Things that haven't changed in Harvard Square

Still serves the best burgers ever.

Still serves the greasiest pu-pu platter in the world.

Still full of future alcoholics.

Still full of people who can't get into Charlie's.

Still playing Eraserhead.

Still the best place to pick up chicks.

Captain America prediction

The Red Skull is currently inhabiting the body of Aleksandr Lukin.

Arnin Zola is working with the Red Skull.

Zola's specialty is cloning.

There's a blacked out text area in the published script for Captain America #25 when he's shot by Sharon Carter.

Here's what I think happened in that blacked-out portion: Sharon extracted Cap's DNA. Which is why the dead body of Steve Rogers ended up looking like his 98-pound-weakling pre-Super-Soldier self.

The DNA is being used by Zola to make a new Cap body.

That Cap body is going to house the mind of the Red Skull AND Steve Rogers, with the Skull in total control (for now).

Because the whole point of the Red Skull is to make Cap watch helplessly as all hell breaks loose. Whatever the Skull's plans have been, they ALWAYS involved Cap being a helpless witness to tragedy.

Which also means that at some point, this Cap clone is going to eventually face off against Bucky as the new Captain America. At the pace Brubaker is writing this? We're looking at a climactic battle in issue #50.

There. I've said it.

O Holy Night

Feed Your Holiday Head

Because nothing says Christmas like Santa Claus eating magic mushrooms.
(From Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine)

the moon looks down and has to sigh

The moon looks down and has to sigh
At how we mortals motor by
Beneath a dark indifferent sky
Like frantic ants --

With smiles set on each frozen face
We dash from place to frantic place
Like sinners after holy grace
Or lost gallants.

Stampeding through a combat zone
Of cars and buses, steel and stone,
Surrounded and yet still alone
Away we fly

In search of money or renown,
A lead-pipe cinch, a golden crown,
And up above the moon looks down
And has to sigh.

Matthew Wells, 12/17/07

Just another night on the L Train

A Matty Wells Xmas

A Warehouse in Schenectady

“So what’s your system?” Skin Girl asked me the other day. “Do you type, do you write and then type—what do you do?”

Here’s what I do.

I try to write for two hours a weekday, and then 4 to 5 hours on Saturday and Sunday. The goal is to treat it like a 20-hour-per-week part-time job. If I put in more than 20? I get mental health benefits.

I carry around half a dozen pens, a notebook, a project folder, and a notepad. The pens are Pentel Energens. The notebook varies; currently it’s a blue 5 x 7 that you can’t find anywhere anymore, but which Staples had a bunch of two years ago, so I bought up about ten of them. This notebook gets the raw material: initial thoughts, notes, early drafts, free associations, et the random cetera.

Every couple of days, I go through what I’ve written and transcribe those notes onto a lined legal-ruled pad of paper (I prefer the canary yellow Docket Gold, which is thick enough so that the Pentel ink doesn’t bleed through when I write on both sides). I organize these notes by project. Each note is treated like a scene which I transcribe and usually expand or free associate around while I’m transcribing it. Sometimes I end up with three yellow sheets full of notes based on just an initial line or two.

These pages go into 6-pocket plastic Avery Project Folders, or into a catch-all folder for ideas that don’t have folders yet. And as the notes pile up, each project builds like a good pour of Guinness.

The project folder in my shoulderbag contains all the notes and scenes for whatever I’m currently writing. I go into this once a day just to rearrange and edit outlines, remind myself of things I’ve forgotten, and spark my imagination. When I’m working on a specific project, the work cycle becomes obsessive and repetitive. I write dialogue and description on the legal pad, type it up and edit it as I type, print it out, edit the printout, and then add things to the printed version and type those up. Then print and repeat, print and repeat, print and repeat till it’s final. How do I know when it’s final? (A) When I’m tired of it and (B) when it tells me it’s done (I can’t explain it any other way).

It’s always amazing to me when I look back after I’ve finished something and realize it started with a few scribbled notes on an otherwise empoty piece of paper, and now here’s a complete play; here’s a hundred pages of a novel. Where did that come from? It’s the question all writers get asked: where do your ideas come from, where do all those words come from? (My favorite answer to that question is the title of this post.)

All I know is, when you put pen to paper, you’re opening a door. (The same thing happens when you type, but it’s a different kind of door, at least for me.) The more you write, the easier it is for that door to open. And when that door stays open, something will always walk through it, through you, and through the ink of your pen onto the blank page. And it will always surprise you.

Random thoughts

This guy? Act????


Ha! That'd be like Rudy Giuliani telling the truth about his record.

And speaking of His Rudeness: Jim Dwyer reminds everyone that when Giuliani answers a question about how open the White House would be if he were President by saying "My government in New York City was so transparent that they knew every single thing I did almost every time I did it,” he is--I'm sorry--what's the current politically correct euphemism for "lying through his teeth?"

And, bringing new depths to tasteless, the New York Post reports the death of Ike Turner.

I Am Legend

I Am Kind of Enjoyable. I went to this movie prepared not to like it, and was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying most of it. There aren't that many Fresh Prince moments, which is a big plus; but then I think that all movies starring Will Smith should obey the Keanu Rule and give him as little dialogue as possible, because when he opens his mouth that's when the trouble starts. The shots of empty Manhattan are riveting. A lot of the fun of seeing the movie is recognizing streets, corners, buildings (look--there's the doughnut place on Seventh Avenue). But as much as I enjoyed myself, I can't say that I actually liked the film, for a couple of reasons.

I Am Schizophrenic. This is so obviously two movies that it’s laughable. Every interesting moment that’s set up in the first two-thirds is totally ignored in the last 30 minutes. The idea that the vampires have human feelings and human intelligence? Set up and never knocked down. The idea that Robert Neville is as more of a monster to them than they are to him? Set up and never knocked down. You have to wonder: does nobody see this on the production end? It’s like a mystery novel where all the clues are ignored in the last chapter. A book like that would never get published; but movies like I Am Legend get made all the frakking time.

I Am Formulaic. Remember the three-part flashback of how Will Smith lost his arm in I, Robot? Same thing here: a three-part backstory flashback about yet another loss. Is this required in all Hollywood scripts or just Will Smith vehicles? Are there writers even now dreaming up new three-part backstory flashbacks while they picket Paramount?

I Am Picky. According to the theatre and movie posters in post-plague Times Square, The Producers is still playing two years from now (ha!), along with Wicked (yup) and Hairspray (maybe) but on the plus side, we can expect a Batman/Superman movie in summer ‘09. Robert Neville is immune to the airborne virus and vampire bites and he's also an accomplished scientist looking for a cure, which is one coincidence too many for me--I mean why not have him be the cause of the vampire plague as well? And post-plague Manhattan is overrun with deer and lions, but the only rats we ever see are in Neville's laboratory. As if.

I Am All About The Ending. There must be a lot of people out there who don't know that this movie isn't even a re-make--it's a re-make of a re-make, having been filmed twice before as The Last Man On Earth with Vincent Price and The Omega Man with Charlton Heston. And if you've seen either of these movies, then you know how the story ends. Which is pretty much the same way the book ends. So when, before the movie opened, Will Smith in a Tokyo press conference revealed details about the end of the movie, producer and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman shouted "Don't ruin the ending! Don't ruin it for people!" This says so many things about Hollywood. When they remake Casablanca, and the actor playing Rick reveals that Ilsa goes off with Laszlo, I can so totally see the producer yelling "Don't ruin it for people!" Like the ending is all that matters. (Which would explain why the last 30 minute chunk of this movie feels like a different film--it sets up the ending Goldsman wanted, as opposed to the ending the story demanded.)

I Am Blockbuster. And it'll make a ton of money, despite the fact that it's pieced together and formulaic, which means we can expect even more pieced-together formulaic action-adventure flicks; and yes, by seeing it, I have helped to cause their creation. So blame me when Will Smith stars in Soylent Green, and Akiva Goldsman chews him out for telling the press that SG is people. I just hope that Batman-Superman movie is as good as the trailer was for The Dark Knight. Holy crap, does that look good.