Artwork

My current emotional state is approaching ecstatic delirium. The root cause of all this happiness is simple: Magic in Dogtown will have cover artwork. Not only will it have cover artwork, but the person designing the cover happens to be one of my favorite people on the planet.

I'll undoubtedly dedicate an entire post about her later on, but here are some facts:
-Yes, she has done prior professional work. I checked it out the other week. It was amazing.
-If the miraculous occurs and the book is published, my desire is to have her artwork featured in the final print.
-She is an intriguing character herself and one of the most fascinating people I know. If I write about her in a later post, people reading the descriptions will probably doubt her existence and therefore my sanity.
-Regarding the fact above: yes, she is actually real.

I'll talk about the artwork more later on as it develops.

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Yesterday I went to a housewarming party wearing a T-shirt my cousin bought me that depicts a fictional construction company called "Steel Erection." Other details about the company are equally lewd. Later into the night it aroused discussion.

Girl: I can't stop staring at your shirt. "Steel Erection"? That's gotta be fake.
Me: No, it's real. My family's in construction.
Girl: But it's obviously referring to a penis.
Me: (feigns dumb) What are you talking about?
Girl: That can't be an actual company. It's a joke about an erection.
Me: (looks down at picture on T-shirt showing a very phallic-looking crane) If you think penises are composed of steel, then I pity you.

The host of the party has a tendency to tear off his clothes, run around, and generally wreak havoc when excited. I thought it wise to escape a bit early to avoid this situation, but Tropical Storm Danny decided to unleash on me on the way home. It saddens me to report that my steel erection T-shirt did not hold up well in the monsoon.


Stay dry,
Corey

Vibrations

Saw District 9 on Friday -- having been wowed by Neill Blomkamp's short film Alive in Joberg -- and was really impressed. Thing was, I put my phone on silent in the theater and forgot to reset it afterwards... causing me to miss all my calls on Saturday and most on Sunday before realizing the mistake. Yeah, I'm just brilliant like that.

Today I got to switch offices. Or, I should say move back into my regular office and out of my summer workplace. When I got there, I had the unusual feeling that I was walking across the bottom of the ocean, the silt stirring and swirling beneath my fingertips. It was that dusty and untouched.

And yes, I'm still writing away. I'm on a fun chapter, and it shows in the writing. I'm trying to start each chapter on a fresh beat to keep things jumping, but I'll only know when I finish the rough draft and read over everything if it works or not.

I saw this music video and suddenly started thinking of a new part of a back story for the main character in the book, but it doesn't relate at all to the song or the video. Strange how the brain works sometimes. Connections that aren't really connected at all. Still, I thank the artists and the creators of the video for the inspiration!

Monday's almost over, everyone. Stay fun.

Adaptations

I have internet at home again. I am satisfied that my life can now be overwhelmed by various online shenanigans as usual.

I've been meaning to write about adaptations for awhile, because I've noticed a lot of misconceptions about them in my life. After all, these days one sees adaptations springing up every weekend. In the past twelve months there have been a few big ones: Watchmen, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and The Time Traveler's Wife, just to name a few.

In any case, there's something important I think everyone should know:

Adaptations are usually not direct translations between different forms of media.

Instead, I prefer to think of them as spiritual cousins, in a way. For example, one of my favorite adaptations is the movie Thank You For Smoking, which springs from Christopher Buckley's novel of the same name. I read the book (normally a sure sign that will make someone immediately scorn the movie) and thought the movie was superb. I think the secret to its success was that it didn't attempt to follow Buckley's novel verbatim. Instead it focused on the main character's constantly evolving relationship with his son. If I remember correctly, they only had one quick interaction in the novel.

In this way, it didn't degrade the spirit of the novel by trying to recreate the exact same ideas on film (how could that compare to what readers already constructed in their imaginations?), but instead took a new and interesting route in the world the novel created. Novels are typically hundreds of pages long. It's not a good idea to try and "condense" one down into 80-120 pages of script.

I think the filmmakers behind the Lord of the Rings movies were smart about this as well. Fantasy fans can be pretty harsh critics, and the Rings epics are classics, so it would have been insane to recreate the novels word-for-word on the screen. Instead, the films are different enough to be exciting and surprising to fans of the novels, but familiar enough to appease die-hards.

So, here are two rules I think every adaptation should follow:

1. Don't try to make the movie an exact replica of the source material. Instead, they should be separate, but definitely related, ideas.

2. More importantly, the original creator or author absolutely has to be on board with the adaptation.

For example, Watchmen was an intriguing adaptation, but author Alan Moore was very much against the idea of it being adapted into a movie. As much as I admire some of the talent behind the film version, I never like to hear about instances like this where the author's requests were ignored.

I've never really been keen on the idea of adapting, but two stories in particular prove to be the exception:

****Neuromancer, by William Gibson -- Filmmakers have been trying to adapt this for years. I think Gibson himself even penned a script at some point. The story, set in the future, follows a hacker who is trying to recapture the glory of what he used to be... at an extreme cost. Basically, I'd love the chance to adapt this, because frankly, it'd be really damn difficult. The novel's brilliant imagery would be tough to capture in a script, the characters are morally compromised in a way that would be difficult to make them sympathetic in a shorter media form, and the plot is complex to such a degree that it's near impossible to weave into a 90 page script. So yes, my desire to adapt is partly due to the sheer sense of awe I feel at Gibson's story, and partly due to artistic masochism.

****World War Hulk, by Greg Pak, Peter David, John Romita Jr., and Gary Frank -- Okay, don't knock it, please. A lot of people scoff at me when I tell them that the Hulk is one of my favorite characters in any form of media. "Where's your sense of good taste?" they inquire. "Didn't you have a concentration in Literature in college?" When questioned about this, I usually ask them if they have ever actually read any Hulk comics, to which the answer is begrudgingly in the negative.

When written well, Bruce Banner and his green alter ego can be very, very compelling. Try reading some of author Bruce Jones' arc in The Incredible Hulk series if you don't believe me. Whenever I let a cynic borrow some issues of this arc, they never, ever fail to get sucked right in despite themselves. Anyway, the World War Hulk story line ensnared me because none of the characters are really good guys. It's akin to watching an episode of "The Shield" for me, because I wasn't sure who to root for, but was glued to my seat nonetheless.

I always pictured it becoming a direct-to-video animated release (I wouldn't kid myself of trying to go theatrical), with the amazing voice-actor Keith David (Gargoyles, Spawn the Animated Series, Coraline, Platoon, Crash, etc) voicing the cunning, intelligent Hulk of the story line. Many people associate the Hulk with the feeble-minded ogre depicted in the movies who has a penchant for speaking in the third person, but in the stories I've read he is anything but.

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that my dream of adapting this comic will ever come to pass, because the prequel, Planet Hulk, has already been made. And if you watch the trailer, I'd bet you a drink that that amazingly badass voice of the Hulk is voiced by none other than Keith David himself. Isn't funny how things develop, sometimes?

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Is there anything you want to see adapted, or would want to try to adapt?

Still In The Lab

So all of my stuff is in the new apartment. Is all of it unpacked? No. Is it all organized into a cohesive living environment? Not really.

But it's clean, yes. And... all my stuff's in it. That's all I really care about at this point.

The writing is going pretty well. Coming to the computer lab after work puts me on a more refined writing schedule, which helps productivity in that department a ton. Maybe I should continue doing it this way even after Internet is restored to my apartment...

... Oh wait, one of the lab employees has just informed us that they're closing early today, so nix that last thought. I'm used to the academic year hours, which are 24/7. Oh well. I got a lot done this afternoon, so I'm pretty satisfied. Exhausted, though. I might just chill with a DVD tonight and recline for a bit. That actually sounds kind of nice, even if it a Saturday night tonight.

Some exciting but secretive stuff is in the works. I'll update about it when I am able to and it isn't so top-secret anymore.

Ugh, if my fractured thought processes -- evident by my scattered sentence structure -- is any indication, I'm completely exhausted. Hopefully I'll make it all the way through the DVD before conking out for the night...

Anyway, I hope your night tonight is more exciting than mine. Have fun and stay cool in this sticky weather.

Good night.