver’s Travels with Homo sapiens as the Lilliputians.

The last thing the factfinders — who call themselves Life — expected to find while traveling in space in The Curious on a mission from their planet, The Living World, was other life. But one day they stumble upon the third planet out from a backwater sun and find it teeming with a vast diversity of life including one sentient and cognizant, if primitive, species that they dub: Otherlife.

Being not only from The Curious but inherently curious themselves they begin to study the Otherlife and their alien culture, discovering such strange things as: marriage, intoxicating drinks, weapons of minor and mass destruction, the gleeful inhaling of toxic substances, two-parent families, layered language, genocide, non-nude bathing, and — the strangest thing of all — religion.

This first contact between Life and Otherlife, disconcerting for both, has moments of humor and moments of horror — and neither escape the encounter unchanged.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAY BRADBURY!

2011-08-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Today is Ray Bradbury's ninety-first birthday. Those of you who know me know how important Ray, as an author and a man, has been to me. I am not alone in this and hardly unique, as I have tried to express on the dedication page of my new novel coming this fall, Traveling in Space:

For Ray Bradbury

I am but one of millions you have entertained and inspired

I am but one of thousands who started writing because of you

I am but one of hundreds you have befriended and been so generous to

But you, sir, you are one of a kind

THE COVER OF MY NEXT NOVEL

2011-07-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Just got this in -

The cover of my new novel, TRAVELING IN SPACE to be published this fall by Blüroof Press.

It's a science fiction first contact novel from the point-of-view of the aliens; a 21st Century Gulliver's Travels with Homo sapiens as the Lilliputians.

I think Todd Cronin did a

great job on the cover and I thank him much!

Of Heroes and Foreskins

2011-06-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

Comic books use to have a bad name. They were considered corruptors of youth that infected their minds with horrific images of violence and sent them out into the street to wreak havoc. Those little colored panels were but a Communist plot, many thought, to undermine the squeaky-clean children of America and direct them to unweave the very fabric of all that was good in America — a true force for evil.

Today comic books are considered a legitimate and fine art of storytelling. While they may not necessarily be a force for good, they are certainly a force for good profits if Hollywood can successfully turn them into a series of tent-pole films.

Now, however, comic books may again get a bad name and that bad name is: Foreskin.

One Matt Hess of San Diego, a supporter of efforts to ban circumcision in San Francisco and Santa Monica, equating, absurdly, circumcision with female genital mutilation in Africa, has published two issues of the super-hero comic book, Foreskin Man. FM, as I will call him, is as buff as most super heroes and as blond as some of them, and fights a never ending battle against Monster Mohel to stop him from snipping the foreskins of innocent boy infants. Monster Mohel is clad in the traditional Orthodox Jewish wide brimmed hat and sports a tallis around his neck and comes equipped with all the instruments needed for a brit milah. Monster (obviously not his “Christian” name) Mohel is designed to be so ugly and evil looking that he would make even Batman crap in his tights.

Mark Hess has claimed that he is not being anti-Semitic. I assume he has said that with a straight face. I assume he has had surgery to paralyze the muscles in his face.

(On a side note, it has just occurred to me that if Kryptonian males are exactly like males from Earth, and if it was not taken care of before Krypton blew up — and Jor-el and Lara were a bit preoccupied just before that catastrophe — then Superman is uncircumcised.)

Now I disagree with Mr. Hess that circumcision is the “unkindest cut of all” and if I lived in San Francisco or Santa Monica I would vote against the ban, but I must defend his right to bring the foreskin into literature — for I have done so myself.

I find the male foreskin funny — or at least amusing — as demonstrated below in several excerpts from my novel, Blood is Pretty: The First Fixxer Adventure. The Fixxer is a mysterious character who works in Hollywood and is paid big bucks to fix the dire problems of the Show Biz elite. He does this using various skills he picked up while in the employ, it is hinted, of some secret agency. He also does this by calling on the service of a “crew” of talented individuals, including Petey, who still works for some secret agency. Petey is my homage, twisted though it may be, to James Bond’s Q. Petey is a short, possibly obnoxious, certainly loud man, who also happens to be a genius. If I were to cast the role today I would cast the comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

In this first excerpt the Fixxer is on the phone asking Petey to fly to Los Angeles to help him on a case. Just for fun in our fantasy casting, let’s pair Gilbert Gottfried as Petey with Jon Hamm from Mad Men as the Fixxer.

“Petey?”
“Fixxer! How’d 12-72 do?”
“Just fine, Petey, just fine. Listen, how much vacation time do you have built up?”
“Oh, well, let’s see? Two weeks a year for the last, uh, 22 years, that would be...”
“Forty-four weeks.”
“Yeah, forty-four weeks. Guess I’ll add them onto my retirement.”
“Well, sacrifice some of it and get out here. I need you.”
“When?”
“Catch the next flight.”
“Well, I’ll have to talk to—”
“I’ll deal with your immediate superior. Is it still Duckmeyer?”
“No, Fucky-Ducky’s gone. It’s Heartburn.”
“Really? Hillburn? Even better. Got any new, undetectable body homing devices?”
“Have you been circumcised?”
“Circumcised?”
“Yes, circumcised.”
“Isn’t that a matter between a man and his god?”
“Come on, stop kidding with me. Have you been circumcised?”
“Yes, Petey, the good doctor who brought me into the world took my foreskin out of it.”
“Good, then I have just the thing.”
“Dare we go into the details now?”
“No. It’ll just disturb your sleep. See you soon.”

In this next excerpt the Fixxer has gathered his crew — the beautiful Anne Eisley, an actress, the authoritative Captain, on the payroll of the LAPD as well as Fixxer’s, the Fixxer’s “Watson,” Roee, an Israeli of singular talents in the kitchen as well as with deadly weapons, and, of course, Petey — to discuss the covert action he is going to take against the antagonists of the story, ex-motion picture executive, budding world-conquering villain Andy Rand and his henchman, Batsarov. The Captain addresses the Fixxer:

“So you and Anne get invited to Rand’s secret hideout,” the Captain said, “to get some evidence against Rand.”
“Yes. Evidence. Or a witness willing to testify.”
“York?”
“Yes. He has a vulnerable personality.”
“Well, you better have a homing device on you so we can give you some backup.”
“That’s the plan.”
“And it better be a well hidden one. Batsarov is versed in such things,” Roee added.
“Petey assures me he has a good one.”
“Yeah! I have a great one! You want to see it?”
“Petey, I think that can wait until...”
“No, here, look, I got it right here!” Petey whipped out of his pocket something that was 2 to 3 inches long, wrinkled, flesh colored and floppy. He held it proudly in his hand.
“What the hell is that?” The Captain moved closer for a better look.
“A synthetic male foreskin attachment with a built-in flexible nano-electronic homing device. It’s really great! It has an anti-detection chip built in so no electronic scan can pick it up. And, as you can see, it is totally non-detectable during visual inspection. Of course, it only works with a man who’s been circumcised. But as most men are, thanks to the good, hygienic sense of your people, Roee, we find it applicable to 92.4 % of our agents. You see, you attach it with this special glue—.”
“Yes, well…” I had to stop him. He was unzipping his pants. “You and I can go over this tomorrow.”
“Oh, okay. But I better tell you before I forget, it has one drawback.”
“What’s that?”
“While you’ve got it on you can’t take a bath. It might short out. Sponge-wash the penis only.”
Anne could no longer contain herself and began to laugh. The Captain shook his head and leaned back in his chair. “Petey.”
“What?” Petey answered still proudly displaying the foreskin homing device in the palm of his hand.
“You are one sick puppy.”

The next day the time comes for the homing device to be attached to the Fixxer.

About 6 pm, just before I was going to dress for the evening, Petey burst into the library.
“Hey, Fixxer, you know, it’s time to put on the homing device!”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
“Do you want me to put it on you!?”
“No, I think I would prefer to put it on myself.”
“You told me you were circumcised when you were an infant!”
“I spoke the truth.”
“So you really have no idea exactly the placement of this fake foreskin!” He held it in his hand, its floppy nature a wonder to behold. “I mean exactly how far it should extend from the tip of the penis!”
“I’ll try to figure it out.”
“That’s funny! You know almost everybody says that! But it’s not like a man knows his penis like the back of his hand! So I prepared this little diagram which shows exactly where to attach the foreskin!”
Handing me the fake foreskin, he held up the diagram, which, in black and white line drawings, showed two penises. One was an uncircumcised penis with a dotted line encircling it about three quarters down from the tip. There was an arrow pointing to the dotted line and which extended from a legend that read: ATTACH FORESKIN HERE. The other penis was obviously an example of what the situation should look like once the attachment was on.
“You can use this!” He held up a little silver tube, the same kind that Formula 12-72 came in. “It’s my special adhesive glue! It spreads on easily, so you should have no problem!”
“Thank you, Petey.”
“See, the beauty of this thing is, if you have to go through a strip search, they may look up your rectum, but nine times out of ten, they won’t play with your penis!”
“I’ll count on those odds.”
“Take the little tube of adhesive glue with you, ‘cause it sometimes comes undone! Which is also why you should wear briefs and not boxers!”
“I’ll be sure to pack it.”
“And remember: No baths! Here!”
He handed me a little plastic bag. “What’s this?”
“Skin tight plastic briefs. Wear them during showers. Then sponge bathe the—.”
“Yes, I—I think I’ll know what to do.”
“Well, if you’ve never lived with a foreskin, you may not know proper—.”
“Petey, please. Can I forego the instructions and just use common sense on this?”
“All right! All right! It’s your penis.” He started to walk out, then stopped and turned with one more point. “Oh yeah! You can only put the foreskin on when you are fully erect! Do you think you can handle that!?”
“Well...“ I wasn’t sure Petey was aware of his double entendre. I decided it was best to assume he wasn’t. “I’ll have to, won’t I?”
“Okay! Well, have a good time tonight!”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Wish I was going with you!” There was now a hint of charming sadness in Petey’s voice. “I’ve never been to a fancy ball before.”
“Well, Petey, that was once the case with Cinderella. And look what happened to her.”
Petey brightened up. “Yeah! Yeah! I suppose there is always hope! Well, thanks, Fixxer, for those kind words.”

There you have it. Possibly not as politically of the moment as Foreskin Man, but hopefully amusing enough to divert your attention from the image of an uncircumcised Superman. Which, by the way, I apologize for.

###

If you would like to read the complete first adventure of the Fixxer, you can download the e-book for $2.99 from Amazon or the audiobook version from Amazon Audio, Audible.com, or at Crossroad Press.

E-BOOKS VS. TREE BOOKS

2011-05-22T12:15:00.000-07:00

A while back L. Dean Murphy, a member of the Florida Writer's Association, asked me to write a piece for the FLW's newsletter on e-books vs. Tree books.

Although I had written last November on the subject in this blog, he wanted some quick, pragmatic words on the subject addressed to writers. As my previous blog was addressed to readers, I was happy to comply.

As the piece will only be in print for the FLW's members, I asked Dean if I might not reproduce it here. He kindly said yes. So, here it is.

eBooks versus Tree-Books

By Steven Paul Leiva

special to Florida Writers Association’s The Florida Writer

First off, let me recommend my blog a Book by Any Other Cover: on eBooks and “Real” Books which is a bit of a think piece on the phenomenon of eBooks and the more emotional questions of the impact of eBooks on, what Edgar-nominated author Timothy Hallinan has called, “tree-books.”

As to pragmatic considerations an author might want to give to eBooks, it is most important to realize that eBooks are just another readable form for your work, a form that is gaining exponentially in readers, a form that is not likely to go away soon, if ever. And it’s a form that is going to change forever the publishing business, adding to the largely negative affect on brick-and-mortar bookstores that Amazon started with on-line shopping for “tree-books.”

If the eBook is a train that has left the station and is gaining speed, authors need to make the decision whether to jump on board or not.

It is important to realize, though, that eBooks are just a form to put your work in, they are not a magical gateway to financial success and literary fame. All the problems an independent author has had in publishing print books remain, and they are daunting, especially if you decide to self-publish—or as it has lately been called, “going the indie route.” As in the indie music scene or independent filmmaking, though, the producing of a product is not the big problem, it just takes smarts, hard work and money. The big problem is distribution and marketing.

That said, eBooks have an advantage over print books in that while it still takes smarts and hard work, it can be fairly inexpensive if you publish just for Amazon’s Kindle eReader. And the beauty here is, Amazon also becomes your distributor. If you want to be available on other platforms—Kobo, Nook, iPads, etc.—that will take even more smarts and hard work, but many independent authors are doing this.

I was lucky. Although I was contemplating publishing my out-of-print novel, Blood is Pretty: The First Fixxer Adventure, via Amazon, a fellow writer recommended a new publishing company, Crossroad Press (CrossroadPress.com), which had been set up by author David Niall Wilson to publish digital (eBooks and audiobooks) editions of authors’ back-lists. David agreed to bring out Blood is Pretty as an eBook, and has just released the audiobook version. He has now expanded into eBook originals and has published my follow-up to Blood is Pretty, Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army: The Second Fixxer Adventure.

Although going with Crossroad Press took some, but not all, of the hard work out of the effort for me, and for which I am quite pleased about, the second half of the big problem remains—marketing.

Whether you self-publish as an “indie,” or you come out via a small publisher, it is most likely that neither of you have the marketing muscle of the big New York publishers. There will be no large budget, no marketing department, no publicists all dedicated to making your book a success. But then, even if you were published by a big New York publisher, you might not have much of that anyway, unless your name is James Patterson, or you’ve got your name attached to Mr. Patterson’s.

So the big problem remains—getting people to know about your book, and then getting them to buy it. I have no solution to this problem (I am looking for one myself)—but there are plenty of suggestions out there on a thousand blogs, almost all having to do with starting your own blog, taking up residence on many eBook-related chat rooms, etc. Writers have experienced a range of sales from such activity, from the negligible to, in rare cases, thousands of sales. I think in the rare cases some outstanding element—the author has a large backlist and built-in following; a newbie author hitting the Zeitgeist at the right time with a teenage vampire and/or werewolf and/or supernatural slightly erotic YA book—was the key. We don’t all have such outstanding elements.

Let me address something less pragmatic about this issue. I am a firm believer that the joy of art is in the doing. If you love to write, write then write some more, and feel the joy—that could be satisfaction enough. However, part of that joy is contemplating others enjoying what you have so lovingly and dedicatedly produced. In other words, it is natural for an author to want to spread the joy. That takes readers. You can only get readers by putting your work into a readable form that can be distributed at a reasonable cost. Making readers aware that your book is available for their consideration, even if you are published by a traditional publisher, will be your greatest task. Ah, I see the pragmatic has snuck back in.

Oh well, you knew the job was dangerous when you took it.

LONDON TO LOS ANGELES, DICKENS TO BRADBURY: A TALE OF TWO SIGNS

2011-04-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

On my first trip to London my plane landed at Heathrow in the late afternoon. By the time the classic black London cab had taken me from the airport to where I was staying — animator Richard Williams’s flat in Belsize Park — it was dusk. Richard was in Los Angeles working at his studio there and he had graciously offered me the use of his London home.

Richard Williams's home in London

So I was on my own in making my way up to his second floor flat (on what we in America would call the third floor). This I did by dragging my over packed and heavy bags up the narrow stairwell in total darkness, as the lights seemed to be out and there were no windows to let in outside illumination, not that there was much of that in any case. This dark situation also existed on the second floor, and I had to feel my way along the walls to find that there were three doors to three flats on the floor. Three doors to choose from, and I could not see which was flat A or B or C. Not being a smoker, I did not even have a match or lighter to illuminate myself out of the potentially embarrassing situation of sticking Richard’s key into the wrong door lock. After a moment of panic and a few moments of scratching my head I came up with the bright idea of taking a Braille-like approach and feel for the letters. This, of course, was only going to work if the letters were raised metal attached to the doors, and not flat printed jobs or, worse, painted onto the doors. Fortunately, raised metal they were. I got the key into the lock, opened the door and was greeted by light streaming through the front, street-facing windows from a large street lamp just outside. I greeted it right back.

A few minutes after arriving, as I was unpacking, there was a knock on the door, which probably made me jump. With caution I opened the door and there stood a man from one of London’s utility companies standing in the wonderful illumination of incandescent light. I could see the doors to the other two flats quite well now and assumed that the light in the hallway had just come back on. The utility man was there to check something in the flat. I asked him in, shutting the door behind him, and had a pleasant chat with him while he was doing whatever he needed to do. When he was done I saw him out, opening the door to a blackness only slightly abated by the light from Richard’s flat.

I apologized to the utility man, saying I guessed they were having problems with a circuit. He looked at me in that way certain Brits like to look at certain Americans — the dumb ones — and reached over to a button on the wall I had not noticed before, and hit it with a “Let there be light” flourish. And there was light. It filled the hallway and the stairwell. “It’s on a timer, Mate,” he said as he dashed for the stairs. I stood there for a moment and, sure enough, as I heard the door to the street open and close, the lights turned off and I was again in the dark.

I was not happy to have had my lack of international travel — this was my first substantial trip anywhere — and my naïveté pointed out, sparking some worry and concern about the evening ahead.

I was scheduled to have dinner with Clare Kitson, a programmer at the National Film Theater. She wanted to take me to a restaurant in Soho and feed me whitebait, which I had absolutely no idea what that was. She also expected me to make it there by subway, which she, of course, called “the Tube.” “Catch the Tube at Chalk Farm and take it to Tottenham Court Road,” she said casually as if she was talking to someone who had a familiarity with cities as large as London, had ridden subways on his mother’s knee, and wasn’t intimidated by dark stairwells. I decided to keep her in the dark, maintaining a pose of sophistication I copied from James Bond films. I showered, I dressed, I ventured forth — and, following instructions Clare had given me, found the Chalk Farm tube station with no trouble.

That — and the feel of London I got just walking to the station — boosted my confidence. Still, I needed to descend undergro und and deal with buying a ticket, finding the right train, getting on it and not getting mugged. All of which I did quite well — including not getting mugged, thank goodness. I had left quite early as I had no idea how far Belsize Park was from Soho. As I studied the convenient map of the tube line in the interior of the train,

and carefully noted each station as we came into them, I soon knew that I was going to be at least one hour early. I made a quick, impulsive decision (you know, like James Bond might do) and got off the train at Goodge Street, the stop before Tottenham Court Road. I was determine to explore the unknown and maybe rub some naïvety off in the process. Emerging out of the tube station into a beautiful spring evening I started walking down Wigmore Street, trying not to look awed that I was in this city that had figured into many of my aspirations. Muggers, you see, look for people who look awed, so don’t. On a trip to a large unknown city, the naïve should always strive to look like the native.

I soon found myself in a section called Marylebone and I turned a corner, walked some more and soon I was standing in front of St. Marylebone Parish Church. I am not that fond of churches, but I am of history, and this looked like an old church that must have figured into some history.

St. Marylebone Parish Church today

St. Marylebone Parish Church in the 19th Century

Then I saw a sign, discreetly posted in the church yard, that informed me that this church, the very church I was standing in front of, served as the model for the church in the baptism scene in Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens.

The great thing about Great Cities is that they are great! My first night in London, a reader, a budding cultural snob, naïve and intimidated but so wanting to be knowing and sophisticated, and I suddenly and delightfully come face-to-face with history and literature and the history of literature. It was a great moment, a floating out of one’s skin moment, a merging of the past with the present moment, making them things to be embraced. Life suddenly seemed reasonable and rational and well worth living.

An experience like this could rarely, if ever, happen to an out-of-town visitor to Los Angeles. Not that we don’t have a subway, we now do, and not that visitors don’t use it. I once ran into a couple from Germany popping up out of the North Hollywood station looking to find out how far it was to walk to the Chinese Theater. Los Angeles does have a history, but not one of long duration or one that has entered the minds of out-of-towners (or most Angelenos, for that matter). And as there is a Literary London, there is a Literary Los Angeles, but on a scale somewhat akin to the scale weighing the difference between London’s history and L.A.’s. A check with Wikipedia will give you this:

Los Angeles's literary history includes legendary authors like Raymond Chandler, whose hard-boiled detective stories were set in pre-war and immediate post-war L.A. Ross Macdonald carried on the Chandler tradition into the 1950s, and in the 1960s and 1970s blended it with themes of classical tragedy. Walter Mosley, James Ellroy and Joseph Hansen are among the local successors to Chandler. Nathaniel West's book, The Day of the Locust, depicted a raw side to the Hollywood dream. Ray Bradbury wrote science fiction after moving to the city in 1934. Actress Carrie Fisher has found success as a novelist. The best known local poet was Charles Bukowski, who mostly lived in Hollywood but in the later part of his life lived in San Pedro. Tens of thousands of screenplays have been written by L.A. city residents, and the movie business has attracted many authors, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley, Tennessee Williams, Evelyn Waugh, and William Faulkner.

How Wikipedia missed Helen Hunt Jackson's influential 1884 novel about Los Angeles's mission era, Ramona, I have no idea.

Although it is not true that people in Los Angeles, whether native or naïve, do not walk (they just do not walk much), when they do they are not likely to suddenly come upon a sign pointing to some literary fact, delight or point of historical interest.

I, however, have found one.

My daughter, Miranda, and I were in Venice (not, unfortunately, the one in Italy) a while back looking for a spot — a square, a street, a circle — that might be a good place to lobby being officially named after Ray Bradbury, once a resident of this Los Angeles beach community. We were looking for the two addresses Ray had lived at: One, 670 South Venice Boulevard where Ray moved to as a young man in his twenties when his father rented a house next to a small powerhouse from the utility company he worked for, the other, 33 South Venice Boulevard, where he and his bride, Maggie, lived. We had no idea if the original houses still existed or what might now be at those addresses if they didn’t. A 7-11 minimart perhaps, or a gas station, or a legal medical marijuana dispensary?

If you have read Ray’s writing you know he is an honestly sentimental writer, and if you know Ray you know he is an honestly sentimental man. These houses, long after he had moved from them, maintained a hold on him, as has the small powerhouse at 660 Venice Boulevard, which he could see out of the window of 670’s garage where he had set up a writing space in a corner. This is where he wrote most of the stories that became The Martian Chronicles. Ray is a man of metaphors, possibly the man of metaphors, and this powerhouse, surging, quite naturally, with power, became a metaphor for his own creative power, indeed, the metaphorical source of that power as he sat looking through the window to the brick building, imagining the power within and imagining it flowing into him to help him imagine Martians. Later on in life, whenever Ray was feeling reflective, often during those passages of life we cannot avoid, he would have his driver take him by “the old house” and the powerhouse. It must have been great to view them, to smell their breath, the scent of his youthful creative life, and take in the passage of time in one gulp, appreciating the whole even if parts were less than desirable.

Miranda and I found that 670 no longer exists. Not the building, not the address. It has been subsumed by 660. However there is a sign! Indeed, there is a plaque.

It was a bit confusing. The plaque reads that Ray, “...lived in this house...,” but the structure it was on — a modern brick building — was certainly not a house, especially one that Ray would have moved into in 1947. 660, the powerhouse, was still standing, but was now being put to a far different use. Both buildings were now connected by a one story concrete and glass building. It was not a 7-11 minimart, or a gas station, or a legal medical marijuana dispensary. I was delighted to find that it was an art gallery, L&M Arts, the L.A. branch of a well-known New York gallery.

L&M Arts - you can just see the plaque on the modern building as a square just above the line of the fence

I walked into the gallery and asked at the reception desk about the plaque. They said that it had been on the old clapboard house they tore down to build the annex to the main gallery formed out of the shell of the powerhouse. They believed the owners of the gallery placed the plaque on the new building.

The plaque can be seen just above the line of the fence

Where Ray's house had stood

Very Los Angeles — the tearing down of the old to build the new. Not that this house had any great architectural significance — and buildings of architectural significance have been torn down in Los Angeles — but it had that old standby, sentimental significance to a man, as well as deep literary significance to a legion of readers who love him. It was deeply satisfying to know that the place where Ray’s house had stood is now as dedicated to art as Ray had, in the same location, been dedicated to his art, and that that location and it’s literary history is marked for passersby to see. Of course, it is on a wide Boulevard traveled rarely on foot and so not likely to be a pleasant surprise to a city wanderer, but this being Los Angeles, that may be the best that could be expected, and if the owners of the gallery had not had the good sense to remount the plaque, we would not even have that.

Where, though, did the plaque come from? I hoped to find out when I went to visit Ray, assuming he might very well be aware of the gallery and the plaque and the history of both.

I was very fortunate when I went to Ray’s to find also visiting, Jonathan R. Eller, Professor of English and Co-founder of The Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts. Jon will publish two important books this year, one being Becoming Ray Bradbury (the University of Illinois Press), which covers Ray's early career through 1953. He’s also working on a sequel volume, to be titled The World of Ray Bradbury, which will cover the middle years of Ray's career through the mid-1980s. The second book, of which he is the Textual Editor, will be The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, a unique volume of Ray’s stories in the chronological order in which they were written and including, I believe, recovered text from the pulp-published stories that had been edited, plus different versions of stories reflecting changes Ray made throughout the years.

Ray was delighted to see that the plaque had survived the demolition of the house, and, more important I think, that the powerhouse, that powerful brick metaphor, still stood — and that it all was now a place of and for art.

Jon filled in some gaps:

The plaque had been put up by some friends of Ray’s (listed on the plaque), at their expense in 2005. In 2007 the then current owner of the house put it up for sale, but no one knew the approaching fate of the house.

When it became known that the house had been sold, Jon, on one of his visits to L.A., took Ray and a couple of his friends and rushed to the house and found it empty with a locked fence around it. The powerhouse was in the same condition. They could get no information on what the plans were for the structures, but they feared they would be torn down. Becoming a literary commando, Jon jumped the fence (along with Jason Marchi, the original sponsor of the plaque, and a long-time Bradbury bibliographer, Donn Albright) and took exterior and interior photos (see below) to make a possibly last document of the structures. Sadly, they found that the plaque was missing.


The powerhouse as Jon and Ray had found it, It had recently housed a printing business.	Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

The empty interior of the powerhouse. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

The house Ray moved to with his parents and the garage where he had his workspace. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

The interior of the garage. The lines in the floor that still demarcated the 9 x 9 wood-framed walls that set off Ray's office from 1942 to 1947. That small work area was in place when the Bradbury family took occupancy in March 1942. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

A wider view. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

Jon Eller at the front door holding an earlier doorplate. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

Jon with Ray looking at his old home for the last time that evening in October 2007. Photo courtesy of Jon Eller

Later Ray's friends found out that the house had indeed been demolished. No one wanted to tell Ray. Would you? But one day, after a visit to the wife of a good friend who had just died, one of those sad passages of life, Ray told his driver to take him by the “old house.” There he discovered the house gone, and although the powerhouse was still standing, Ray feared that it too would be destroyed. Sadness upon sadness.

That is all that Ray, Jon, Ray’s friends and family knew until I came with the report of what had happen to the house, to the plaque, to the powerhouse.

I have never in my life been such a happy messenger.

2011-04-15T12:52:00.000-07:00

LIKE A GOOD SATIRICAL
HOLLYWOOD THRILLER?

Check out The Fixxer novels by Steven Paul Leiva

E-BOOK

AUDIOBOOK

“Steve Leiva not only promises but delivers. This is a fine first novel. Bravo!”
— RAY BRADBURY, author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles

“Blood is Pretty is a wonderful read, a highly entertaining and impressive debut novel." — RICHARD ZANUCK, Academy Award-winning Producer of Jaws, Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, and Alice in Wonderland

“Steven Paul Leiva takes a dash of James Bond, the ghost of noir, a splash of Hollywood and stirs it into Blood is Pretty, an adventurous, fast-paced first novel.” —MELODIE JOHNSON HOWE, Edgar-nominated author of The Mother Shadow

E-BOOK

“Leiva’s immense gifts for mystery and suspense are matched only by his wry, biting wit in skewering the Hollywood he clearly knows so well.”
— PAUL PROVENZA; author of ¡Satiristas!, director of The Aristocrats, host of Showtime's The Green Room with Paul Provenza

“At last, Steven Paul Leiva has given us a second Fixxer adventure. Ever since I read Blood Is Pretty a few years ago I’ve been eagerly anticipating more fun, exciting and riotously entertaining travels with Leiva’s Bond-like character. This time Leiva mines his firsthand knowledge of the community he has toiled in for much of his life, Hollywood. And he does it with the same wry humor, intellectual insight and terrific story telling that are the consistent signatures of his work. Once you start this novel you won’t put it down.”
— KEN KRAGEN, legendary Hollywood producer/manager

AVAILABLE FROM AMAZON.COM AND CROSSROAD PRESS

THE RATTLESNAKE ATE THE RABBIT AND I ATE THEM BOTH: Or, The Universal Sausage of Eternity

2011-04-10T13:22:00.000-07:00

At the end of March I received an offer for a free lunch. As a writer earning somewhat less that Stephen King, no two words in combination are sweeter to my ears than free and lunch unless they are best and seller.

My two favorite words in combination used to be free and love -- but that was in the 1970’s.

The offer came from Diego Nunez, a video producer for KCET.org, the multifaceted and fascinating website of the largest independent public television station in the United States. He asked that I be the second “public” reviewer in a new web-series, FREE LUNCH (catchy title), which features visits to some of the more interesting eating establishments in Los Angeles by people who like (or possibly really need) to eat. They are then videotaped giving their on-the-spot reviews of the food and the experience. The first public reviewer http://www.kcet.org/socal/freelunch/green-peas.html was the lovely Lynn Chen, an actress who writes a blog about the life of a Hollywood actress (oddly enough). http://theactorsdiet.wordpress.com/ I’m not calling her lovely just to be a gentleman, she truly is lovely as you can see here in this photo by the lucky Chopper Platt.


Lynn Chen - photo by Chopper Platt

The aesthetically unbalanced me

I can only assume Diego picked me to be the second reviewer for aesthetic balance.

But that doesn’t matter, because, for whatever reason, I got a free lunch out of it!

The restaurant Diego picked for me to give my intelligent and/or peckish consideration to was Wurstküche -- Purveyor of Exotic Grilled Sausages,
http://www.wurstkucherestaurant.com/ located in downtown Los Angeles at 800 E. 3rd Street. You can see Diego’s logic here. As I grew up in Azusa, California, east of Pasadena, about one of the most subdued of suburbs in the American West, I’m about as exotic as you can get. It was a good match.

The subdued yet exotic me in Azusa

Diego and his fine and pleasant cinematographer, Ana Shepherd,

Diego and Ana

picked me up in front of the Central Library in downtown L.A. I had taken my beloved subway from the Valley.

My beloved

(Can a subway be beloved? Well, it is by me -- but then I always wanted to be part of an underground resistance).

We then made the short drive to Wurstküche and entered the realm of exotic Sausages.

The place itself

The sausages themselves

Before coming I, being a writer, naturally did a little research and had already seen the menu on their website and knew what to expect, so I was not shocked to see among the exotic: rattlesnake & rabbit with jalapeño peppers.

Indeed, I was intrigued (the exotic will do that to you) and although my general wuss-like nature would normally see me order the safe chicken apple sausage, I screwed up my courage to order this dish. It was not, as you might have already in a deep fit of prejudging guessed, the combination of rattlesnake and rabbit that would put me off -- it was the jalapeño peppers. I have never liked jalapeño peppers, not just because of the heat generated, but I find the taste not at all appealing. Not that the heat is not a consideration: As the general existential and random nature of life are enough to give one heartburn, I have never considered it intelligent to intentionally give it to yourself. I was a big disappointment to my father, whose family came to California from Spain some 240 years ago. “But son,” my father would say when I would refuse to ingest a whole jalapeño pepper the way he had a habit of doing, “You’re Spanish.” Reminding him of his choice in wives, I said, “But, Dad, I’m only half Spanish -- and not that half!”

In any case the combination of rattlesnake and rabbit I found interesting so when I ordered I told the kind man behind the counter of my concerns regarding the jalapeño peppers.

The kind man behind the counter

He assured me that the sausage was not hot, indeed was one of their milder creations. Wanting to believe this informed professional, I ordered the rattlesnake and rabbit for, as my daughter, Miranda, had pointed out to me, it is a very ironic sausage as rattlesnakes eat rabbits. I love the ironic. When I mentioned this to the bright guy behind the counter he immediately, with the slight smile of one who can appreciate the ironic, said, “Actually it’s said that’s how we get this sausage. We only capture rattlesnakes that have just ingested a rabbit, then we grind them up together!” Even if I hadn’t been sold before I would have been then for, as I told my new friend who I hope to visit again, “There’s a certain logic to it because aren’t we all going to end up in the great universal sausage of eternity?”

The man in front of the counter contemplating the great universal sausage of eternity
Photo by Ana Sheapard

I gave Wurstküche -- Purveyor of Exotic Grilled Sausages a good video review. You can see it here: http://www.kcet.org/socal/freelunch/wurstkuche-rattlesnake-rabbit-sausage.html I liked the R&R sausage a lot, I liked the counterman a lot -- he alone would bring me back -- and the well designed, comfortable feel of the place makes it a wonderful and relaxing stop for something exotic yet down-to-earth (you know, where the rattlesnakes and rabbits are) to ingest during the noon hour.

Six Characters in Search of a Stenographer

2011-03-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

If you are at all interested in novels and novelists you have probably read an article about, or interview with, one of your favorite authors in which the author declares: “I don’t really write my books, my characters write my books, they talk to me and I just take dictation.” Readers seem to love hearing this from novelists, if we take as evidence the fact that so many fictioneers, not to mention a few literary authors, have spouted this line at least once in their careers. It is a statement that portrays the writing process as almost mystical, practically magical and downright mythic, putting writers and their process on an existential plain somewhat above the mundane. Some authors will use the qualifier as if, but I think many reader’s eyes glaze over those two simple words and accept only the unqualified version.

It is, of course, an absurd notion and a damn silly thing to say. After all, Pirandello did not write Six Characters in Search of a Stenographer. Writers write their own work, it comes from them and not from some rarified literary ether where characters live. Writers deserve all the credit for what they produce—or all the blame.

This stenographer-author notion may come from the fact that when you are writing well, when the words are just flowing out almost faster than you can write them down, it does indeed feel as if something supernatural is going on, but this is more akin to the art of a good jazz musician or improvisational comic, than to the channeling of a psychic. Everything that a jazz musician, or a comic as wildly inventive as Robin Williams, does comes not from somewhere out there, but from somewhere in their brains—and only from their brains. Brains that we hope have been well-informed and that are the repositories of a myriad of experiences both personal and researched, as well as knowledge and opinions lodged in those brains and based on the information received and the experiences deposited. Add to this the emotions naturally attending this information and knowledge and those experiences, and you have a very real place from which music, comedy—and certainly novels—can spring.

Good writers do not channel in from some higher plain, they are simply human creatures who have a talent for expression and a talent, as Noel Coward would have said, to amuse. Brilliant writers combine those talents with a talent to reveal truths—or, at least, very interesting questions—about the human condition. Everything they write—everything—is an expression of their selfs, no other selfs are involved.

I started thinking about all this a couple of weeks ago after I went to the Hammer Museum in Westwood to attend the screening of two works of Samuel Becket’s that was part of the UCLA Festival of Preservation. One was the 1961 television production of Waiting for Godot with Zero Mostel and Burgess Meredith.

Al Hirschfeld's drawing of Burgess Meredith and Zero Mostel in Waiting for Godot

The other was the only film Becket was involved in, an experimental short made in 1965 called Film, featuring Buster Keaton.

Buster Keaton in Samuel Beckett's Film

Despite being considered by some the greatest playwright of the Twentieth Century, Beckett, being avant-garde and absurdist, is not an easy writer to warm up to, although I do think his Godot may be the greatest play of the Twentieth Century, or, at least, the purest distillation of the existential nature of man in the Twentieth Century. I bring Beckett up though, not to talk about him and his place in literature, but to offer an example of how an experience I had lodged in my brain and, many years later, came out in a short scene in my Hollywood based thriller, Blood is Pretty:The First Fixxer Adventure.

In 1979 I was an independent publicist specializing in small animation studios. One of my clients was the great Chuck Jones who had been one of the key directors of the Warner Bros Looney Tune shorts.

Me at the servants entrance to the Chuck Jones Studio in Hollywood. Photo by Peter Lonsdale

We were in London, where Chuck was having a “season” at the National Film Theater, and staying at the Hyde Park Hotel in Knightsbridge.

The Hyde Park Hotel seen from Hyde Park

One afternoon when we came back from a radio interview Chuck had done, the hotel’s Major Domo, the tall, handsome and very efficient Peter Crome, excitedly informed us that, “Mr Samuel Beckett is staying with us while he is in town doing several BBC Radio plays.”

Peter Crome at the Hyde Park Hotel in 1979, later voted one of the top three Hotel General Managers in the World in a readers poll in Gallivanter's Guide. Chuck Jones can be see to far left of the photo.

Chuck did not seem impressed, but then Chuck was not often impressed with a person until he had been convince that that person had been impressed by him. I, on the other hand, being a budding cultural snob (and here I was doing publicity for a man who had gained fame for animating a duck and a bunny!), was very impressed and shared Peter Crome’s excitement. While Chuck excused himself and headed up to his room for his afternoon nap, I asked Peter if he thought Mr. Beckett would autograph a book of his plays for me. Peter assured me that he could arrange it if I would but give him a copy of the book to hand to Mr. Beckett. I immediately left the hotel, went to the Knighsbridge tube station, took the subway to the Tottenham Court Road, emerged to quickly walk down Charring Cross Road to the big Foyles bookshop there and found Ends and Odds, a small book of plays and sketches by Beckett. I got back to the hotel and gave the book to Peter, thanking him for his kindness.

The next day when Chuck and I returned from another interview, Chuck went immediately up to his room to rest and Peter Crome called me over and handed me Ends and Odds, autographed by Samuel Becket.

The thing itself

I was thrilled and decided to go into the hotel bar for a drink to savor this, the first autographed book by a famous author I had ever received. I sat down and ordered a Pimm’s Cup, an alcoholic concoction Chuck had introduced me to and which I insisted on drinking despite not really liking because it was so English and I was, as I said, a budding cultural snob.

I started to look through Ends and Odds—I had not had time the day before to peruse it—and was fascinated to see that in Beckett’s Radio II radio play, the lead character was named, “Animator.” Wow, I thought as I looked up from the book. “Wow,” I probably said out loud when I realized that Samuel Becket was sitting alone across the bar directly opposite me drinking a beer.

The man himself

I immediately got up and went over to him, apologized for disturbing him, but explained that I was the person who he autographed this book for, and I just wanted to thank him. He graciously accepted my thanks. I then told him that I was in London with Mr. Chuck Jones, the famous American animator and cartoon director and I couldn’t help notice that one of his characters in Radio II was called “Animator” and I was just wondering if the character was a cartoon animator? Mr. Samuel Beckett looked up at me as if I was an idiot—although the qualifier, as if, is probably unnecessary here. “No, no,” he said. “By ‘Animator’ I mean the one who animates the discussion.” “Oh,” I said, quickly excusing myself and going back to my Pimm’s Cup.

Peter Crome, Chuck Jones, Chuck's future wife, Marian Dern, and the young idiot in front of the Hyde Park Hotel

As time went on, and after actually having read plays by Samuel Beckett and seen productions of his work, this small, autographed copy of Ends and Odds became a proud possession and meeting Becket became a cherished memory. It should not be surprising, then, that years later when I was writing a scene in Blood is Pretty, involving my hero, the Fixxer (you never learn his real name), and his “Watson,” Roee (who is also an avant-garde playwright) the experience of meeting Beckett popped out of my head and became the basis for the following dialog between my characters:

“Penne with Moroccan lamb and mint.”
I opened my eyes. It was Roee announcing the “simple” pasta dish he had prepared for dinner. “Did the lamb really come from Morocco?”
“It’s not the lamb that’s Moroccan, it’s the sauce. Which should include Zucchini, but as I know how much you hate Zucchini....”
“Your indulgence of my dislikes is appreciated.”
“And I know you are not a wine lover, but I have found a rather nice Chenin Blanc that I would deem it a tragedy for you to pass up.”
“Well, if you can indulge my dislikes I can certainly indulge your likes. I will have a glass. And after dinner I would like you to join me for a little job.”
“Oh.” Disappointment expelled with the word.
“You had plans?”
“I was going to watch a video tape of Waiting for Godot.”
“Can it wait?”
“I have borrowed it from a friend.”
“Can he wait?”
“It is Beckett directing Beckett!”
“Well, he’s dead. I suppose waiting is not a problem for him.”
“Fine. I will wait.”
Roee began to leave as a commentary on my request.
“I met Beckett once.”
Roee turned back to face me, as I knew he would. “You did not!”
“In the bar of the Hyde Park Hotel in London. He autographed a book for me.”
“Which you have conveniently lost.”
“No. You’ll find it in the Bs.”
Roee went over to a bookcase. “Which one?”
“Small blue book. Ends and Odds, I believe.”
Roee pulled the book out and opened it up. His eyes widened slightly. “With your background, this could be a forgery.”
“Yes, but for what reason? The only person it has ever impressed is you.”
Roee looked at me, raised his eyebrows, nodded his head, and closed the book. “Let’s have dinner.”
“Good idea. I’m starving.”

I can assure you that Samuel Becket did not look upon the Fixxer as an idiot. They probably had a wonderful, intelligent conversation, and most likely many laughs as Beckett drank his beer and the Fixxer drank his vodka tonic with a lemon twist (I can’t imagine the Fixxer drinking a Pimm’s Cup—therefore he never will!). However, if it had not been for that young idiot, who has become, I hope, less idiotic with time, my character would not have been able to reveal this little moment in his past, which I hope the reader finds to be an intriguing hint into the nature and history of the mysterious Fixxer.

My Fixxer novels, Blood is Pretty and Hollywood is an All-Volunteer Army, are available at Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Steven+Paul+Leiva&x=0&y=0 and at Crossroad Press http://store.crossroadpress.com/index.php?main_page=advanced_search_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=Steven+Paul+Leiva in various formats. Check them out, sample them in digital print for your e-readers and, for Blood is Pretty, in audio as well.

Libraries -- The Lungs of a City

2011-03-03T13:31:00.000-08:00

First of, let me apologize for the absolutely awful title of this blog. Lungs are so biological and wet and you wouldn’t want to touch them with your bare hands and to look at one might remind you of the more gross scenes in an episode of House or, worse than that, Bones.

Yet -- it makes a point, doesn’t it? Lungs are vital not only for keeping us alive, but keeping us mentally alive. Unlike muscles, your brain cannot store energy. It needs a steady flow of nutrients and oxygen to function normally. Oxygen deficiency can decrease your alertness, memory and judgment.

This is why I think it is vitally important, if you are a resident of Los Angeles, to vote YES on Measure L in this Tuesday’s (March 8th) municipal elections.

Here’s what Measure L says:

Shall the Charter be amended to incrementally increase the amount the City is required to dedicate annually from its General Fund to the Library Department to an amount equal to .0300% of the assessed value of all property in the City, and incrementally increase the Library Department’s responsibility for its direct costs until it pays for all of its direct and indirect costs, in order to provide Los Angeles neighborhood public libraries with additional funding to help restore library service hours, purchase books and support library programs, subject to audits, using existing funds with no new taxes?

Here’s what that means:

Measure L will not require residents or property owners to pay more taxes or fees: While the amount of funds the Library receives from the city is based on a percentage of property values, Measure L will only increase the Library’s share of existing city funds. Measure L funds are subject to audits.

Measure L will progressively increase the Library’s share of existing funds: Within 4 years, Measure L will increase the Library’s Charter‐required funding from the current .0175% up to a maximum of .0300% of each $100 of assessed tax value on property within the city and provide the funds needed to restore 6‐day and 7‐ day a week library service citywide.

Measure L will increase the Library’s responsibility for the cost of its operations: It will increase the Library’s responsibility to pay for all of its direct and indirect costs, until the Library pays for all of these costs, which include utilities, building maintenance and other operation costs.

Measure L will respond to recent reductions in library services that have resulted in: Library hours cut 3 times in the past 12 months; library service cut from 7 days a week to 5 days a week for the first time in the Library’s 139‐year history; and Library staff cut by 28%

Here’s some facts about the Los Angeles Public Library:

Includes the Central Library, 72 neighborhood branch libraries and a Website with on‐line resources.

The Library budget ($150.7 million) is 2% of the total city budget ($6.7 billion).

In FY 2008‐09, a record number of people visited the 73 libraries 17 million times; borrowed 18 million books and other items; used the Library online 155 million times.

Library programs and services include (A complete list is available at www.lapl.org):

6.4 million books and other items 2300 public computers Adult Literacy Centers in 21 libraries.

Online homework help and a safe place to do homework.

Online job search guide and resources.

Programs for children, teens and adults.

Okay, stop snoring. I know a recitation of facts is boring but, damn it, they’re important. So look, let me catch your attention with a disaster movie scenario:

In 2008 the City Council and Mayor decided to start shifting certain costs over to the Library without additional funds. The first two years of the shift resulted in certain budget restrictions, reduced hours and layoffs. In 2010, the third and most recent year of the shift, $22 million was taken from the Library budget and sent back to the City General Fund to pay for indirect costs. This amounted to essentially a 25% reduction. As a result the Library eliminated 28% of the staff, cut services and closed libraries two days and two nights a week.

That’s the back story -- if Measure L doesn’t pass here’s the real disaster:

If Measure L does not pass the Los Angeles Public Library system is expected to lose another $28 million. The loss of $22 million devastated the Library this year; an additional $28 million would essentially destroy the public Library system in LA.

They would be forced to close 64 of the 72 branch libraries, leaving only 9 libraries open only 5 days a week a maybe less. That would be accompanied by massive layoffs essentially firing another 50% of the librarian work force and support staff. To be clear that would mean that 64 libraries would stand as monuments to our city’s decision to abandon the Public Library system as we know it.

The closures would leave one Library to serve all of East Los Angeles, one Library to serve all of South Central Los Angeles and three libraries to serve the entire San Fernando Valley. This would return the Library to where it was at the tun of the century! No, not the last turn, the one before -- it would take one of the the best library systems in the world and reduce it to where it was in 1900!

There is such a thing a blast from the past -- but this ain’t one of them.

The unique aspect of Measure L is that the additional funding our library system would receive would not come through the raising of taxes or the accruing of debt through a bond, but from a shift of allocation of funds already in the city budget. There is, of course an argument to consider against Measure L, for you can’t shift towards something without a shift away from something. There are those who decry the fact that other city services may suffer because of this shift. The most prominent city service mentioned is our police department, not a service to hamper. But as Charlie Beck our Chief of Police supports Measure L, that doesn’t seem to be a major concern.

Chief Beck probably supports Measure L for a lot of good, hard, practical reasons, such as providing a positive place for the young to gather, rather that on the streets, or internet access for many who do not have it at home. This being the early 21st Century and not the early 20th, such access can help the disadvantage search out and apply for jobs or services, which can possibly make them a little less disadvantaged, thus a whole lot less frustrated, a condition that could lead to less of the civic peace Chief Beck has been hired to keep.

I very much like the fact that our library offers such services for they are undeniably important. But what I love is the little bursts of inspiration and revelation and life changing moments that libraries can offer to individuals. Literary treasure Ray Bradbury has made this statement:

“When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn't go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years. I read everything in the library. I read everything. I took out 10 books a week so I had a couple of hundred books a year I read, on literature, poetry, plays, and I read all the great short stories, hundreds of them. I graduated from the library when I was 28 years old. That library educated me, not the college.”

Any diminution to the effectiveness of our libraries to give comfort and succor and the fresh good oxygen of creative and mental stimulation to future Ray Bradburys is a sin against civilization. No city, indeed no community of any size, can truly consider itself as civilized without outreaching, welcoming, comprehensive and open libraries.

If you live in Los Angeles I urge you to vote YES on Measure L on March 8.

The Animator as Actor: 1979 to 2011

2011-02-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

With the Academy Awards happening Sunday, and with Toy Story 3 being nominated not only for Best Animated Feature Film, but for Best Picture, I thought it would be interesting to consider why it most likely will not win Best Picture -- outside of the strong competition. The conventional wisdom is that no animated feature will ever win Best Picture as the members of the Actors Branch, the largest branch in the Academy, discount animated features because their (the actors) contribution is always behind the microphone and their lovely mugs are never seen on screen. That may be—self-interest is certainly not rare among actors. Possibly, though, they should turn from the mirror and turn within to their creative centers to consider the contributions of the character animators who do all the non-verbal acting in animated films. Yes, acting, not just drawing, and yes, even in CGI animated films it starts with drawing. If actors would truly consider these fellow artists and what they accomplish, possibly they would come to realize that character animation is not a fine art, but a performance art, and possibly they would consider them brethren rather than post-voice-recording below-the-line workers.

In 1979 I wrote a short essay for the program book for The Animator as Actor, a film program I produced for that year’s Los Angeles International Film Exposition (FILMEX). I wrote it at a time when animation was considered a dying art form sinking in the muck of commercial doldrums when the idea of an animated feature being nominated for Best Picture was as absurd as Cambodia’s Pol Pot being named Humanitarian of the Year. Still, some, especially certain young students at Cal Arts enrolled in the Animation Program, had a love for the art form and a faith and, more important, a determination that it would revive and prosper. I believe some of those students may well have been at this FILMEX program. If they were I hope they appreciated this, my small defense of their art:

The Animator as Actor -- it's a simple concept, a statement complete enough to require no explanations beyond its own words. But somewhere this simple concept has been lost, or forgotten, or possibly never even considered by the public, and, more important, by the press which gives the public much of the information upon which it forms impressions. When the general press runs an article on animation, it is almost inevitable that the main point made, the "news" imparted, will be that there were, "Over so many odd thousands of drawings made to complete this film." Then everybody goes "Oooh!" and "Ahh!" and shake their heads in wonder as if they were being told how many hairs there are on a centipede's leg. The impression is made that an animator is only and just an individual who does a tremendous -- possibly a tremendously silly -- amount of drawings that are somehow strung together to make a "cartoon." Animators are seen almost as manual laborers -- ditch diggers with pencils -- with brows covered with sticky sweat instead of (as it actually is) the furls of creative concentration. This, of course, is all wrong. For as Chuck Jones has said, "Animators do not draw drawings, they define characters."

Drawings for animators are simply the instrument through which they act, emote, mime, dance, and create characters as real as any devised by nature. Their successive drawings are their instrument in no less a way than a "live" actor's body, a singer's voice, or a pianist's piano are their instruments. But no one ever seems concerned over how many individual moves an actor makes to complete a scene, how many notes a singer hits to complete a song, or how many keys Horowitz strikes during his playing of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. The concern is over how well they acted, sang, or played; how they -- as artists -- interpreted the scene, song, or composition. It should be the same for animators. For it is not really the drawings that matter, or how many there are, but, rather, what matters is how well the animator succeeds through successive drawings in breathing life into the characters his lines define. The animator plays drawings, utilizing "movement scales" rather than musical scales to realize a desired effect. The animator mimes action, but he does it on paper, instead of with his body.

Exactly how the animator does this cannot really be explained. But neither can it be explained exactly how Horowitz so brilliantly interprets Rachmaninoff. You can't just say, "Well, he hit all the right keys at the right times." It is something more wonderfully mysterious than that, something more interior. And so is animation. You cannot just report the thousands of drawings it takes, and feel that you've explained it. You have to try for a deeper understanding.

As you view the classic character animation in this program, realize that what you are seeing are not drawings that move and act, but rather, movement and acting that is drawn.

For the record, the films screened were Mighty Mouse Meets the Jekyll and Hyde Cat (Terrytoons, 1944), The Natural Thing To Do (Fleischer, 1939), Hello, How Am I (Fleischer 1939), Little Rural Riding Hood (MGM, 1949), Mouse in Manhattan (MGM, 1945), Pest in the House (Warner Bros, 1947), A Bear For Punishment (Warner Bros, 1951), Ragtime Bear (UPA, 1950), The Country Cousin (Disney, 1936), and The Pointer (Disney, 1939). The program also included a panel moderated by myself with guests Frank Thomas, Chuck Jones and Richard Williams.