My Interview, Questions by Johnny Logic

Ambitions
1. Whatever happened to your comic book collaboration with Michelle? Have you ever considered collaborating with Matt on a comic?

The comic collaboration was supposed to be with Michelle, Matt, and Mario. (I never realized that they're all "M" names until just now. Jeez.) The book was going to be about three interconnecting stories for at least six issues, two drawn by each artist and each artist's story focused on one character. My job was to plot each book with a page, or less, of text and then I'd work with the artist to do the dialogue when we got to that point. Two and a half years ago, Matt, Michelle, and I got together and hammered out the basic characters and the world they lived in. About two years ago Matt, Michelle, and I met and talked about the three artists' sketches of the characters and I'd written sort of detailed plots for the first three issues so they'd be able to work on a comic and when we met next, we could see what'd been done. About eighteen months ago we all met and only Michelle had actual pages penciled and had thumbnails plotting all the pages of her issue, Matt had some more sketches and a couple of thumbnails, and Mario had a few more sketches; at that time I gave them all my basic plots for the next three issues and some reference material for drawing. That Thanksgiving, Mario, Michelle, and I got together and talked about the business end and I learned that neither one of them had done anything extra. (Mario had just had his kid and Michelle figured she could slow down because the other two had done squat.) Since then, Matt has sort of quit; Mario occasionally calls or e-mails, but still hasn't worked on anything; and Michelle and I have sort of talked about just the two of us trying to do six issues for the character that was going to be her focus.

That's pretty much where we are. Michelle has some pages and thumbnails. I have print outs of all the sketches that had been e-mailed between us. I still have my notes and plots. And I don't think anything is going to be done.

Michelle's working of getting her architecture license, or something like that, so that's what she needs to focus on. Matt is being Matt and sometimes other things. And Mario's probably being a family man supporting his wife and son.

Me? I'd love to see this thing happen, but I can't draw a bean, so I can't do this on my own.

2. I know that you have written fan fiction—is there any chance of us seeing it? What was the plot?
Other than the fan fiction story based on Queenie's Punks stories, I haven't really written any fan fiction. I've read way more than I'd like to admit to. (And for the record, I prefer the hetero slash stuff, if the regular slash gets too into the squishy details, I just don't find myself reading it, I skim. Actually, I like the stuff that does the sort off "boots scene" love stuff better than any slash. I'm there to read a story about characters I like, if I want sex scene after sex scene there are other websites that have much better written jerk material.) If I ever said that I've written fan fiction, I was lying. I really haven't.

I wrote the beginnings of a Star Trek: Voyager spec script a long time ago. I think I got the teaser and the first act or two and then plotted the rest. I know it's posted here, but I don't want to look it up right now. That script I started writing to send to Paramount, but I didn't finish it and the show ended and then I never finished it, but often wished I had.

I also plotted script for how I would have started the sixth season of Gilmore Girls and wrote the teaser out and, I think, a few lines from the first act, but nothing more.

And that's all the fan fiction I've written. In a notebook there are some ideas for stories based on the Harry Potter stuff, but taking place in the USA wondering what sort of an impact Voldemort had across the Atlantic and how the wizards of the US are different from the British wizards. I have an idea that'd take place in the Marvel Universe about a young woman who doesn't want to register with the government and how she tries to hide herself. And then there are the obligatory Star Trek stories that rattle around in my brain.

Will you get to read any of them? I doubt it. Since they're not written and who knows if they ever actually will. If they are, though, they'll probably be posted as a Fiction Friday.

3. As an eighteen year old, what did you imagine yourself and your friends doing ten years from then? Does this question depress you as much as it does me?
When I was eighteen years old, I didn't imagine myself ten years down the line. I knew what I was going to school to learn, but I never pictured myself actually working. Even when I figured out that engineering wasn't the path for me, I still didn't really have a picture of myself in the future. Well, I sort of did: I was older, balder, and fatter, but nothing else. There were the occasional flashes of fame and fortune and hot, sweaty love, but I knew those were only dreams.

Friends, though, I thought I had some idea for a few of them. You, I was sure, would have your PhD and be teaching at a university slowly becoming cynical about the laziness and listlessness of your students and wishing that you could just focus on your research. Many, I thought would go on to much more creative endeavors than they did. One turned out exactly as I feared. And then there are those who I don't know how they turned out, but wish I did.

Sometimes it saddens me that my friends aren't necessarily as successful as I wish they were, but maybe they will be one day.

Entertainments
4. I love getting recommendations from you, so what are your top ten television series?
(First, thanks. I sometimes think that people ignore things I recommend until someone else says they're good or I physically force the DVDs or books on them. That tires me.)

This is an impossible question for me to answer, in the way it's stated.

I don't like doing top ten lists; that's so limiting and, I think, sort of demeaning to the people reading them, as if they can't figure out that if I list my favorite things they have to know which I like better than the other so they can find the BEST. It's especially hard when things may be similar in form, but so different in content. I don't think that's right.

Another reason is because me just rattling off my favorite shows will be full of many tried and true shows that nearly everyone likes. How many more lists do we need that have I Love Lucy and All in the Family on them? Sure, those shows are probably the two most brilliant and influential and funny sit-coms ever, but should I go on about them here? I don't know. Yeah, they're two of my favorite shows, but it seems like they'd end up on a lot of top ten lists. Or what about my love of Star Trek, even the crappy ones, or Buffy, or the new Battlestar Galactica, do I need to expound upon those? Or even the drastically under-watched Freaks and Geeks or Firefly or My So Called Life that everyone now seems to have watched? I don't think that would be worth anyone's time unless I go well into the details of why I like them.

So, what I'm going to do is list some shows from the more recent past that I can't get enough of and rank them in three categories: Shows That Weren't Watched, Shows That Didn't Find An Audience, and Shows that Made It.

Shows That Weren't Watched:
Popular.
It was, sort of, about two girls, one blonde cheerleader and the other brunette geek goddess, who were forced to live together. What it really was was a scathing satire of the teen dramas that were once all over TV. The first season, it started out seeming like a normal teen soap, but its satire quickly moved into the scripts building to the season finale that had all the finale clichés you've ever seen. It's still one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV. The second season wasn't so good. It seems like the network decided it didn't was the comedy as much as the overwrought melodrama that's found in most teen soaps. Still, I like this show a lot and think more people would enjoy it, especially the first season, if they tried it out, too.

Grosse Pointe.
Like Popular, it's a satire of the teen drama genre, but it's a behind-the-scenes sit-com of a teen soap rather than pretending to be one. The premise basically is that the way things are among the cast and crew behind-the-scene is more like high school than the high school drama these people are working on. I also like seeing the difference between the characters on the show and the actors who are playing the character, which makes me want to know what the actors playing the actors are like in real life.

Wonderfalls.
I don't get what's wrong with the world that this show only aired four episodes. You bastards out there have to get with it. What's wrong with people?!... That's enough of that.

Shows That Didn't Find An Audience
Arrested Development.
I have to admit that for as much as I watch them and try, I don't understand people. People say they want something new and different, but when it comes, they don't go with it. Or maybe people were uncomfortable with the way that this show took the family sit-com type and decided to build it around a family of narcissists who were much more concerned with money than with each other, even though they kept on saying, "Family first." Me, I thought this show was brilliant. From the narrator to the odd bits of self awareness to the quirky characters to the running gags, there isn't an episode that doesn't make me laugh.

Everwood.
I don't think I've ever watched a show that had more heart than Everwood. Sure, some times it sank into the depths of angst, but most of the time it carefully balanced itself between the sweet and sour that shows can fall into. It was the story about a distant father moving his kids to a small town after their mother died. It was about a family trying to become a family. It was about the adults as much as it was about the kids. The producers actually came up with true reasons that brilliant kids wouldn't go to top schools. They weren't afraid to let the emotions be honest. And while I think that the series finale was too pat for such a rich and complex show, it was nice that they had the opportunity to end it rather than leave it hanging. The worst thing about this show is that only the first season's on DVD. When can I get the other three? Hell, if all of Roswell can be put out, this show deserves it. Oh, and even though it had four seasons I say it didn't find an audience because after it's second year, it was always on the bubble as to whether or not it would come back the next year because it's audience, although loyal, was on the smallish side, even for the WB.

Veronica Mars.
The first season was as close to perfect as I've ever seen. There is not a crappy episode in the bunch. The second season was less focused, but it had enough really good episodes to more than balance out the not so good ones. I still haven't seen the third season, but I'm sure it's good. I like me some spunky, modern Nancy Drew, which is who Veronica Mars was. And the supporting cast was so strong that I thought if they ever wanted to do an episode where Veronica was missing, they could have pulled it off. Not that I'd have wanted that to happen.

Shows That Made It
Gilmore Girls.
Fast paced, sharp dialogue was the reason I started watching this show. Well, the dialogue and Lauren Graham, who delivered so much of the dialogue. Back when the show started there were rumors that Aaron Sorkin was really the creator because the words popped like they did on The West Wing. He didn't, though, but it's a nice comparison for the show about a mother and daughter who were as much friends as they were anything else. All fans will agree that there were five excellent season of this show. Many will say that it went way off track during the sixth, I wouldn't, though. I saw that sixth as taking a deeper look at the relationship between mother and daughter and how similar they are. Most would say they lost their spunk. I'd say the spunk was always a cover and the other fans didn't pay attention to what the characters were really like. Most would tell me, politely, to fuck myself. I didn't see the seventh season, but I know how it started, and it didn't start happily. Still, the first six are some of the best hours TV has produced.

King of the Hill.
While The Simpsons and Family Guy started out at a slower pace, they quickly became more and more frantic until it got to the point that the beginning of the episodes didn't have anything to do with the end. King of the Hill has, to me, always seemed proud how it could take its time to tell a story. I like the pacing. I like the confused relationship that Hank and Bobby have. I like Dale's love for his son who isn't really his son. I like Bill's insecurity. I like Peggy's over confidence. It's one of the few cartoons out there that seems more character driven than plot driven because the characters are so well realized. All in a quiet town in Texas.

South Park.
Often crude, sometimes mean, but always funny. I don't really know what else to say about this show. I like it. The animation's pretty awful, but that's the point. The kids are sometimes way to smart to be kids, but I can get over that. It has scenes that are amazing, like Cartman riding an ostrich in the future surrounded by otters riding their own ostriches. It's willing to call bullshit on religion, the best example was when the boys started a church to save the souls of the kids and Cartman stared asking for money so he could get $10,000,000. Cartman is one of the most brilliant evil little bastards ever.

Farscape.
Some may have a problem with me labeling this show that it "made it," because it was cut off after a cliffhanger, but it had four seasons and a miniseries to tie everything up. Sure, the miniseries felt like it was 13 episodes worth of plot in four hours, but how's that any different than Serenity? Anyway, this is a show that I really like because of the insane science fiction, like the worms that brush your teeth, and it's willingness to make pop culture jokes. How often does the hero on a spaceship get to make a crack about Star Wars? Not often enough, in my opinion. Then there are the wonderful special effects, I'm still always impressed with the starburst effect, beautiful. Oh, and Muppets. There are Muppets. Sure, Rigel looks like a puppet, most of the time, but practical puppets are so much better for the actor to act with. The other major puppet star, Pilot, hardly looks like one; he's brilliant. And the alien make-up, by the Henson Company, is outstanding. Only Michael Westmore comes close to them, but he rarely has the mandate to use prosthetics with gears and motors.

5. What are your favorite nonfiction books?
Well, I don't really read nonfiction. Ever. I have some books on myths, but are those considered nonfiction? I don't think they are.

I've read some memoirs and biographies, but not many and I was rarely satisfied when I finished them. Do those count? If they do, then I'll choose Dancing Barefoot, by Wil Wheaton. It only has four stories and it only has a hundred and some odd pages, but I liked it a lot.

Nonfiction doesn't often tell stories. People may use them to make arguments, but no matter how good the writing is the books always seem to be broken into points. They read like: Here's what I think; Here are a bunch of chapters that support what I think and hopefully help you to think what I think; Here's why those things should have made you think the way I thought. I fought against that form of writing in college and I'm not a fan of reading it.

I bet, though, that if I picked up a book of essays that analyzed a TV show I liked, I could get into it. Like something about feminism and Buffy or the metaphysics of Star Trek. I'd rather buy a novel, though.

Beliefs
6. Are you an agnostic? If so, are you an agnostic about Zeus and the Easter bunny as well? Why, or why not?
I'd consider myself an agnostic, yes. No so much because I want to save my ass in the end, but because I'd really like to be able to believe that there was real magic in the universe. Sure, science does and shows some amazing things, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to think things into existence?

While I try not to limit my agnosticism to the Judeo-Christian-Muslim singular God, I am not an agnostic toward the Easter Bunny. If there are fuzzy creatures like the platypus and the echidna out there that can lay eggs, why not something that looks like a rabbit? Really, though, my agnosticism, toward beings, has to do with gods and such. Beings that are supposed to be omnipotent and omnipresent. Higher than us. And, in fact, looking at how messed up and chaotic our world can be, I think the idea of a pantheon of petty, asshole gods, like the Greek or Egyptian or Norse gods were, interfering with people makes more sense than one God doing it to us. I think I could only really believe in the one God theory if I took It as the clockwork type, who built the universe and let it go while It went off to do something else and occasionally comes back to see what's going on, but doesn't really care about it.

7. You have seemed pretty jaded this political cycle. Is there anything that would make you give a monkey's tit about it? What would your ideal presidential candidate look like?
I've been pretty jaded about the last several political cycles. I just don't have the idealism that I once had about our process. It really started at the 2000 election. It wasn't because Bush got the presidency because the Supreme Court decided to over rule Florida law and stop the recounts. No, my problem was how all sorts of people suddenly started to think they were politically aware.

I was in a basic writing class in college and we had to write an essay that explained something, anything. Over half the class wanted to write essays explaining how the Electoral College worked. Why did they want to use that as a topic? Because they were shocked that the President of the USA wasn't actually voted into office by the popular vote. These were students at a university, ranging from first to fourth year students, who had just learned about the Electoral College! The first time I remember hearing about the Electoral College was in fifth grade. I didn't understand how it worked until my civics class in eighth grade, but I definitely knew how the popular vote was turned into electoral votes which actually elected the president by the end of that school year. And it clicked, these people are the reason that morons and criminals get elected all the time and if most of the electorate is that dumb, how could I be surprised anymore?

The recall election here in California was the next thing that pushed me deeper into my pit of political cynicism. Recalls are to boot people who commit crimes out of office. It was not a crime to let failing business fail and die and therefore have less tax money. Yes, the deficit was large, but that's not a crime. I don't care who anyone voted for on that ballot to replace the governor, I care that more than 60% of the people voted to recall an elected official who just happened to be the man in charge during an economic slump. Even if there was a recall on the governator for the $15 billion dollar deficit, which I believe was the number that we had back then, the state's running now, I'd vote no, because he didn't commit any crime but being stupid, and that's not a good enough crime.

I guess the only way I'd really care is if I thought the average person voted based on more than sound bites, more than a smile, more than a slogan, and more than because the other choice is worse. I'd like to know that the average voter would read the slogan "Change We Can Believe In" and wonder how wanting to build more fences and increase patrols along the border is a change that we should believe in. I'd like to know that the average voter would ask if all the oil company contributions have something to do with why she's been such a staunch supporter of the war. I'd like the average voter to get "The Straight Talk Express" to actually talk straight and explain why a man who pushed for campaign finance reform no longer wants matching funds so his campaign doesn't have to deal with the restrictions he helped to create.

None of that's going to happen, is it?

As for my ideal presidential candidate... well, my candidate would have to be absolutely candid with the people. My candidate would be willing to admit that taxes are necessary to the nation we have. My candidate would forcefully speak out against the military spending. My candidate would be realistic about the bullshit war on terror and admit that there's no good way to deal with the shit this administration got us into. My candidate would say that the best way to stop illegal immigration is to help build up the economies of the Central and South American nations rather than keep then under the heel of the US. My candidate would admit that the only way to save Social Security is to make it so that all Social Security funds are only used for Social Security and not a place for the Representatives and Senators to dip into when ever they want to build bridges to nowhere. My candidate would want to rebuild the USA's reputation in the world and use that to bring about a more peaceful world. My ideal candidate would never be able to be a candidate. He or she probably wouldn't get enough money to even enter one primary.