(Non-Writing) On Hobbies

Perhaps you have this problem....you've just lived through another long day at work, where you put up with people that you're fairly certain shouldn't even be allowed out of their own home (let alone into a corporate work environment) and where you deal with the soul-crushing inefficiency of rapidly tightening deadlines; you've made your hour or longer commute through a mire of cars, bodies and delicious smelling smog; you hang out with your wife/kids/pets/friends, who make it worth having trudged through your day even as they help drain the last of your hard-earned life energy; and then you finally have time to sit down and....and...hmmm...

I have this odd cycle where I go from having a single hobby that I bear only a half-hearted devotion to to suddenly being seized by what feels like a dozen different projects vying for my attention. I go from being bored to being actually too busy with free-time projects to attend to them all. That's right...I have to plan out and manage my free time.

Something ain't right here.

Case in point: up until about 2 weeks ago my past-time projects involved 1) playing D&D Minis online (a past time I was actually getting a little bored with), and 2) revising "Darker Sunset". These are both activities worthy of my attention, but you can only play the same game for so long before it eventually starts to get old, and revision projects, while thrilling in and of their own right, have difficulty maintaining my attention for long periods of time. (That's something that I just need to get over, I know, but I have to be honest: I hate revising. It's maddening, time consuming work that I often feel could have been better spent writing something new. It's an entirely illogical and ultimately non-productive standpoint, to be sure, but it's often the position taken by my tiny brain during those internal struggles when I have to decide where to better spend my time.) So I was really only tending to these interests rather than being actively engaged by them; I was trudging my way through my own hobbies in the same manner I trudge through my days at work...and that's just silly. It shouldn't be a chore to partake in your own hobby (though, of course, it does happen, especially if your hobbies involve very long creative projects).

Luckily for me, something happened. Inexplicably, all at once my seemingly limited hobbies exploded into a veritable cornucopia of enjoyable past times. I'm not sure how this happened. I didn't push a button that said "Entertain Me" or sign up for a newsletter that told me how to suddenly become too busy with my own free time. I found myself engaged in a myriad of compelling activities (well...they're compelling to me, at least, which I guess is what this is all about), to the point where I now have to find time to juggle all of these new hobbies about.

So what has me so enthralled? Weeeeeeeeeell...

Rifftrax
To be perfectly fair, for most people watching movies isn't so much of a hobby as it is a default ("I have nothing else to do, so I'll pop in a flick"). I do this too, of course, but I also tend to watch movies from a somewhat analytical standpoint (the English Lit major in me), or from a purely technical standpoint, where I enjoy films more from a craftsman's perspective than as an objective audience member. (This is the Creative Writing major in me, because when I look at a film's technical aspects I'm often looking for compelling visual imagery and storytelling tricks that I can steal.)

Sometimes, however, it isn't nearly as much fun to watch movies as it is to make fun of them. Enter Michael J. Nelson and company and their excellent Rifftrax project. Back in the day, Mike Nelson was the head writer (and later the host) for an inspired bit of Comedy Central lunacy called "Mystery Science Theater 3000" (or MST3K, for short), a strange saga of a man and two robots who were forced to sit and watch horrible movies as part of a diabolic mind control experiment. The way they survived this horrible treatment was to make fun of the movies in question by adding their own dialogue and by making wonderfully smart-ass comments about the film. MST3K carried on for some 7+ years before it finally went the way of the proverbial Do-Do, but now Mike offers us Rifftrax, a site that offers the same form of entertainment, only with movies that you know!

The concept is really simple: Mike and company (his guests include MST3K alumni Kevin "Tom Servo" Murphy, Bill "Crow v2.0" Corbett, and others) record an MP3 vocal track of their "riffs" on a movie, which you play concurrently with the movie in question (Mike doesn't actually sell the movies for copyright purposes, so you have to provide your own copy). I've downloaded 6 Riffs so far and have watched 5 of them, and thus far only one of those was even a moderate disappointment. Considering the cost (the Riffs range in price from $1.99 to $3.99), that's a good track record.

Most importantly, they're just damned funny. While we all like to make fun of movies from time to time, no one does it as well as these guys. Check out some of the free samples on their site -- if your sense of humor is anything similar to mine, you may just find these horribly addicting...

Riffs I Recommend (in order of preference): Reign of Fire, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Matrix.

Not Recommended: Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (a major disappointment, though I understand that Mike & Company's treatment of Episode 2 is much funnier, and Episode 3 was just released about a week ago).

Purchased But Not Yet Viewed: 300

Planned Purchases: The Bourne Identity, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Eragon (my daughter owns it, much to my dismay), Raiders of the Lost Ark

The Eternal Campaign
D&D Minis is, without a doubt, my favorite game, but like any game it threatens to go stale through repetition. While a new set of rules (that will accompany the controversial arrival of 4th Edition D&D) due out in 2008 should serve to reinvigorate the game, in the meantime I've joined up with The Eternal Campaign, a delightfully entertaining expansion on the rules presented in the Dungeons & Dragons Miniatures Handbook. With these rules, rather than playing single games you play a campaign that allows your game units to improve over time, collect magic items for your armies, and gain special abilities. (It really is like playing D&D without the silly role-playing. :) Best of all, you get to play new and interesting people from around the world (players hail from here in the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, and even Canada!) in ever-changing scenarios, and you only play as often as you want. If you don't play D&D Miniatures, this particular entry will mean nothing to you, but if you *do* then I suggest you check it out. You'll be happy you did.


Nanowrimo
November is approaching, and I have to be ready. Well...not *ready*, but I have to be at least partially prepared. Last year, I didn't have any intention of joining up with the so-called "Write a Novel in November" program at all, arguing to my wife that it had been too long since I'd tried to undertake a major writing project and that it would all just be a big waste of my time. Well, like most arguments I have with my wife, I lost this one utterly, in this case not because she forced me to do anything but, as usual, because she knew what I wanted and needed to do. I wrote an 80,000+ novel that month and a follow-up novel nearly twice that size in the months that followed. I'd intended to carry on to the 3rd and final book in the rather dismal "Razor" trilogy when I ran smack into Christmas, Year End, and all other sorts of bodily injuries. Because the style of the books is both very fast and linear, I thought that the next Novel in November challenge would be the perfect opportunity to finish up the series once and for all. The only problem is....I haven't looked at any of it since it was written last year and have completely forgotten the plot line and characters (oops), so for the past month or so I've been reading and revising "Razor: Angel" and "Razor: Hell" like a madman. My goal is to finish the first-pass revision of "Razor: Hell" right around the end of October, so that the story is fresh in my head when November 1st comes about and I start off on "Razor: Serpent". I'm psyched. (A little intimidated...but psyched...)

Reading
Hey, who doesn't love to read? When I heard about the pending HBO series a few months ago I decided to re-read George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Fire & Ice" saga. I didn't used to be very big on re-reading books, primarily, I think, because I associate such an act so much with college. (As an example, I had to read Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" and Bram Stoker's "Dracula" 4-5 times each over the course of my college career. There are more, but those are the examples that also spring to mind.)

(Something else that I just realized...I don't like revising what I've already written, and I don't like reading what I've already read. Is that some old person's version of ADHD? Do I have issues with revisiting my past? Or am I just a boner?)

I enjoyed my re-read of Martin's books so much that I decided to revisit some other books that made an impression on me, namely "The Sword of Shadows" by J.V. Jones (or at least the 2/3 of the series that has been released...if that 3rd book doesn't come out in December as promised, she and I are going to have issues...), and "Tyrants & Kings" by John Marco. Marco's "Lukien Trilogy" is likely next up on my re-reads list, but we'll have to see.

That's all for now. I may post another snippet from either "Darker Sunset" or "Razor" later this week...or maybe I'll post something entirely random...so random that even I don't know what it will be....