September 2008

Surely this breaks some sort of record

There is a musical being made here in New York of the movie Shrek.  Which I find nothing short of crazy.  More info is here.

Someone also, apparently, wrote an opera based on the movie The Fly, which you can read up on here.

These two rather difficult to believe stagings prompted an e-mail discussion with some friends of mine about how often old ideas are recycled.  This led us to the following products.
First there is this:

That is the soundtrack to the new Mamma Mia movie, making that a soundtrack to a movie based on a musical based on the music of ABBA.
But that’s not the best. I do believe this is the best:

Ready? That, my friends, is the motion picture soundtrack for The Producers. Which makes that a soundtrack to a movie which was based on a musical which was based on a movie which was about a musical.
Got it?

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My Ground Zero Story

If you’ve read my bio and glanced at the calender recently you may have guessed what the focus of this next story is.

After September 11th, 2001 I spent six or so months working as part of the Ground Zero recovery project.  I started as a truck checker at the not very busy Pier 6 offloading site and wound up as a swing supervisor bouncing between the not very busy Pier 6 and the insanely busy Pier 25 as well as bouncing between the day and night shift.

A few years ago I got around to writing a story about that time, condensing those six months into one night.  It’s an odd story for a number of reasons, some of which I can’t really put my finger on.  One thing I do know is that I had a very hard time cutting scenes out, resulting in a long story.  Basically I wanted my main character to touch base in some way with every member of the crew.  It didn’t seem right to cut anyone out because of length reasons.  Still doesn’t.

The weird thing is that the characters are more of a mash-up of people I met all over that job as well as those I met working in my family’s scrap yard growing up, so really it was more like I didn’t want to cut scenes out because I wanted my main character to touch with every post at the job even though the characters I put at those posts were fictional.  It’s confusing.  For a number of reasons.

At any rate, though, that’s what the story is about and it will be posting tomorrow morning.

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Maddening Games

I’m rather a big fan of games on the Internet.  There are all sorts of fun point-and-click things going on in this place, ranging from the really stupid and mundane to the profound and innovative.

One of my favorite games is something known as Hapland.

There are three of them.  The first one is here, then comes the second, then comes the third.

It’s all quite simple.  You have a couple of stick figure men who you can click on to perform actions.  Also you can click on a bunch of things in the environment to make them do stuff.  All you have to do is manipulate everything so that the men light the little torches.

The first board I was able to figure out.  The second board I was able to figure out…after revisiting it off and on for about a month.  The third board I’m still working through with my therapist.  He says the nightmares should subside by the time I’m fifty.

Enjoy.

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Coney Island Weiners

Coney Island is closing.  It’s in all the papers.  You can read about it here.

Well, specifically the Astroland part of Coney Island is closing.  They said this last year too, but this time it seems for real.  And last year I think the story was that the Cyclone was closing as well, which isn’t happening.  It’s sort of confusing.

Here’s what I do know.  Coney Island is awesome and I took a trip there last week with my cousin and his wife.

We went to Nathan’s and ate hot dogs.

And cheese fries.

We shot the freak.

Which is where you fire at a guy wearing body armor with a paintball gun.

We watched this man shove a screwdriver up his nose.

And, of course, we rode the Cyclone.

Which…

…was…

…AWESOME.

Clearly I have no idea what on earth is going to happen to this place, and all the things I’ve mentioned here aren’t going to be effected, but it’s hard to imagine what this place will be like with a luxury high-rise in the middle of it.

I’m glad we went.

So long Astroland.

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New story next week

I’ll be posting a new story next week.  The countdown will go back up and everything.

Truthfully it’s an old story but it’s new to you.

Suddenly I’m faced with a lot of confusing decisions about how to organize the site and how best to compartmentalize “26 Stories” while not completely uprooting everything.

I need to play around a bit.

Happy weekend.

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The Internet makes me laugh

I was bouncing around today and found this…this…I don’t know what it is.

An ad company started up a contest in Coney Island that runs during the same time as the Cannes Film Festival.  I have no idea what it’s all about, but it’s very much in the spirit of “I want to go to Cannes but know I never will so to hell with that place I’ll start my own damned contest and invite whomever I want.”

The name of the contest is “The Wrath of Cannes.”

Which is what made me laugh.  Hard.

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Shameless Self-Flogging

There’s currently a new thingy in the upper left of the website with the header “Shameless Self-Flogging.”  It contains a link to the Boingboing.com submissions page.  Boingboing and sites like them are aggregators of the Internet, combing through all it has to offer and writing up the more interesting things going on for their audience.

Getting written up at such a site would be huge, so if you’re a fan please click the link in the upper left (or click here) and drop them a line telling them why you like Joseph Devon, why others should be seeing what’s going on here, what I did last year, your favorite story, or whatever it is about this project that tickled your fancy.

Seriously.  I’d appreciate it.

Go open your favorite story, cut and paste the address into their form, and drop them a line explaining how much free interactive fiction there is going on at this site.

If the project as a whole seems most worth mentioning in your mind, then open up the “Stories” page and cut and paste that address into their form.  Twenty six short stories in a year has to be worth something.

I’d appreciate it.

So go.  Click here.

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Obey the Sign

This is one of the signs outside of the bumper car ride at Coney Island.  It’s a rather good motto, I felt, but my point here is really that I recently bought a new camera and will be inserting more pictures into my posts.

Which you may have already noticed.

On top of that, though, I will be retroactively inserting pictures into old posts, namely old stories.  I was against putting pictures at the front of the stories for awhile, but advances in WordPress that I finally got around to downloading let me place pictures more naturally within the text making it not such a bad idea, so I thought it would be fun to slowly start amassing “covers” for all 26 Stories.

I have absolutely no idea what any of them will be, to start with I’m just going to carry my camera around and take shots, I’m sure I’ll stumble across a few applicable pics early on and build from there.

I’ll let you know when I come up with something.

And if anyone has any bright ideas for interesting imagery from any of the stories I might be able to capture in real life let me know.

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The Matthew and Epp Stories have been moved

I had to take down the Matthew and Epp stories, now titled Probability Angels, because the post was so gigantic it was causing some problems.  Like making my site not work.

You can still read Probability Angels in its entirety, though.

Just go to the Stories page and start with Part1: Second Choice.  Once you’re done with that you can find Parts 2 – 10  in that list as well.

Thanks and happy reading.

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Monday Zen

A monk asked Chao-chou, “I have just entered the monastery; please give me some guidance.”

Chao-chou said, “Have you eaten your rice gruel?”

The monk said, “Yes, I’ve eaten.”

Chao-chou said, “Then go wash your bowl.”

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