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Dearest Bloggerford,
Today is a day of triumph. Today I have crossed the threshold from some time Scrabble aficionado to Master of the Scrabble Universe, and by universe I mean the people in my apartment. At the current moment that is my always charming roommate and my mother. I end this day a Scrabble hero. For the first time in my Scrabble playing history, I used all the letters on my rack to achieve what those in the know refer to as a ‘bingo,’ thereby earning myself an extra fifty points. The winning word was ‘mountain’ and on this mountain I climbed to a most glorious victory. Over my mom.
Sound ridiculous? Has Steinho finally lost her mind, rejoicing in frivolous board game conquests? Well, I won’t deny, we all had a good laugh about it. My mother and I have been playing Scrabble since I was about eight or nine, and I can actually track the course of when I no longer needed her help to make more than three letter words. Now, I’d say we’re pretty evenly matched. Still, I felt a sick joy rushing through my veins like sweet ambrosia when I slapped all seven tiles onto the board. Take that, Mom! I mean, I love you, make me some more dinner.
Yet, my wee moment of Scrabble genius is really quite pathetic compared to some of these competitive scrabble players. No, for realsies. They have tournaments across the country, some even internationally, and the stakes are much higher than you’d think.
My first, and only, source on the subject came from a non-fiction book by journalist and sports writer, Stefan Fatsis. Leave it to a Greek to find the dark, seedy underbelly of board games. The book, “Word Freak,” was an absolutely fascinating read, if you can stand to read 100 some pages about Scrabble. What really struck me was the various competitors Fatsis met along the way. They were the sort of extreme characters that if I came across them in a creative writing workshop, I’d tell the author to go back and make them more three dimensional. Some of these men (and women) come off as absolutely brilliant, but utterly unable to cope with any world or society outside their relatively small Scrabble sphere.
The most intriguing part of all was the transformation of Fatsis himself as he delved deeper into the competitive world. He goes from the level-headed outsider to a Scrabble obsessed maniac, forking over tons of his own cash and time to compete. It’s his desperation to succeed that really whacks you over the head. Here was a successful journalist, a man who walked into this story looking for just that, a story. Not a life altering experience. And of all the things to become insanely competitive about, Scrabble seems pretty high up on the nonsense hobby list.
All the same though, I can relate. There was definitely a burst of pride, that moment of ‘I am better than you because I can use more of my tiny lettered wooden squares.’ Not a big deal, but enough to make me want it to happen again.
Because I am the greatest Scrabble player in the universe. And by the universe, I mean my apartment.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Why I am smarter
Dear My Little Bloggy McBloggykins,
As a former English major and constant devourer of those papery stacks we scholars like to call books, (screw you kindle) I often grow frustrated with literary snobs. These are the jerk-faces who believe a writer must be dead for sixty years and have spent all time prior to this demise hiding in a closet, locked in a mental institution, or drunk in a pub near Oxford, in order for their work to be considered a ’classic’ or ’real art.’ Now, I’m all for drunk, old, bearded authors (Hemingway) or drunk, nutty, melancholic authors (Poe) but what rocket scientist decided that a book can’t be both enjoyable and well-written?
Fools, I say! That is why my favorite author is better than everyone else’s.
But who, Steinho? Who is your favorite author that by far surpasses the likes of petty bourgeoisie peasants like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, winner of the Nobel Prize for boringness? What modern day wordsmith’s epic horror tomes have thrilled masses and crushed walnuts (seriously those books are huge) for the past forty years? Whose thrilling and bizarre tales of the macabre have been adapted into some of the most gasp-inducing horror flicks known to mankind? And as long as he doesn’t get hit by another van will likely continue to do so.
If you haven’t been living under a swamp log, you likely have already figured out I’m talking about Stephen King. With an imagination outmatched only by the likes of maybe H.P. Lovecraft (mental patient) King can take the most mundane ideas and turn them into a tale equal parts heart-wrenching and horrifying; both bloody and bloody hilarious.
Consider the first novel he wrote post getting hit by a van, “Dreamcatcher.” An interesting tidbit, King wrote this novel out entirely in long hand because he was still recovering from being eaten by a van and couldn’t sit in front of a typewriter. But I digress.
Speaking of motored vehicles doing inappropriate things, “Dreamcatcher happens to be the second King novel I’ve listened to in my car, the first ironically being “From a Buick 8,“ where an alien Buick eats the people inside it.
What, you say? Listening to a book while weaving through insane LA traffic??? You should be arrested! Well, driving is boring and I have to do it a lot for my current occupation. That’s why God invented the audio book.
Let me set up a little snippet of “Dreamcatcher.” All you need to know is that it’s about parasitic aliens. That grow in people’s rectums. So imagine, I’m speeding down Santa Monica Blvd. and I hear about a man sitting atop a toilet, trying to contain a long, red, spiky-toothed weasel worm that has just popped out of some hunter’s ass, and now wants to bite some other poor guys, and now wants to bite some other guy’s face off. Literally, a third dude walks in, and sees the guy on the toilet’s nose in the creature’s jagged toothy mouth, and wonders, is that actually a nose? Yes, sir. It is! The point is, King took a situation, a guy sitting on a toilet, passing noxious farts (a sign of impregnation by the heinous butt aliens) and makes it terrifying. He makes farts terrifying. The way he describes the monster eating its way through stomach and intestines and flesh before bursting forth from its gastrointestinal snuggie only to spring out like a deranged Jack-in-the-box and start gnawing faces, well, it nearly made me crash my Buick. And crack up. And grab my stomach in sympathy pain.
Lots of books can make you laugh or cry, but only Stephen King can make you afraid of a toilet. That is true brilliance.
And by the way, anyone who tells you Shakespeare wasn’t a guy just trying to make a buck is a liar. Sure, he was way talented, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the back of the Globe Theater with the rest of the guys in dresses and pumpkin pants, counting how many coins they weaseled out of the peasants.
As a former English major and constant devourer of those papery stacks we scholars like to call books, (screw you kindle) I often grow frustrated with literary snobs. These are the jerk-faces who believe a writer must be dead for sixty years and have spent all time prior to this demise hiding in a closet, locked in a mental institution, or drunk in a pub near Oxford, in order for their work to be considered a ’classic’ or ’real art.’ Now, I’m all for drunk, old, bearded authors (Hemingway) or drunk, nutty, melancholic authors (Poe) but what rocket scientist decided that a book can’t be both enjoyable and well-written?
Fools, I say! That is why my favorite author is better than everyone else’s.
But who, Steinho? Who is your favorite author that by far surpasses the likes of petty bourgeoisie peasants like F. Scott Fitzgerald and William Faulkner, winner of the Nobel Prize for boringness? What modern day wordsmith’s epic horror tomes have thrilled masses and crushed walnuts (seriously those books are huge) for the past forty years? Whose thrilling and bizarre tales of the macabre have been adapted into some of the most gasp-inducing horror flicks known to mankind? And as long as he doesn’t get hit by another van will likely continue to do so.
If you haven’t been living under a swamp log, you likely have already figured out I’m talking about Stephen King. With an imagination outmatched only by the likes of maybe H.P. Lovecraft (mental patient) King can take the most mundane ideas and turn them into a tale equal parts heart-wrenching and horrifying; both bloody and bloody hilarious.
Consider the first novel he wrote post getting hit by a van, “Dreamcatcher.” An interesting tidbit, King wrote this novel out entirely in long hand because he was still recovering from being eaten by a van and couldn’t sit in front of a typewriter. But I digress.
Speaking of motored vehicles doing inappropriate things, “Dreamcatcher happens to be the second King novel I’ve listened to in my car, the first ironically being “From a Buick 8,“ where an alien Buick eats the people inside it.
What, you say? Listening to a book while weaving through insane LA traffic??? You should be arrested! Well, driving is boring and I have to do it a lot for my current occupation. That’s why God invented the audio book.
Let me set up a little snippet of “Dreamcatcher.” All you need to know is that it’s about parasitic aliens. That grow in people’s rectums. So imagine, I’m speeding down Santa Monica Blvd. and I hear about a man sitting atop a toilet, trying to contain a long, red, spiky-toothed weasel worm that has just popped out of some hunter’s ass, and now wants to bite some other poor guys, and now wants to bite some other guy’s face off. Literally, a third dude walks in, and sees the guy on the toilet’s nose in the creature’s jagged toothy mouth, and wonders, is that actually a nose? Yes, sir. It is! The point is, King took a situation, a guy sitting on a toilet, passing noxious farts (a sign of impregnation by the heinous butt aliens) and makes it terrifying. He makes farts terrifying. The way he describes the monster eating its way through stomach and intestines and flesh before bursting forth from its gastrointestinal snuggie only to spring out like a deranged Jack-in-the-box and start gnawing faces, well, it nearly made me crash my Buick. And crack up. And grab my stomach in sympathy pain.
Lots of books can make you laugh or cry, but only Stephen King can make you afraid of a toilet. That is true brilliance.
And by the way, anyone who tells you Shakespeare wasn’t a guy just trying to make a buck is a liar. Sure, he was way talented, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in the back of the Globe Theater with the rest of the guys in dresses and pumpkin pants, counting how many coins they weaseled out of the peasants.
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