Favoites: Hamilton, An American Musical

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I did a lot of theater in high school: Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Mousetrap, Wizard of Oz…it was a lot of fun, and helped me break out of my introverted shell.  I was a quiet kid, surprise surprise.

I never did well in any of the singing stuff (I had one of the few non-singing parts in Oz, as the ol’ wizard himself), but I always kind of enjoyed musicals.  Sure, they’re kinda ridiculous, but in my own experience it’s not uncommon for folks to break out into random song and dance.

All that said, I really haven’t ever paid much attention to musical theater.  It’s not that I have anything against most musicals, just that they never really seemed my style.  Rent was okay, Sweeny Todd was pretty excellent, but none of them ever grabbed me the way that so many of my theater friends were grabbed by musicals.

Then I heard Hamilton.

I’d heard a bunch of buzz about it late last year, seen people talking it up and heard everyone who had heard/seen it raving.  So I gave it a listen over Winter Break 2015.

First listen through didn’t really grab me, but I wasn’t paying very close attention.  Then I listened again.  And again.  And again.

And again and again and again.  Over and over.  I was hooked, and bad.  The last half-dozen songs put me in tears every time.  I drew several comics about the show.  Obsessed over it.  Started following Lin-Maneul Miranda (the writer and star of the show) on Twitter.

And then, in Februrary, I got to see it.

A dear friend – my musical partner, Emily – won free tickets (!) to see the show, with all of the original cast.  Sure, it was standing-room-only spots, deep under the balcony and behind a couple of posts, but we were there.  And we sang along, and I cried during the last several songs like I always do, and it was a perfect moment.

And, for every couple of weeks since then, I listen to the soundtrack a couple of times in a row.  I can get through most of the songs without crying now (still not the last couple, ’cause they’re so good and emotional), but it still fills a part of me that I hadn’t even known was empty.  While I’m not really a big fan of hip-hop, generally speaking, these songs speak to me in a way nothing else had before.

The show reminds me of what’s important: family.  Legacy.  Keeping to my principles.  Not throwing away my shot.  Writing like I’m running out of time.  I don’t know if history quite has its eyes on me (not the way I have my eyes on history in my day job, anyway), but that’s okay.

The Summer of ’02 and the Birth of Eddie Hazzard

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I’m going to tell you a story.  A story about mountains, and hiking, and storytelling, and the search for some sort of direction.  It’s the story of how I spent a summer in Yellowstone National Park and wrote a short story about a down-on-his-luck private detective with a serious drinking problem.

The summer of 2002 followed my graduation from college.  My younger brother and I got jobs working for Xanterra, the concessions company that operates food service and gift shops in a bunch of the national parks.  We were working as table bussers in the dining hall at Mammoth Hot Springs, at the north end of the park.  It wasn’t a particularly difficult job; we had difficult shifts sometimes, and were often very busy, but it was simple and straightforward and didn’t require much in the way of thinking.  In our downtime, we hiked, played basketball and soccer, and worked on writing songs.  I also spent a significant amount of time reading; that was the summer I got into Terry Pratchett, reading almost a dozen of his Discworld novels over those few months.

When I was between books, I’d spend time writing.  I had a Mead 5-Star five-subject spiral notebook, in which I wrote poems, songs, and a short story idea I’d come up with.  The story, which I eventually called “Missing Person,” is barely recognizable as the same story that will be published in December as the full-fledged novel The Invisible Crown.  The basic bones were the same: woman comes into the detective’s office, hires him to track down her missing husband, he goes through a series of misadventures until he discovers the missing man’s fate, and…well, telling anything more would be giving away the story.  Eddie was still Eddie Hazzard, though he was less snarky and more a misogynist jackass.  The story itself was more of a pastiche of noir cliches and was set in some undefined time in the past.  The story wasn’t great, but there was something in it that I must have liked, because I kept coming back to it over the next decade.

I don’t know where that spiral notebook is now, which is kind of sad.  I’d like to go back and re-read the original story, the handwritten kernel of a larger, more elaborate work that will finally see the light of day before the end of the year.  Things have changed, but Eddie is still around, and he has lots of new adventures ahead of him in the coming years.

Handwriting vs. Typing

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According to research, there’s a huge difference in the way our brain processes handwritten things versus typed.  I know lots of authors prefer to handwrite their first drafts, then type up the edited and revised story.

Not me.  I always type my stories.  Part of it is that I type much faster than I write.  When I handwrite things, I have a difficult time keeping up with my thoughts.  Words tend to pour out of me in quick bursts, and trying to write it all down by hand only ends in things left unwritten and lots of hand cramps.

On the other hand (no pun intended), when I write poetry or songs, I always write them out by hand.  The few times I’ve tired typing a song instead of handwriting it, the lyrics have turned out absolute crap.  Of course, this means I end up with snatches of lyrics and ideas for choruses written on random pieces of paper and stuffed into pockets or my backpack.  But that’s the price I have to pay to chase my muse, I guess.

Back in the Saddle

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As of this moment (Friday, August 26, about 10:30 in the morning), I’ve been back at work for a little over two and a half hours.  I know what classes I’m teaching for the coming school year (team-taught World History II and Government), what classrooms I’ll be in (I’m a nomad this year, bouncing from room to room like a man without a homeroom), and who I’m teaching with (one veteran teacher and one fresh-faced second year).  It looks – admittedly, from what little information I have so far – like it will be a pretty good year.  I’m feeling re-energized after my summer off, ready to tackle new topics and get down in the trenches, as it were.

Of course, that means we should probably review the summer’s activities and assess my performance, yes?

I had three primary goals this summer:

  1. Start exercising again so I don’t die of a heart attack or something similar before I hit the age of 40.
  2. Drive for Uber to make some extra cash.
  3. Edit book 2 and maybe even finish writing book 5.

I can say item #1 has been going pretty well.  I’ve been exercising consistently, and I’m up to running a mile most every day.  Should be up to two miles by the end of September.

I did a bit of driving for Uber, but it wasn’t as productive or profitable as I’d imagined it would be.  Part of it was because I was usually busy chauffeuring my wife to and from school during the times when I’d have been able to make the most money, part of it was I didn’t really want to drive in DC much (where the demand and thus pay were usually higher than out in the ‘burbs), and part of it is just the flaws inherent in the ridesharing app and business.  I’ll probably continue to drive for Uber once in a while during the school year, but I don’t see it being something I do as a steady source of income.

I edited a grand total of 11 (eleven) pages of book 2 this summer!  That’s…not great.  However, I did do a lot of plotting in my head for book 5 and beyond, and came up with a couple of short story ideas in the Hazzard universe, so it wasn’t completely wasted time.  And I tend to do better when I’ve got a full schedule anyway.  My ADD brain just works more efficiently when there’s the pressure of lots of external deadlines, so I’m sure I’ll get the edits done on book 2 pretty fast now that the school year is upon us.  Heck, since my classroom is already set up, I may even be able to get some editing done today.

Kicking Television

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See the image at the top of this post? Yeah, that’s what my tv screen currently looks like. It is not supposed to look like that. It’s this tv’s version of the blue screen of death, basically.

Someday, years from now when consumer goods aren’t made with planned obsolescence built in as a feature (so, like, never), I will be able to make it through an entire summer without something needing catastrophic repairs or replacement. Last summer, the Wife’s car needed $1400 in repairs and one of the cats needed almost twice that in dental work. This summer, it’s just the tv, but it’s still a source of frustration.

That being said, did you know I have a Patreon page? It’s more set up for folks who follow the comic, but anyone can support me on it. Anyone, including you fine folks! You get rewards and stuff, I get some extra cash to support my comic and novel and music pursuits. Maybe consider it, huh? Even a dollar or two a month will add up eventually. 

Headphones

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A good pair of headphones is hard to find.

Nearly a decade ago, I got a pair of Bose earbuds (see above). They are, hands down, the best, most comfortable earbuds I’ve ever owned. They fit perfectly and sound amazing.

I’ve noticed the trend lately for earbuds to include those weird hook thingies, ostensibly to keep them in the ear better. I hate those things, mostly because they don’t fit in my ear very well and are just remarkably uncomfortable.

The upshot of all that is, the older my earbuds get, the more concerned I become a out their continued utility. They’re eventually going to break and need to be replaced. And, if rumors about the next iPhone are to be believed, I’ll probably have to upgrade to wireless earbuds. Trouble is, now they’ve all got those damned hook thingies. You can’t hardly find earbuds without them.

All I want are earbuds that sound as good as the ones I have, fit comfortably into my ears, and are wireless maybe.

So, if someone at Bose could get back to me on that, I’d appreciate it.

Imposter!

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Like so many other creative-types, I suffer from something called imposter syndrome.

It’s not a real, DSM-V disorder, mind you.  It’s just this feeling that many authors, musicians, artists, and creators have, this sense that you don’t deserve any respect or admiration for the things you create.  It’s this belief that folks are going to figure out you have no idea what you’re doing, that you’re a fraud only pretending like you know how to do this thing you’re doing.  And when they find out…well, they’ll expose you and decry you and exile you from society.

It’s a very frustrating, debilitating sensation.  It can cause you to hesitate, to consider yourself worthless (or at least worth less than you actually are), make you feel like you don’t have anything worthwhile to contribute.  It can stop you from doing the things you want to do, prevent you from putting yourself out there for fear of rejection and disgust from your audience.

Rejection may not even be the worst of it.  People hating something you’ve created is at least a reaction.  What feels worse in a way is the absence of any reaction: silence.  No one reacting one way or the other.  Feeling like you’re shouting out into an empty void, with only the echo of your own voice returning in response.  It’s a different type of rejection, one that’s harder to deal with in many ways.

I’ll probably always feel a bit like an imposter, no matter how successful I end up being in my endeavors.  It’s part of who I am.  In a way, it’s not a completely bad thing.  It pushes me to be better than I am, to work harder at my craft and learn from my mistakes.  It keeps me from becoming too complacent.  I just have to remind myself that these things I do – my writing, my songs, my comics – are for me.  The fact that some other people may also like them?  That’s just frosting on the cake.

A History Lesson

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Totally and completely unrelated to any current political platform being offered up by any major American political party, I offer up this brief history lesson.  As you may recall, my day job is teaching social studies, and historians (yes, I call myself a historian.  Yes, it’s pretentious as all get-out.  No, I’m not going to stop) like to think that, if folks bothered to actually listen to us once in a while and learn the lessons of the past, maybe we could stop repeating the dumb mistakes our great-great-great-great-grandparents made.  Or maybe we’d still make the same mistakes, but we’d make them with more interesting fashion choices or something, I don’t know.

Today, we’re going to talk about the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, a set of laws so wrongheadedly-awful that they actually killed an entire major political party.

The United States in 1798 was in a weird situation.  Under President John Adams, the country had some major decisions to make about foreign and domestic policy.  Britain and France were having a bit of a to-do over in Europe, and the United States wanted to sell stuff to both of them but didn’t want to get dragged into the conflict.  To that end, President George Washington had made a statement of neutrality one of his last major acts as Commander-in-Chief.  Washington was no fool, of course: he knew the US wasn’t up for a major conflict so close on the heels of the Revolution.  Neutrality allowed the US to keep selling things to both countries without having to pick a side.

Adams and the Federalists would try to take things further, though.  Using their win in 1796 as some sort of mandate to draft policies of isolationism and anti-immigrant fear-mongering, the Federalists in Congress created a series of laws, the Alien Acts, that gave the president the power to deport immigrants for (essentially) whatever reason he wanted, prohibit new immigrants from entering the country, and make it vastly more difficult for immigrants to become naturalized citizens (the less-discussed Naturalization Act, as part of the laws collectively called the Alien and Sedition Acts by most history textbooks, lengthened the time you had to be a legal resident of the nation from seven years to 14 years…two years longer than most immigrant worker visas lasted at the time).

The Sedition Act was even weirder.  It made it illegal for newspapers – or, well, anyone – to criticize the government in any way, punishable by jail time and fines and all sorts of lovely stuff.  All the sort of stuff you’d expect from a group that definitely thought it was doing the right thing, right?

Now, there are some ulterior motives behind laws.  The Alien Acts were designed to keep out “undesirables,” such as the Irish, who were not sending their best (to hear the Federalists tell of it).  It was surely no coincidence that the Federalists’ political rivals, the Democratic-Republicans, included more immigrants in their ranks.  Surely these laws were just spite aimed at weakening their opponents?  No political party in the United States would ever do that!

Anyway, turns out those laws were seriously unpopular.  Adams and the Federalists lost the election of 1800 to Thomas Jefferson (with a little help from the only other major Federalist in the country other than John Adams, Mr. Alexander Hamilton), and the Federalists were basically a non-entity on the national level after that.  Hell, the next couple of decades saw nothing but Democratic-Republican candidates win the White House.  They didn’t call the 1810s the Era of Good Feelings because everyone liked how itchy their wool suits made them feel.  It wasn’t until the populist jackass Andrew Jackson took the office that another national political party, the Whigs,  would even emerge to challenge the Democratic-Republicans.  It didn’t help that Martin Van Buren was all mutton chops and no action, or that Jackson killing the Second Bank of the United States destroyed the only federal fiscal regulatory tool the government had and ended up precipitating the Panic of 1832 (the event that killed Van Buren’s presidency), but that’s all a story for another post.

My Favorite Photograph

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I like taking pictures. I’m generally not great at it, but I still enjoy taking the odd snapshot when the mood strikes me.

There’s one exception to my photographic mediocrity: a picture I took in Sleepy Hollow, New York, several years ago when we’d gone up to visit my wife’s family. We were being all touristy in the village, checking out the churchyard cemetery where Washington Irving (of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman fame) is buried. The church itself was quite old and rather lovely, that it was closed at the time. Undaunted, I used my phone (and a photography app called Hipstamatic) to take a picture through the window. I ended up picking up a reflection from te window, creating an effect that I was tremendously pleased with:


I was afraid I’d lost this photo when my laptop hard drive crashed last year, but thankfully I’d posted it to Facebook and was able to recover it from there. 

Lazy Summer

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I’ve been pretty lazy so far this summer.  I spent the first couple of weeks of it sleeping in (or getting up, driving my wife to work, then coming back home and taking a long nap) and binge-watching several shows on Netflix.  The past couple of weeks, I’ve been driving for Uber, which has been a novel experience.

Editing has started, though it’s going slowly.  I’ve made it to page 11 (of 118) of the manuscript.  Admittedly, most of the editing for The Hidden Throne (book 2) will go pretty quick, because this book has already been through three rounds of self-editing.  It was the only novel I ended up self-publishing, after all.

I have signed contracts for THT and a short story, both of which will appear sometime next year.  So that’s pretty exciting!  It does mean I need to get on the stick with the editing.

I’ve got a month or so left before I have to report back to school for teacher inservice.  In that time, I should be able to get THT edited, and maybe get some more work done on book 5.

In the meantime, though, I have to go.  Season Three of Bojack Horseman ain’t gonna binge-watch itself!