I read all of my blog comments

In response to my earlier post…

I imagine that Coach Gibbs is a staunch conservative, but I’m ok with that. This November, there will be no hanging chad when Coach Gibbs uses one of his 3 Super Bowl rings to punch out George W. Bush’s name on his ballot.

And I do care about the Jags winning. Not because I care so much about the Jags, but because Ernest Wilford caught the game-winning touchdown. Wilford is a Hokie, so I’ll be rooting for the Jags this year.

Celebrating one year of words

That title feels pretentious to me, at first thought, because I don’t wish to imply that I’m celebrating anything more than words. One year ago, I began RollingDoughnut.com with a simple paragraph:

This is my first entry. This will be immortalized forever as the first entry in which I say nothing important. Absolutely nothing.

I don’t claim anything more than the words. There were no giant leaps in literature, no spectacular, life-altering speeches. Not even brilliant words, most of them. Just words. But I wrote 83,203 of them in the last 366 days.

What those words have done, though, is more important. They’ve taught me how to write. They haven’t completed my education, as if that’s possible. I can’t foresee a day in which words are effortless, but I can imagine one in which the struggle to string them together is joy. I’ve inched closer to that ideal thanks to the words posted for nothing more than my desire to write.

My biggest surprise over the last year is how those words have also taught me what I believe, as well as helping me to discover new beliefs I didn’t know I possessed. I started RollingDoughnut.com to write. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about, but I knew I needed to join the parade of bloggers. As I’ve mentioned a few times, I want to be a professional writer but I caved to fear too many times in my past. I envisioned this blog as writing without a goal that could kick start me towards writing with a goal. I could post random details about my daily life and practice my narrative techniques, but I got bored with this idea before I started doing it regularly. I realized that my daily life isn’t that fascinating. Going to work and reading magazines is poor fodder for most narratives.

What RollingDoughnut.com has become is different and more interesting than that. My ranting commentary on random events started in August with Escalators Are Not Hard To Use. I began to enjoy the ranting posts when I wrote my second, I Am Not Dennis Hopper. The words flowed easier because I cared about expressing my opinion. When writing, I’ve learned to chase the joy.

September was a wash because I was delirious from sleeplessness. I worked more than 300 hours that month, so my coherent thoughts declined rapidly until the return of Alias. I did enjoy a hurricane, though.

I only posted twice in October. For the first half of the month, I was using my stored vacation from September. The rest of the month I lacked the inclination because the desire to write hadn’t taken over.

It didn’t take over again in November. I participated in NaNoWriMo 2003, so that captured most of my writing energy. I was also un-staffed in my old job, so motivation to be productive was low. I was burnt out on thinking. And I caught the Tono in Las Vegas.

In December, I posted a few times about whatever was on my mind, from Kurt Vonnegut to the earthquake in Virginia. Then I went to Atlanta. As a lifelong Dale Murphy fan, I had to post about this. Reliving My Dale Murphy Childhood was the turning point of my RollingDoughnut.com motivation. I didn’t know if I could write a nostalgic travelogue. Trying was fun.

In January I discovered the beauty of skiing. I wrote what was supposed to be the complete recap, but it became part one of five. I took me more than a month to finish and ended at more than 8,700 words, but it was a great challenge.

February was the beginning of the free speech and marriage equality posts. These themes continued, flowing through March and into April. (They still catch my attention).

In April I began to write about the 2004 Presidential Election. I got trapped in my bathroom again. I also wrote about Lemonade Stories, a film by Mary Mazzio about extraordinary entrepreneurs and their mothers. From that post, I received a copy of Lemonade Stories. After I watched it in May, I wrote my first movie review.

May also saw the beginnings of cicada infestation in the Washington, DC area. I discovered the evils of the cicada in my backyard and my refrigerator. Some of those cicadas may have eaten three commuters’ brains.

June was highlighted by “It’s not anymore the two-ply.” Despite having other posts, June didn’t need others to be complete. Thank you, Governor Schwarzenegger.

In July I had fun with Senator Allen. I also wrote my second movie review., which was considerable fun to write. And lest anyone forget, I celebrated my birthday. Ending July, I prepared for Vegas and my rendezvous with Wil Wheaton. When I returned in August, I wrote about it here, as well as meeting Flash Gordon.

Flash Gordon capped the year at 199 posts. Reminiscing has been fun for me because I’ve been able to see the changes and growth in my writing over the last year. If nothing else, I have a large body of words to remember. 83,203 words are enough to fill a novel.

I was hesitant before starting RollingDoughnut.com and didn’t know what to expect when I began writing blog entries. I recently discovered that the act of writing for its own sake can bring unexpected surprises. When I wrote my review of Lemon
ade Stories
, I intended to alert as many people as possible to watch a worthy film. What I received was an outcome I never could’ve dreamed about: I was quoted in the film reviews section of the Lemonade Stories site, ABOVE the viewer feedback. My name doesn’t appear on a movie poster, but I’m quoted with writers from USA Today, NPR, The Boston Globe, and Fast Company.

One year ago, that would’ve seemed illogical, but there it is. And I realized that I like seeing my name in “print”. Not for my ego, because I could satisfy that with a vanity press. I like it in the same way that a carpenter likes his furniture. It’s not for recognition, money, or any other extraneous goal. I’m proud of my execution of the craft. For at least one moment I can call myself a writer and know that it’s true.

The secret is this

Wil Wheaton was a dick. For many years, that’s what I thought, even though I’d never met him. I’d seen Stand By Me when it showed up cable. I’d even seen him on Star Trek: The Next Generation, even though that was only while flipping past whichever channel was airing it. But I knew. I knew it because it mattered that some guy, some actor, on the other side of the country was a dick. Gossip is the coinage of teenage youth. Besides, no tabloid magazine was necessary. I had a first-person account.

A few months ago, I wrote about my high school friend, John Aboud, and how he was part of the group of friends with whom I ate lunch every day. Also among that group was Grady Weatherford. Grady was a Junior that year, my Senior Year. I don’t remember how we added him to our group, but we did. And he was an actor. And during that year, he landed a role in Toy Soldiers, playing the all-important role of student. I had an “in”.

Never having worked on a movie, we quizzed Grady any day he was in school during filming of Toy Soldiers. I don’t remember who first brought up Wil Wheaton’s name. I didn’t even care about Wil Wheaton. I just wanted to learn the truth about Gordie Lachance, a.k.a. “TV’s Wil Wheaton”.

In what was inevitably a throw-away comment, we learned that Wil Wheaton was a dick. Who needs to question that? That knowledge was good enough for me. And my life continued happily for years.

While in graduate school, I spent the summer between my first and second year staying up late, playing on the new-fangled Internet, and watching random movies on cable. One night, I saw a movie called Pie in the Sky. I’d never heard of the movie, but it starred Josh Charles. Since I’d enjoyed his performances in Threesome and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, I stuck around when it came on.

So I’m watching and enjoying the movie when “that guy who I heard was a dick” showed up on screen as Jack, Charlie Dunlap’s (Josh Charles) best friend. I’m not going to describe what happened in the scene because you should watch the movie, but this is important: I laughed. So I thought “That guy’s funny. I wonder if he’s still a dick…”. Over the next few years, I watched Pie in the Sky enough to memorize most of the dialogue. Every time I watched, I always laughed at “that guy who I heard was a dick but seems to be funny”.

On November 25, 2002, I read Whitney Matheson’s Hip Clicks in USA Today. This is what she wrote:

The Onion A.V. Club interviews Wil Wheaton this week. The star of Stand By Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation also has a great Web site; if you haven’t checked it out, you should.

“Hey! It’s that guy,” I thought. I wanted to know what he might have to say. There was no investment in clicking, just satisfying a curiousity. I clicked my way to WIL WHEATON dot NET.

I first recognized that his site was set up like this new internet phenomenon I’d heard about called a weblog, or “blog” to the kids in the know. I started reading. The first post I read included this paragraph:

A few months ago, I made this major decision in my life: I would stop applying a singular focus to getting work as an actor. I would continue to accept auditions as they came along, but I wasn’t going to break my back, or sacrifice time with my friends and family to play Hollywood’s game.

“Dicks” don’t sacrifice their career for their family. Do they? I read more. And more, until I noticed a theme. He’d lived his life, faced struggles, and transformed himself into a family man/writer/actor who was not a dick. Having never met him, I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t a dick, but I could sense enough from his writing to assume the best about him. My old uninformed opinion fell away.

I bookmarked his site and checked in multiple times a day, waiting for each post. Last summer, he self-published a book, Dancing Barefoot, which I bought and read and enjoyed. When I bought Just A Geek, I jumped into the pages immediately and found a writer with a skill few writers possess: he made me laugh, out loud, while riding the subway. (I recommend Just A Geek. For a little more depth in a review, consider reviews here and here.) When a writer can do that, allow me to paraphrase a quote from Richard Bach: I hope Wil Wheaton makes a million dollars from Just A Geek.

As I said, I’ve never watched Star Trek, yet Danielle and I added an extra day to our vacation in Las Vegas when we learned that Wil Wheaton is signing autographs and performing at this weekend’s Star Trek Convention. We’ve already purchased our admission and autograph tickets, so after this
weekend, besides striking Star Trek Convention from my Crazy Things I Never Thought I’d Do&#153 list, as I did with the Miss America Pageant, I’m anxious to confirm that Wil Wheaton is not a dick, that he’s just a geek.

(Was that too much Hallmark to be David Sedaris?)

Shhh… we’re really cousins

At some point in the recent past, Danielle pointed me to the fine comedy stylings of The Sneeze. I’m grateful. Over the last month or so that I’ve been reading the site, I’ve laughed out loud. Catching up on the archives, I laughed. With each new post, I eagerly anticipate the joke. When there is no intended joke, I marvel at every interesting turn of phrase. In short, it’s good.

This morning, I checked for an update. When I saw the title “Reviews You Can Use: Identical Twins”, I laughed in anticipation after reading the first line. I quote:

The concept of identical people is an intriguing one.

Being an identical twin, I laughed. In a few paragraphs, a short list, and a final assessment, he mocks every person who has ever treated my brother and me as one person. People are always “shocked” when they see us together, until they get to know us. Then they realize how easy it is to tell us apart. Because we’re not “identical”.

I recommend The Sneeze. Too bad he doesn’t know that every cheeseburger my brother eats dumps another pound on my gut.