The Blind Side, Blink, Tandoori Oven, Bischoff Cookies

By John Brown | July 6, 2010 - 7:09 pm |November 29, 2010 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever

The Blind Side

Every time I see a sports movie advertised, I groan. Gee, what could this be–yet another story about an individual who, through pluck and determination, overcomes great odds to yadda, yadda, yadda win the game, yea, go team?

Yawn.

I enjoy sports, but only those where the outcome really is in question. Only those where I don’t already know the story. If I want a scripted win, I can watch some long-hairs and freaks on WWF.

So you’ll understand why I didn’t rush out last year to see The Blind Side. What? A monstrously huge kid plays high school football as a lineman? Wow, he must have really worked hard at that. Is the paint still drying at the Zeyer’s house? Maybe I’ll go watch that instead.

And this was my response even though Sandra Bullock plays the leading role. I usually enjoy the movies Bullock stars in. Well, except for the last two–The Proposal and All About Steve–which I couldn’t bring myself to watch more than ten minutes of combined. But besides those, she’s probably been one of the most enjoyable actresses since Katherine Hepburn. This is because she actually plays real women, interesting characters, people with personality.

This is opposed to some actresses who don’t really play people at all, but are put in movies by directors who must think that if they can make the eyes bong out of male heads, those very males won’t notice that the story is dumber than a bag of rocks. These gals have lips that are so puffed up they look painful (e.g. Angelina Jolie, ouch, ouch, OUCH, somebody help her) or have seemingly nothing else to bring to the table besides their looks (e.g. Megan Fox, oooh, look at her shirt ride up over her belly, oooh, another shot of her eyes, oooh, white teeth), and so all their roles end up including very little besides posing for the camera so that we can see that, yes, Timmy, these women really were born with some mathematics, i.e. symmetry and facial proportions conforming to the golden ratio. Are your eyes bonging out yet, Timmy? See, that’s why you should study algebra and geometry. Math lets you do things like that.

Anyway, so it was a Bullock film, yet I still didn’t want to see it. But my real-man brother-in-law suggested it for a date night, and so I reluctantly went to watch. (Date night as in double date with the wives, not him and me. Sheesh, you people.)

I’m so glad I went. The movie was excellent. Probably because it was not about the plucky athlete winning the game, but about something far more important and enjoyable. It’s based on the true story of a rich southern white couple–Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy–who try to take a homeless teenage African-American, Michael Oher (“Big Mike”), into their family. Michael’s mother is a crack head. His father is unknown. Michael himself is not doing very well. He’s failing school. He doesn’t even have a place to sleep sometimes. And he’s got the good old boys of his neighborhood wanting to hook him up with their gang and drug scene. But Leigh Anne soon takes charge.

And, boy, does she take charge. She’s one of the most delightful characters I’ve seen in a long time. I laughed again and again at her lines and personality. She also made me think about what I’m doing with my life. This woman and her family did something significant. I won’t tell you what happened with Michael–blah, blah, blah, yea, go team. You can find out for yourself. That wasn’t the important story here. The important story, the one that touched my heart and funny bone, was the one about a delightful family who went way out of its way to try to give a complete stranger a chance at a happy life.

Go see this show. No, it’s not in the theater, but you can buy or rent it. Me, I get all my films via Netflix. If you haven’t subscribed, consider it. Then you too can feel the excitement of seeing the happy little red Netflix envelopes waiting for you in your mailbox.

By the way, I have enjoyed a number of other great sports films over the years. If you like The Blind Side, I think you’ll enjoy Coach Carter, Miracle, Invincible, and Cool Runnings (a Brown family favorite).

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

We are told to make decisions based on logic, not emotion. Reason must prevail. The closer we are to Spock, the better. At least in our decision-making, right?

Well, no. That’s actually wrong.

Over the last two decades researchers have found that the vast majority of our decisions are made by our gut, in the blink of an eye. And even those we make consciously, we make with a large input from our emotions. In fact, people who have the emotion centers in their brains damaged seem almost unable to make good decisions. Give them seven types of apples to choose from, and they can’t seem to pick one. Ask them to schedule an appointment, and they’ll go round and round listing the pros and cons of different dates and times. Let them know one deck of cards is stacked against them, and they still choose to play with it. They have logic, but lack judgment.

The rapid, emotional part of our brain is critical for good decision making. Of course, out guts can often be spectacularly wrong. In Blink, Malcolm Gladwell explores both sides of the choices we make in the blink of an eye.

But this is no tome of dry erudition. Gladwell writes with fantastic simplicity, clarity, and power. He explains what we now know about human decision-making by letting us meet the psychologist who has learned to predict whether a marriage will last, based on just a few minutes of observing the couple; the tennis coach who knows a player will double-fault before the racket even makes contact with the ball; and the art experts who can spot a fake at a glance. He helps us see why New Coke failed, how we pick presidents, and how it was possible that the police shot down Amadou Diallo, who was simply coming home one night. He shares the story of Paul Van Ripper who beat the Pentagon war-gamers in a massive defeat and why.

Blink reveals that great decisions makers aren’t those who have the biggest brains and highest IQ, but those who have perfected the art of “thin-slicing”—focusing in on the factors that make the biggest difference.

The book was fascinating. Read it. You’ll start seeing the world differently.

The Tandoori Oven

While living in Orem, UT, Nellie and I got our first taste of Indian food. When we moved to the San Francisco area, we found a few Indian restaurants and really learned to love the cuisine. So you can imagine how excited we were when we moved up to boonieville Laketown and were told that just an hour away in Logan was a great Indian restaurant. So we followed the directions to the address we were given and ended up at the gas station just south of the USU football stadium on 720 East and 1000 North. And there above the gas station was the sign for the restaurant.

We both looked at each other and rolled our eyes. Were the people who told us about this kidding?

But I decided to just go look. Sometimes the little holes-in-the-walls can surprise you. Maybe in the back by the Hostess rack and chips we’d find some great food. I entered the gas station and found it run by a pleasant Indian fellow. I thought, dang, we’ve got our very own Apu’s Quiki-Mart (Apu being one of my favorite characters on the The Simpsons). However, there was no restaurant. I looked around and saw nothing but racks of normal gas station snacks. I was confused. “I was told there was an Indian restaurant here?” I said.

“Right over here,” he said in his Indian accent and pointed me to an entryway in the far wall hung with strings of beads. “Through there.”

Intrigued, I passed through the beads and did indeed find a small restaurant. They’d simply sectioned off a part of the original gas station. I also found that there was a separate door to the outside which I’d missed. I examined the buffet, which looked pretty good, went outside and waved Nellie in. We were going to give it a shot. We let them seat us, and proceeded to enjoy a fabulous meal.

The restaurant is called The Tandoori Oven: http://TandooriOvenLogan.com. Nellie and I go there regularly. It’s been updated since the first time we went and dished up our soup into treacherous styrofoam bowls. Now they use real cutlery, but the good food and friendly service hasn’t changed.

If you know Indian food, you can go in the evenings and order a number of dishes to share. But if you want the best deal, go for lunch. They put on an all-you-can-eat buffet which will let you sample a number of dishes. We love the kurmas, saags, vindaloos, curries, naans, and, dude, the spinach soup! Heck, it’s all good. Especially when we can sweeten it a bit with their tamarind or mango chutney. And make sure you leave room for their saffron helwa (spiced cubes of farina) smothered with cardamom rice pudding for dessert.

Bischoff Lotus Cookies

I recently performed a taste test. I got a package of Oreos and a package of Bischoff Lotus cookies, and I am here to state that the Bischoff Lotus cookies spanked the Oreos and sent them back to kindergarten for some schooling.

After the taste test, I had to force myself not to eat the rest of the Bischoff Lotuses in one sitting. I succeeded in lasting for two sittings. Yes, they’re that good—crisp, caramelized, sweet. They have none of the bitterness of gingersnaps, yet have enough spice to delight the tongue.

But these aren’t new cookies. The Dutch and Belgians have been enjoying them for years. Over there these types of cookies are called speculaas and are probably the most popular cookie around. I can testify they’re great with milk, hot chocolate, and Pero (hey, this is Mormon country). I understand they go great with coffee, even though I have not imbibed in that Aztec concoction and, therefore, cannot vouch for it personally. And for two years I enjoyed them, along with picturesque scenes of cobblestone streets, bicycles, and windmills.

When I came home, alas, I couldn’t find these delights anywhere except at specialty Dutch stores. And when we moved away from Utah, I never found them again. Then Delta Airlines started serving them on their flights. Oh, joy. But I don’t fly that often. So I’m excited to report that recently I was walking in Macey’s grocery store just across from the Stadium 8 movie theaters in Logan, scanning the packages along the cookie aisle and finding nothing appetizing, when the heavens parted, and a beam of light illuminated a white package with red lettering. I believe I heard a choir.

Bischoff Lotus cookies.

Could it be?

It was.

I heard reports they were also in Wal-Mart, but I didn’t see them there. So for the sure bet, go to Macey’s, buy, enjoy. And consider yourself Dutchified.

Toy Story 3, How to Train Your Dragon, Rumbi Island Grill

By John Brown | July 1, 2010 - 6:48 am |November 29, 2010 John's Reviews - books, movies, whatever

4 Comments

Toy Story 3

It’s interesting that two of the most enjoyable films this year are both animated. The first is Toy Story 3. We all know how awful sequels can be, and, in fact, I didn’t like Toy Story 2 all that much. But Pixar defied the sequel slump with this one.

Andy has grown up and is going to college. From a toy’s point of view, that’s tantamount to death because Andy has to clean out his room, and what is he going to do with all that junk anyway? The last few remaining toys barely miss the garbage truck and get sent, by accident, to the local day care instead. Sounds great for a toy, right? They’ll get played with every day forever. But things are not as they seem at the day care, and our crew of toys is put on the fast track to an early death. Will they be able to escape when the other toys there are ruled mob-style by a big pink teddy bear that smells of strawberries?

I laughed and cried and cheered in this movie. There are hilarious scenes featuring Barbie and a Ken who’s gone over to the dark side. More gut busters with Buzz Lightyear when he’s put into Spanish mode and Mr. Potato Head who has powers we never would have suspected.

But the movie goes beyond toys and action. It’s not just a cartoon. It’s about loyalty and friendship and heroics and love and family. Because my oldest will be leaving the nest next year, the final scenes carried extra power for me. But I think they will be effective for almost anyone because Pixar does in this movie what all great art does—it reaches into themes we all share. And in that moment, we identify so strongly with the characters that their situation becomes our own.

How to Train Your Dragon

Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon, based on the novel by Cressida Cowell, is the movie I should have seen for my birthday. Instead, we went to the mind-numbing Clash of Titans. I still cringe at some of the massive plot holes in that one, even though Medusa rocked. Which only proves, once again, that cool effects can’t save a bad story. How to Train Your Dragon, on the other hand, delivers cool monsters, but never once did the writers make the mistake of thinking that cool monsters is what the story was about.

The movie is about a young Viking named Hiccup who wants to be accepted, wants to become one of the burly defenders of his city, like his dad, Stoik the Vast. But Hiccup isn’t brawny. However, he is resourceful. And during a dragon attack, he brings down a mysterious Night Fury dragon with his invention. However, when he finds the dragon, he can’t bring himself to kill it. Instead, Hiccup and the dragon begin a friendship. But will Hiccup be able to save the dragon that everyone wants to kill? Will the Vikings be able to see the truth about the dragons before they’re destroyed? Most importantly, will Stoik be able to accept his son?

I enjoyed the superb animation in this story as well as the dragons. But it was the characters and humor that made this movie so good. There’s Stoik who just can’t relate to his son, but tries to bond with a very interesting use of his dead wife’s brassier, Hiccup, the son, with his dry wit, and Gobber, a peg-leg family friend who has some of the best lines in the movie.

Go see this show. You’ll laugh, and then you’ll wish you had a dragon of your own.

Rumbi Island Grill

The Rumbi Island Grill is a restaurant chain that started in Salt Lake City in 2000. They serve fast, casual tropical food at incredibly good prices. My favorite is their rice bowl. It comes with your choice of sauce, rice, and meat with sautéed vegetables. In the Netherlands I learned to love Indonesian food and the spicy-sweet peanut sauce that often accompanied it, which is why I can’t get enough of the Bali Island bowl with brown rice and shrimp. You might find you love the sauce so much you ask for two servings to pour over your bowl (oh, and add a dash of the hot sauce). The food’s great, but they’ve paid attention to the Hawaiian atmosphere as well. So even though it’s fast food (you order and they bring it out to you), you feel like you’re sitting in a casual dining restaurant.

I always look for a Rumbi when I travel down to Salt Lake City or Provo. Now I don’t have to go so far–a restaurant has opened up in Logan right across from the Wal-Mart on the south end of town! I took Nellie there recently. The staff was friendly and the food was delicious–just what I’d come to expect.

Now all we need is a Cheesecake Factory!

Writing Update: 25,000 words of battle and still going

By John Brown | June 26, 2010 - 5:59 pm |August 25, 2010 News - updates on books, events, appearances, etc.

1 Comment

Curse of a Dark God ends with a big, BIG battle. I’ve been working on it for a number of weeks now. It contains some large revelations, a lot of action, movement back and forth between four points of view, and the need for a number of people to act heroically. When I finished writing today it was 25,573 words long and I still have one more chapter to go. I don’t think I’ve written any single action sequence this long. To put this in perspective, a normal adult novel is 90,000-110,000 words long. Young adult novels average 50,000 – 70,000 words. This one sequence is a quarter to half the size of many other novels! It’s been quite a task, but I’m happy to have the end in sight. I really think readers are going to enjoy it.

I do have a little bit of other good news that I’m excited to share, but I’ll have to wait until papers are signed.

Happiness!

Can you make a living writing short stories?

By John Brown | June 22, 2010 - 7:48 am |June 22, 2010 On Writing

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We already know that many people break into the novel market WITHOUT writing short stories. So they’re not necessary for starting a writing career, although they might have helped some folks. See this page http://johndbrown.com/writers/writing-business-facts-figures/ for links that will show you how people break in. But some people just love short stories, so the question is can you make a living writing them?

The answer is yes, you CAN do it–you go into television and get hired to write scripts for TV series (grin).

But what about doing it in print? Well, let’s try some conservative math.

1) How much would you need to sell?

TARGET: a conservative $30,000 gross per year.

The median household income in the USA is $50,000. But you can find a place (rural Ohio or Indiana or North Dakota etc.) where housing is relatively cheap and live on $30k. I think this is a reasonable target. So let’s make some assumptions about the stories. We’ll assume each short averages around 4,000 words and that you get paid seven cents per word. To earn your target amount you’d have to sell:

TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 428,571
TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 107 (words divided by average story length)
TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 2 sales per week (weeks in year divided by number of stories)

At 10 cents a word:

TOTAL WORDS YOU NEED TO SELL: 300,000
TOTAL STORIES YOU NEED TO SELL: 75
TOTAL STORIES/WEEK: 1.4 sales per week

No, this doesn’t count reprints, movie deals, gaming contracts, etc. But reprints usually don’t pay well and movie deals, while they pay well, can’t be counted on. Besides, we’re being conservative.

2) Is this a feasible production rate?

Again, a little math.

TARGET: 2 stories, 8,000 words average per week

If we assume you write five days per week for six hours per day at a rate of 500 words per hour, which may be very aggressive if you try to include thinking and revising time in that, then you’ll produce 15,000 words per week.

So, yes, this is a feasible, if aggressive, production rate–on paper. But I don’t know anyone finishing this many stories per week. Furthermore, it’s highly unlikely you will sell 100% of what you send out. So you need to actually produce MORE than two stories per week. You might have to end up writing three or four. Week after week after week. That’s one story every day or two.

Theoretically, yes, that rate of production still fits in the 15,000 word capacity. But I’m going to say it’s doubtful anyone can do this because I haven’t seen anyone do it. Have you?

But even if you were the Lizard King of writing and could pull this off every week of the year, the question is can you sell all those stories?

3) Is it feasible to sell two stories per week?

According to http://duotrope.com/index.aspx there are about 200 venues for short fiction paying pro rates, which for them is 5 cents or more. No, anthologies are not represented there. But I’m not sure it will change the equations that much. So you have to sell 107 stories to these 200 markets. I don’t know how many slots are open in these places. Some of these venues publish one story per year, some publish twelve, some more. Some are published semi-annually, quarterly, bi-monthly. Let’s say there are 2,000 slots. Of course, we might need to count total wordage up for hire at these venues instead, but we’re just doing this on the back of a napkin. So 107 stories out of 2,000 slots means you’d have to make up 5% of the market. You sell five of every 100 stories these folks buy.

FIVE PERCENT OF THE WHOLE MARKET!

Nobody makes up 5% of the whole short fiction market. NOBODY. Okay, let’s say there are 4,000 slots. Each venue averaging twenty stories per year. So you have to make up 2.5% of the market. Nobody does that either. What about 1%? Anyone? One out of every 100 stories? No.

Is this because writers are lazy? Could it be done? You might be the first?

That’s lotto thinking. What you want is demonstrated income, i.e. people have DEMONSTRATED it can be done. Nobody has demonstrated this can be done in the current market. So it’s not reasonable to expect you’ll do something nobody else is doing.

So the answer is that even if you produce three to four short stories per week, you’ll never be able to sell enough to make a living. Now, I know of a few authors who can make a few thousand dollars per year writing short stories. I’ve heard of one guy who made $10,000 a year for a few years. But can you live on that? Even if you move to a place where housing is very, very cheap? Besides, we’re trying to avoid lotto thinking here. We’re trying to be practical and conservative. This is one guy. Do you yourself know anyone who has done this? I wouldn’t want to base my future on what one guy did.

CONCLUSION: there’s no evidence that strongly suggests it’s feasible to sell at the necessary rate to make $10,000 per year let alone $30,000.

4) Re-purpose the wordage to Novels!

Go back up and look at the annual output of words. If you can write 300,000 to 450,000 words per year, you could write four to six young adult novels (averaging 70,000 words per book) or two to three adult novels (averaging 120,000 words per) in that same time.

Why not build a career in novels?

Yes, you may start at $5,000 – $6,000 advance per book. But if you sell well, that goes up. Plus, if it does sell well, you get royalties. Plus you can sell foreign novel rights. Plus you get an advance to help with some expenses. More importantly, we have thousands and thousands of folks DEMONSTRATING they can make a living writing at that pace.

So write short stories if you love them, but don’t expect to make a living at it.

5) But what about Amazon and self-publishing?

Could you make a living selling your shorts out there?

Only if your shorts were once worn by Brittany Spears.

For more on e-book sales, let me recommend you read a few posts by J. A. Konrath. I’ll let you decide. But please note that he’s selling NOVELS. And as always, you want to be realistic about this and make sure you see many people DEMONSTRATING it can be done. Do you think Konrath presents such evidence? You tell me.