Recent thoughts

• No doubt everyone has their horror stories from the dentist's office. What perplexes me is that little has changed since I was a wee lad, except that I get a gourmet cookie instead of a lollipop. (The hypocrisy of providing the dentally debilitated unadulterated sugar seems too obvious to mention---conspiracies abound! The miniature spit sink/armrest must be bugged also.) My dentist resembles a leather-skinned slick used-car salesman/shady Wall Street mover-and-shaker, not the dowdy kind-spirited Santa-types I was so fond of as a pubescent metal-mouth. He refers to me as "studly." His assistants are all wafer-thin, well-tanned and/or smooth-skinned, polished and bright as their teeth. On my most recent visit to the dentist I was hurriedly asked whether I wanted anesthesia or not---his words: You want me to numb you...? Before I had time to bleat out a "%$#@*&%$ Numb me! Numb me, you cretin!" a voracious drill was feverishly applied to an already throbbing molar and a very thin temporary crown. Thankfully my agonized contortions were ample sign that he should stop or risk a wild bony elbow to the forehead, and I escaped his sadistic predilection momentarily. To make a long story short, I've now got a new crown, and no matter how incongruous the fit may result in the next month I have no desire to return to this house of horrors.
• My dearest Amber took me to see The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and it was a well-crafted movie, though I understandably was not immersed in the story despite my best efforts. There were tear-jerking moments, giddy girl fun-times and so on, but I couldn't help but pay more attention to the whispers and sighs in the estrogen-riddled audience around me. In one moment in particular the a female behind me testified, "Oh, I love her dress! I want all of her outfits! The only time I feel that way during a movie, I remarked to Amber, is when I'm watching Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson in Guys N' Dolls. Additionally certain yelps and oohs caught me by surprise, though in one or two cases I understood the implications. Suffice it to say that my masculinity, although challenged in a sports venue or toppled in a contest of car knowledge, was validated and then some. (As for other forms of criticism, I have yet to breach the feminist rumblings stirring within... Don't ask.)

I should have been a farmer...

No doubt the packs of ravenous Potter fans have already masticated, digested, and er, excreted the latest news on the fourth installment of the movie version coming this November, and will soon enough be perched ominously over the carcass of the sixth book arriving this month.

Likewise Star Wars fans' creative saliva is dribbling down their sagging jowls after a hearty helping of the Dark Side, and they'll be twenty years down the road foraging in a video game bin for a relic copy of a Star Wars first-person shooter just for old-times sake.

Even the bedraggled vestiges of Lord of the Rings majesty hover like the skeletal reinforcements of the last installment over the media-frenzied populace.

The aftermath of them all? A drought of creative elbow-room. I speak from a creator's standpoint when I whimper that I can't make a viable "stand-out" wizard/fantasy story in the wake of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Were I to attempt a sci-fi epic it would get caught like a dolphin in a net meant for tuna. They would see my personal "babies" and call them by other names. My Jonathan would be their Anakin... My RedGuy would be their... I dunno.

Perhaps it's just that my timing is terrible. I want to make a work that inspires... and I don't know how to surpass something like Harry Potter , etc. when I'm still geeking out about them myself. Ugh. To quote a movie that thankfully isn't so "epic," (or at least so prolific) "I should have been a farmer."