MikeBlog

Crossing Fingers, Crossing Toes

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:57:00 +0000

Probably the stupidest thing about being a writer is everything it requires that isn't actually writing. Currently, that means: the sitting and the waiting, and the crossing of fingers and toes.

As I start to hack away at the novel again, I just submitted a collection of short stories about Long Beach to a local publisher, Write Bloody, on Sunday; in the next few weeks I should know if they want to go forward with it. Man, I really hope they do—I'm pretty proud of what I've put together, and they're an awesome outfit. With Buddy Wakefield, Mindy Nettifee, and Derrick Brown, they have three of my five most favorite living poets in their folds (along with Tony Hoagland and poet/translator Stephen Mitchell), and to be included among their ranks would be pretty ace.

Anyway, as a distraction while I'm waiting to hear back, I plan on being more active around here, while dancing between raindrops on the Post as usual. Look for stories, book reviews, photos of my wife eating frybread, etc., hopefully we can amuse each other and make the time go by a little faster.

STORY: Volley

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:55:00 +0000

The white of Susanna's tennis skirt as it caught the sun made his stomach bend, and he wished for the thousandth time that this wasn't happening. But, of course, it was. He'd messed up, bad, and he was losing his gorgeous, brilliant wife, his kids, his El Dorado Estates home—he was clinging to those things with all he had, trying to grab every last second before it all fell apart. Their weekly tennis match was the last piece of normalcy he had—Susanna, as he'd been moved out of his bedroom, and told to start apartment-hunting, still wanted to volley with him.

As he'd gone through their weekly ritual in the bungalow that served as court rental office and pro shop, he moved slowly, memorizing every motion, the position of the tennis ball tubes, aware that it could be the last time. He'd been living that way for the last two weeks—everything he did could be the last time. Susanna tucked a ball under the skirt, on her right hip, a move he'd seen her make 10,000 times, and then stared him down, sizing up her opponent. They hadn't spoken in days. She lofted the ball, then crushed it at him—it bounced and ricocheted into his thigh, bruising him.

She smiled, paused, and then brought it, smashing serve after serve by him. Each twang of racket on ball made him remember—their first kiss, at the Japanese Gardens at CSULB. Their wedding, four years later, the same place. Their daughter's first day of preschool. Their son's. Whack, whack, whack, first set to Susanna. He stood there, helpless—she swept him.

He had nothing, and she won the day easily, until they came to the last point, and all he had was to try and save face, to put something other than love on the board. His serve came back quickly, and he got under it this time, forcing it to Susanna's backhand—she handled it, crossing it back, and he backhanded it to the same side. She crossed to him and he returned, but this time she pivoted and drove it straight, down the line and right by him. He watched it go, and dropped his racket.

His wife, her blond hair bouncing, smile flashing, pumped her fist and stared at him. The smile faltered just a bit, and the victorious gleam in her eyes clouded for a moment with uncertainty. He nodded at her, fighting back tears. She, still holding her racket, spread her arms, and opened her mouth, then sent volley after volley of questions at him, with her eyes.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From Drew Magary's "Men With Balls"

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 20:04:00 +0000

"This will be the very last book you ever read. Because after you read this book, you will know how to be a pro athlete. And pro athletes don't need books. Or strong family bonds. Or any of that stupid crap."

I took a break last week from reading the Library of America horror anthology, out of the need to finish something. If I go more than a few days without finishing a book I start getting itchy, so I picked up a book I'd wanted to read for a while—it's a pretend handbook for the modern professional athlete, one of a weird little wave of fake authoritative books from a few years ago (Daily Show's America the Book, the works of John Hodgman, McSweeney's Comedy By the Numbers). The author, Drew Magary, is my favorite online columnist, a profane and prolific writer for Deadspin.

The book is pretty funny, though because it was less profane it was less funny than most of his Deadspin columns—but it made me very happy to have the job I have, and not the job most local-level sportswriters wish they had, covering pro sports. It's funny to me that the image most people have of athletes are overpaid, under-educated jocks who love to waste money and break the law. The kids I work with genuinely like their sports, for the most part, and they aren't getting paid, and they're often so dedicated to practice and work that it reminds me of how much I loved writing when I was in high school, so much that I'd lock myself in my room, before I'd ever heard of deadlines or writer's block.

Those were nice days; these are nice days too, but it's nice to live with a constant reminder of how much easier it was to be obsessive in a good way, back when I was 16.

Puppy Bowl VI Was A Disgrace To The Sport Of Puppy Football

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:48:00 +0000

Let me start by saying that I'm an enormous fan of puppy football, that great American pastime. But this most recent incarnation of the Puppy Bowl was a true sham, a disgrace to the sport—in just six years, the Puppy Bowl has gone from an innocent celebration of an historic game, to a commercialized mockery of epic proportions.

When the Puppy Bowl was first started, in the heady days of 2004, the idea was to crown a true Puppy Champion. Now? All you hear about are Bandit's DUI, and Chocolate's contract renegotiations. What happened to the love of the game, puppies?

If the behavior of the athletes wasn't bad enough, the sport itself has become so capitalist you can barely see the actual competition beneath the veneer of advertising dollars and sponsored segments. There's an ad or logo on every available inch of wall-space in the stadium, sponsored highlights, sponsored replays, sponsored halftime specials, sponsored blimps. They've opened the doors to so many different animals that it's barely the puppy-centric endeavor we all came to know and love. Kitties and rabbits as cheerleaders? Gerbils flying the blimp? Fat Justin Long as the referee?

Fat Justin Long's officiating this year was so clearly biased it made the 2002 Lakers/Kings game look honest in contrast. And the enormous, greased logo on the center of the field—instituted to cause more "cute slipping" is nothing more than a giant injury hazard, worse than the Vet in Philly.

In short—I can keep watching, for the love of it. For the love of games of old, the athletes of old, with their trimmed hair and great work ethic, for the love of the spirit of the sport. But it will grow harder each year as more animals crowd the frame, as advertisements clutter the field of play, as Fat JL continues to throw dubious flags. It will grow harder as the sport I love grows more and more loveless.

JK y'all! Here's to the next six months of football-less life going smoothly and quickly, so we have something worthwhile to do with Sundays again.

STORY: (Coffee And) Cigarettes

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 20:43:00 +0000

There's a cigarette being passed around on Long Beach's Eastside. A longshoreman from the Port bought it from the L&L Liquor on his way home from work—he'd been living on the Eastside for 30 years, and working at the Port for 30 and a half. He shook his head at the price of a pack, as he did once a week, then handed the clerk his money.

On his way out the door, he slid the crinkling cellophane off the pack and stuffed it in his pocket, then pulled out two cigarettes, lighting them both. One he put to his lips and drew on—the other he held towards the ground, without even looking to acknowledge Veteran Johnny, who lived outside the liquor store and who was the once-weekly beneficiary of the longshoreman's generosity, even in the wake of rising prices and falling pay-scales.

Veteran Johnny waved bye to him, and smoked half of the cigarette, then pinched it off and tucked it behind his ear, for the morning. He rolled himself up in his ratty Salvation Army blanket, and fell asleep. When he woke, his ear was naked, and he slapped the ground. In a rust-bucket heading towards the Westside, a young wannabe-gangster was smoking the last half of the cigarette, his lungs fogging from the clouds of his first smoke. He'd seen Veteran Johnny lying there and thought, "Hey, what the fuck? Gotta start sometime."

As he finished it, sucking on the butt too long because he didn't know when to stop, a cop car flying up Santa Fe plowed into him, breaking his legs and sending the butt flying out the window, where it landed on the asphalt and rolled to the curb. Yoger, the homeless who lived on the corner of Santa Fe and PCH, stepped over to the butt, picked it up, and tried to draw on it—nothing left. He flicked it back into the street, and went back to his ratty Goodwill blanket, cursing.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From "The Jolly Corner," by Henry James

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:41:00 +0000

"He could live in 'Europe,' as he had been in the habit of living, on the product of these flourishing New York leases, and all the better since, that of the second structure, the mere number in its long row, having within a twelvemonth fallen in, renovation at a high advance had proved beautifully possible."

Still in the thick of that horror anthology from Library of America I mentioned last week—just wanted to include this random sentence from Henry James to say, "I'm really really glad I'm not writing at the turn of the century." I can barely wrap my brain around that sentence, just one glaring tangled mess in a 40-page forest of indecipherability. Yes, Hemingway may have been too far in the other direction, but…man. God bless the progression of the ages.

STORY: Worth It

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 20:38:00 +0000

He was the kind of man who checked his watch again every time his wife plucked another outfit off the rack at Penny's—but who wouldn't let her go by herself. She was the kind of woman who couldn't stop plucking outfits, like they were wildflowers and she was a vase, and who thought, "I'm worth it" every time she bought something.

They spent four hours there on Sunday, plucking and checking and plucking and checking, and finally checking out. He stood there with his hands on his hips, like he could get in the way of anything with just a grimace, and his hand made a fist around their credit card, going up and swiping down, going up and swiping down. "I'm worth it, I'm worth it, I'm worth it," she whispered.

STORY: He Wanted to Say

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 18:50:00 +0000

He wanted to tell her so many things—stupid, useless things about how she'd saved him, about how he wanted to save her. About what candlelight did to the naked shape of her, and the suggestions those shapes made to him. He wanted to tell her that he wanted to subscribe to her newsletter, read her blog, gape at her flickr, break the lock on her diary with his teeth and eat every page until he knew everything.

Nobody had ever told her she was beautiful and he could see that, those not-words burned onto her face like a scarlet alphabet. He wanted to tell her that she was, and he wanted to pin her hair behind her ear for her and tell her he didn't care if she never shaved or waxed or plucked or peeled. He wanted to tell her she'd still be his main course if she spoiled on the vine.

He wanted to tell her she wasn't just the answer to the question Why, but to the question How.

But he waited. And then it was too late.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From "Ma'ame Pélagie," by Kate Chopin

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 19:42:00 +0000

"In her deep, dark eyes smouldered the light of fires that would never flame."

Yowie. The Chopin story is in a collection published by the Library of America that I bought myself for Christmas, called American Fantastic Tales. It's a two-volume, 1400-page anthology of horror stories by American writers, from pre-Poe all the way up to Joe Hill. It's incredible.

By far the most fascinating aspect of the book so far has been the evolution of subject—of what Americans are horrified by. This Chopin story, from more than 100 years ago, has touched closest to what keeps me awake at night. Madame Pelagie (I'm leaving out the accent because I'm lazy) and her sister live in the ruins of their father's brick mansion, and dream of pinching enough pennies to rebuild it—they are middle aged and estimate they will be very close to death before they can make that happen. Then, a young niece comes to live with them, and captures the heart of Pelagie's sister. When the sad isolation of their impoverished, meager existence drives the niece away, Pelagie's sister begs Pelagie to throw away their shared dream, and use their money to create a new, open life for they and their family.

Pelagie, for love of her sister, listens to her weep for hours, then goes that night to say goodbye to the ruins, and relents. She spends the rest of her life with her sister, their niece, and their family, living in the shadow of the ruins, until she dies, unfulfilled—the line above comes near the end of the story, after she's given up, and it's the only line in the anthology so far that's actually made my shiver.

I think most driven people—whether you're trying to be a writer, a rich person, or a professional athlete—have that vision of life as their nightmare. A time when you've given up, or realized that you've failed, but still have to live out the rest of your days. I know that feeling has, more than once, caused me to get out of bed at three in the morning to write, so that I can wake up and feel like I'm still moving. Like Pelagie, we all get a limited time—incredibly limited, if you're trying to make it as an athlete—to achieve what we feel we're meant to achieve. If you don't live with that feeling, I'd suggest you not go in search of it. There's nothing horrifying about living life for happiness, or peace—it's just not a state of mind I understand.

To me, a major message of the story is that you have to do what you can with the time you're given—if Pelagie and her sister had managed to save enough money to rebuild the mansion before their niece arrived (call her death, or a blown out knee, or whatever applies to you), they would have achieved their mission. Once that curtain drops though, there's no lifting it. It's a powerful motivation to me to keep working—the last thing any of us wants is to live our life by smoldering, faint fires. There is another quote from the anthology, from Harriet Prescott Spofford's "The Moonstone Mass" that you may want to turn to if you feel you've stalled in your mission:

"Death and stillness have no kingdom on this globe, and even in the extremest bitterness of cold and ice perpetual interchange and motion is taking place."

Even somewhere behind Pelagie's eyes, her dream still lives. Even when you feel you've failed at what you're trying to do—there's still something moving inside you. Whether it's to restart your goal, or find another one, it's up to all of us to harness that natural energy.

Unless you're fifty and your dream is to play pro football. Then you're pretty much screwed.

STORY: Hate For Hire*

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 00:18:00 +0000

*Extracted from the "About" page of RonnieBricksHateForHire.com

My second-grade teacher—may she rot—told us on the first day of class that God gave everyone a gift, and that it was a teacher's job to help unearth it. Well she did her job with me, because I hated that fluffy bullshit and I've been hating ever since. My moms, my friends, rich people, poor people—I hate all that shit. Sports, movies, television—I hate the mother-hating Jesus Christing crap out of that stuff.

In college, my boy Beef Jersey—who I haven't spoken to since what he pulled at the beach—made me a suggestion that I didn't hate. He said: "Ronnie Brick, man. You hate so toughly, and so cleanly, you oughta get paid for that shit."

"You're retarded Jersey," is what I said at the time, but I remembered his words. In 2003, I made them a reality with the launch of this website, www.RonnieBricksHateForHire.com.

Since that time, I've been doing what you don't have either the time, the energy, or the conviction to do yourself, and hating your enemies for you. I will also hate your loved ones, if necessary. I offer customizable packages for every budget and situation. Whether your needs are conceptual—my general bad-will program—or tangible (such as my hate mail and angry phone message plan) I'm confident Ronnie Brick's Hate for Hire has something for you.

I invite you to navigate around the site and browse my options, then get in touch by clicking Contact, and we'll work something out. You're a douchebag if you don't.

Gone to Texas!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 05:53:00 +0000

Shar and I are in Austin for most of the week, so I won't be updating--I'll post some pictures after we get back, and then next week the usual junk!

Hook 'em, and etc.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: From "The Audacity to Win," by David Plouffe

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 06:00:00 +0000

"No one wins the presidency with stunts."

--Plouffe to Barack Obama on John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate

If you invested either time or money (or even thought or a vote) into the Obama for President campaign, consider this book an incredible "Thank you" note from campaign manager David Plouffe. A "Thank you" note that will cost you $25, but still—it was fun to relive the stressful two years that Shar and I spent living and dying with the campaign, especially knowing that the book had a happy ending.

The joy of this book, for me (aside from the insight into the behind-the-scenes stuff), was gaining an appreciation for the discipline and intelligence of Plouffe and the rest of the campaign team. It was easy to take in the debates as they happened, but Audacity to Win makes it just as easy to take in the debate prep—in the quote above, Plouffe sums up a lot of the campaign's philosophies. Don't try to pull stunts or fast ones on the American public—craft a winning strategy, and stick to it at all costs. Put your heads down and work.

Stunts, Plouffe reminds us (and his candidate), do not win the presidency—nor do they win the job, the girl, or the attainment of any serious goal. Hard work and consistent discipline do those things (and if you don't believe that's the only way to win the girl, good luck). In trying to move towards my own goals in life, it's an important lesson to remember. There is no substitute for hard work, and for seeing your path to victory—as Plouffe writes, in one of the book's frequent and well-executed sports metaphors, you have to block and tackle to win.

If you can't master the fundamentals of whatever arena you're trying to succeed in—whether it's football or campaigning—you're going to get your butt kicked, no matter how much of a juggernaut you appear, or feel like. Dan Monson, the basketball coach at Long Beach State, has pointed out once or twice to me that, "You can't fake confidence." As his team has painfully learned a few times, you can't fake free throw shooting, either.

Along with mastering the basics, the long-view perspective ("Seeing the whole field, and not just three yards of it" as Plouffe writes) is essential. I have more than one friend who told me they wanted to write fiction for a living, but who completely melted down after receiving a rejection letter for the first story they've ever submitted somewhere. Mastering the ability to recover from setbacks—minor or significant—is a fundamental skill in every arena, and one that has to be mastered, I think, to succeed in any of them. Obama wouldn't have gotten very far if Plouffe freaked out and threw in the towel after losing New Hampshire, the second state to hold a primary.

So, from the book, comes an affirmation of a way I've tried to live, and a methodology I've used to hit most of the goals I've set for myself. Decide where you want to go; craft a plan to get there; work hard to execute that plan; and remember its length and breadth to help overcome setbacks. "Idealism kept us going, but pragmatism kept us grounded," writes Plouffe. And grinding on their goal, every single day, got them where they wanted to go.

We should all be so lucky, and so disciplined.

New Story Published!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 04:48:00 +0000

So over the Summer, right after I finished my novel, while we were in the lull period on the Post, I spent a month really focusing on short fiction. I've always loved writing short stories, and had never really had much success getting them published. In fact, aside from publications I worked for, I'd had a grand total of two stories published in about five years of trying. So imagine my surprise when the dam burst over the Summer—I wrote five stories, and all of them got accepted for publication at the journal or magazine I was targeting.

The first I already linked to—a short short called "A Biography of the Ave" that was published in Book by Authors, a nonprofit fundraiser collection to help benefit North Long Beach.

This story I'm more excited about, and I hope you have a chance to read. It's called "Alone and Awash on the Queen Mary," and it's a literary ghost story that (like everything I'm writing now) is focused with a local angle. It was published a short while ago at Verdad Magazine, and I just found out it won the Editors' Choice for the Fall 2009 issue (since there are a few other writers in the fiction section this quarter that I'm competitive with, I was doubly happy about that). Anyway, it's a fun story that I'm very happy to have written, and now, to be able to pass along to you to read—enjoy!

Click here to read the story.

STORY: On A Plane

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:55:00 +0000

There are four planes of existence I'm currently perceiving. Doubtless there are many more, but at the moment I am capable of experiencing four of them. There is the world outside my office window, bright and glaring, a blue sky and wintering trees, scattered clouds and invisible air. There is the screen on my window, which is the second plane. There is the space between the screen and the glass of the window, occupied currently by an unidentified flying insect, with six legs, a flattened cylinder for a body, and a barely visible proboscis. Finally, there is the glass of the window, the closest plane to me, and yet also the least real.

All morning I had been focused on the farthest plane, as I often am on crisp Winter mornings when it's bright out, and not shedding snow. But the insect has caught my attention. He is, after all, trapped, a position I both comprehend and empathize with. He can perceive only two planes of existence—the screen which pins him in to one side, and the window glass, which he perceives only through physical sensation as it bars him from escaping (his vision is not sufficient to actually see the glass, similar to my situation for most of my adult life).

He is beating uselessly between the center of the screen, and the glass, which he butts up against again and again, painfully I imagine, unable to understand how he is trapped. I look around me at my office, as the drab, sole plane of existence that stretches away for what feels like miles, and then turn back to the window, the bug, the screen, and the world. A soft, dull plinking noise emanates from the glass as he rams it—finally, he gives up and turns back to the screen, where he settles and begins to clean his legs.

The insect is unsure of how he got into this predicament, and clueless as to how to get out of it, lacking the intelligence and perceptive ingenuity to see his whole situation. There are two options for him: adapt his insect mind to pretending he enjoys the trap, or thrash himself to death trying to escape it. I have no advice for him, even if my skills of communication were advanced enough that I could impart it. All I can tell him is that if he's trying to escape, he's better off starting at the edges, than at the center.

Welcome to MikeGuardabascio.com! What the Hell Are We Doing Here?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 05:54:00 +0000

Well, hello there. Welcome to, depending on your varying point of view, my fun new website/blog with lots of cool recurring features, or the ultimate testament to my own crushing narcissism! A few friends have already asked me why I felt the need to start an eponymous website, now that practically everyone has them.

Three reasons, surprisingly bitchy friends (friends, by the way, who didn't even know the word eponymous, which I kindly inserted into their hypothetical complaint to make them sound like they paid attention in college). One, I had a little extra money lying around, and my very talented, very unemployed-at-the-time friend Angie Yen wanted something to work on. The best of all myriad ways to spend disposable money is on talented friends who are hungry for work. Two, I just finished a novel and was looking for any edge—no matter how teensy—I could find in helping to promote it and my name as I try to force it on the publishing world. Three, the time demands of my regular jobs (Managing Editor at LBPOSTsports.com and writer for Long Beach Magazine) often leaves me feeling like I don't set aside enough time for myself to write fiction, for pleasure or profit.

If you read this blog at its previous location, you probably saw some of A Storied Year, an insanely stupid experiment where I wrote one piece of flash fiction every day for 366 consecutive days (damn you, Leap Year!). I liked that time—I liked forcing myself to look everywhere for story ideas. Not only was it good for my writing, it was good for my life; looking at every person on the street with a sympathetic, concerned eye, viewing every facet of the world with an involved, inquisitive perspective. These are good things, for me.

So, while I'm much too busy with jobs, novels, and life to embark on that ambitious project anew, I will be updating this blog, at least three times a week, Monday through Friday, with stories, "fake" stories (where I jack the style of a famous writer), Casting Calls (where I, and hopefully you, attempt to cast great novels for hypothetical movie adaptations), and quotes of the week (brief, deep meditations on a small quote from a book I'm reading). There will also be the usual pedestrian book and movie reviews, career updates, et cetera. Fun? FUN!

If any or all of that sounds interesting to you, I beg you to please come back, and often, and to comment as much as you'd like. I welcome suggestions on how to improve this site or this blog, and I hope to hear from you once we get going on Monday!

Stuff I Read In 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:15:00 +0000

My best total for a year since I started keeping records! 58 books (not counting graphic novels), not bad for the busiest year of my life. Here they be:

Bat-Manga!

Salmonella Men On Planet Porno

Zamyatin's We

A Practical Guide to Racism

Revolutionary Road

McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes

The Zoo Story/The American Dream

The Genius: Bill Walsh

The Graveyard Book

Collected Plays of Edward Albee

History of My Heart

Sleepyhead Assassins

Live For A Living

Last American Valentine

McSweeney's 28

McSweeney's 30

McSweeney's 29

McSweeney's 27

McSweeney's 25

The Colorado Kid

Get A Financial Life

Big Fish

The FInal Solution

Gentlemen of the Road

Enemies & Allies

The Poe Shadow

This is Water

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men

McSweeney's 31

McSweeney's Little Box Of Stories

Afterlives

Idiot America

Consider The Lobster

Oblivion

Thanks and Have Fun Running The Country

This Shape We're In

Vacation

Shakespeare Wrote For Money

Long Beach: Fortune's Harbor

33 1/3: Let it Be, Colin Meloy

33 1/3: Aeroplane Over the Sea

Zeitoun

Selected Poetry of Rilke

Magic Kingdom For Sale

The Black Unicorn

Wizard at Large

Football Previews

The Tangle Box

Witches' Brew

Princess of Landover

I Drink For a Reason

Fine Just The Way It Is

Manhood for Amateurs

The Wild Things

Book By Authors: NLB Anthology

The Catch: One Play That Changed the NFL

The Book of Basketball

The Audacity to Win

Don't Look At Me!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:20:00 +0000

If you're reading this...stop! Someone recently pointed out to me that the "old" site that this blog appeared on, astoriedyear.blogspot.com, has started redirecting everyone to the "new" site hosting it, MikeGuardabascio.com, where you apparently are right now. This site's not quite ready for public consumption yet, so please kindly go amuse yourself somewhere else for a few more days until we get our bras snapped and our hair clicked back.

If you're looking for a good time, check out this new collection of oral histories, essays, and stories about North Long Beach, which I've got a short story in: click here to see it.

(Halloween) STORY: Out For a Walk

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:08:00 +0000

Stephen's doctor had explained to him, with firm patience, how just 30 minutes of walking, five days a week, could help keep him from filling the empty plot next to his father—who had died of congenital heart failure at 45. Stephen was 46, and inclined to listen.

So he found himself locking the front door of his two-story Los Altos home at 11pm Saturday night—he'd only walked four days so far that week, and he was determined to show Dr. Sharma he was serious about his health. As the lock clicked over, the wind sent a rustle through the jacaranda, shaking its limbs in greeting.

Nodding his hello back, Stephen danced down the four wide, wooden steps of his porch. It had been a good week, for him. Boeing had laid off fifteen employees in his branch on Thursday, and he'd been sick with anxiety all week, sure that his would be among the first heads to roll. Instead, he not only kept his job, but got a promotion in the bargain, passed up the ladder to supervise the new department created in the consolidation of the two departments that had lost the most staff.

He paused for a moment at the bottom of the porch steps, enjoying the silence, the tranquility of the neighborhood. His street was quiet even during rush hour, since it was three turns away from the nearest major street; late at night, it was completely quiet, except for crickets, and the sound of the wind passing through the trees.

Walking across his yard to the sidewalk, the free feeling in his chest got tangled up when he plodded through a spider-web—a big one, with thick strands that clung to his hair and his neat, well-trimmed beard. As he pawed them out, something big buzzed by him, and he gasped loudly. The kid on the bike snickered back at him loudly, and Stephen had to wait a few seconds for his heart to slow down. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he mopped it with the back of his hand. "And this is why you have to walk five times a week," he whispered to himself as the sound of his heart thumped in his ears.

Breathing deeply, trying to regain the bouncy, light feeling he'd just had, Stephen began to reason with himself as he walked to the corner. "A quick thirty minutes," he said, aloud. "Twice around the block, and then you can fire up the Netflix on your computer and have half a bag of popcorn as a reward."

He told himself he felt better, but he could still hear his heartbeat, faintly. He turned the corner and kept walking, set on achieving his goal. All the houses up and down the street were dark—even on a Saturday, no one had stayed up late. At the moment, Stephen was wishing for a little more company, but he appreciated that the neighborhood kept such reasonable hours, and had since he'd moved in a decade ago. With Halloween just a few days away, there were pumpkins on every porch, trees swathed in fake spider webs, the occasional gruesome diorama—the block was in costume, for the holiday.

He smiled, halfway up the street and feeling better. Every year he looked forward to the holiday, to all the neighborhood kids showing up and asking for candy, talking for a moment with their parents before they hurried off to the next bounty. A sprinkler came on in the yard next to him and he hopped away from it, surprised but laughing. As the water overflowed onto the sidewalk, the rivulets of dark liquid against the light concrete looked like fingers, snaking towards him. Stephen skipped ahead.

The end of the street came quickly, and he realized he'd been shuffling much faster than his usual strolling pace. "Well," he thought, "Dr. Sharma wouldn't be upset at me for moving a little faster." He decided he'd walk quickly, and just do one trip around the block—he was almost halfway done already. Sunday morning he could do another trip around, and then a full two blocks that night to make up for it. A little earlier, though, when the sun was still hanging on the horizon, when families were still outside to wave and talk to.

An explosion of sound to his left nearly knocked him down—but it was a dog, that was all, too ambitiously defending its home. Its booming barks picked his pace up even more, so that he was nearly jogging by now, rounding another corner, just one more street and one more turn from being home. "Come on," he said to himself. "Stop this." He forced his feet to walk at a normal pace now, though it felt like they were being pushed forward by an unchecked engine. It was all he could do to physically restrain himself from sprinting back to the comfort of his home, his movies, his popcorn, his bed.

He passed the midway point of the street, marked easily by the two-story home with a real estate agents' sign staked ominously in the dying front yard—the only house on his block that had been caught in the foreclosure tsunami, it hadn't sold still, a month later. Suddenly, against the blackness of the open windows on the second floor, he realized someone was standing in the bedroom window. A white face stared at him, immobile, blank. Stephen could see no body, below the face—just the featureless, fixed gaze. And then it smiled.

He stopped worrying about feeling, or looking silly now, and broke out in a full sprint, or at least what he could manage. It was all he could do to get in walking shape, but he hadn't sprinted in years, decades it felt like. His limbs were churning through concrete for all the progress he made, as the corner seemed to stretch further and further away, the pumpkins at his sides encroaching as the street constricted to a pin's width. Stephen pushed his legs, one at a time, trying to move towards his home, but he felt himself falling, sliding on the concrete.

He tried to get up, but the pain in his chest was a weight that pinned him—he realized that if he'd been a little boy, he would have been safe. When he was a child, if he'd felt even a second of the terror he'd felt before, he would have turned around and run home. He wondered when that changed, and why, as he heard a dull thud-thud, thud-thud grow louder. He couldn't tell if it was his heart's crescendo, or footsteps, drawing nearer.

Books Read/Bought: September 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:50:00 +0000

Sorry the updates have been sparse around here—been busy getting this new site pulled together, and cranking out the short stories (which I'll have news on in the near future!). It was a light month of reading, and October is looking the same—there's no time when it's harder to be a grownup than when it rains for the first time, and you can't just lay on your couch and read all day.

Fortunately, my reading selections for the month were very decidedly non-grownup, so I guess I'll just have to call it even.

Books Read

(Something's wrong with Blogger's image server, so if you're desperate to see the covers of these books, you'll have to use Google. I know. Neolithic and shit.)

Magic Kingdom of Landover Series

Magic Kingdom For Sale

The Black Unicorn

Wizard at Large

The Tangle Box

Witches' Brew

I read five novels this month, which comprise the Magic Kingdom of Landover series I loved as a kid. I went through a year-long fantasy/sci-fi obsession right around the middle of middle school, all thanks to this series. I used to volunteer at the library down the street from my house, and I picked up the first book of the series because I liked the cover. I like the premise even more: Ben Holliday, bored with his life, answers a department store ad that says there's a Magic Kingdom for sale. He's skeptical, but—shockingly!—the ad turns out to be legit.

Adventures ensue—I reread the whole series because last month Terry Brooks, the author, published a new Landover book for the first time since I started going to high school. So, this month I got caught up, and I'm glad I did.

There's something about books you have an attachment to that brings you back to old periods of your life, periods you thought were inaccessible. Books are better at this than music or movies, for me—I spent about half of this month wandering around in a gauzy, nostalgic daze.

Anyway, I don't know that many of you would actually enjoy this series, but it's pretty well-written, and it's a great premise, so if the thought of reading a fantasy series doesn't make you flinch, I'd definitely recommend this one. It's pretty easy to swallow—next month I'll review the sixth volume, which just came out.

Football Previews

Yep, I'm counting this. Why? Because I spent approximately seven hours reading three football preview magazines, which is the equivalent of a 420-page novel. To be honest, despite my degree, a few scholarships, and departmental accolades, I probably used more mental faculty analyzing these previews than I would have been flexing if I'd cracked open Light in August. Sorry, academia, that's just the way it is when the Fall rolls in.

Books Bought

Sigh…none. Wouldn't life be easier if we all had just a little more money? Get on that, gubment.

STORY: Mr. America

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 00:55:00 +0000

Mister America, riding down the highway in a rust-red pickup rocket, the window down and the shocks creaking, his cigar lit, loving it or leaving it, Cash blaring and a flag rippling in the wind behind him, unfurling like a train that spreads over the landscape.

Mister America, shifting into fifth as he slides his Toyota Hybrid into the carpool lane on the freeway, hip-hop beating like hammers on his windows, breaking the speed limit because there's somewhere he's got to be, caring so much it hurts, saving his sneers only for a rust-red pickup, whose driver is sneering back as they flank each other down the road, pulling ahead and falling behind, tripping over each other as they try to fit through the doorway.

And neither of them tap the brakes and wonder, "So what? Who really gives a shit?" The days are growing short and the roads are so so long, and there's lanes enough for everyone, or no one.

Books Read/Bought: August 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:12:00 +0000

Well, August was, as promised, my last gasp of free reading time. I'm still sneaking in an hour here and there where I can get it, but...that's not many places. So expect to see just comic books or Dr. Seuss titles for September!

Books Read:

Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth

So, like most McSwy's devotees, I'm something of an Unferth fanboy. I really liked her volume of short shorts in the McSwy's box, and when I was loading up from their Garage Sale, I saw that they had the novel of hers they published on sale for a measly five bucks. So...yeah. Vacation is 50% window dressing (nifty tricks, experimental techniques, and the like), but wrapped inside that is a really beautiful portrait of a disintegrating marriage. I haven't ever seen a dissolving relationship done in quite this way, and since I read 50 books a year, I've seen dissolving relationships written in, say, 15,000 different ways. If you don't mind working a little for your gorgeous fiction, you'll love this book.

Shakespeare Wrote For Money by Nick Hornby

I've been looking forward to this day since I started this column, which is a direct ripoff of Nick Hornby's Believer series. Shakespeare is the final book collecting that series, and it's basically filled with what you're reading right now, except really good, and much more interesting. Hornby gives me hope for humanity, really.

Long Beach: Fortune's Harbor

This is a history book written about Long Beach; it goes all the way back to discovery, and the Native American myths about the world being created from a stream that runs through the CSULB campus. There are a number of incredible factoids (did you know Babe Ruth once came to Long Beach to get a public drunkenness ticket cleared, since he knew the judge who was sitting that day?), but I especially enjoyed the sweeping portraits; the city in the roaring 20's, the city pre- and post-WWII. Honestly, I was even fascinated by the way he described Rancho life in the early settlement days. A great book if you're into LB history--if you want to read it, plan on sitting on my couch because I'm definitely not letting this one out the front door!

33 1/3: Let it Be by Colin Meloy

33 1/3: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

If you're not yet familiar with the 33 1/3 series, prepare to slap yourself on the head. The premise in this many-volumed series (I think they've put out seventy) is that each slim book focuses on one album. The writer of the book (each book is done by a different author) can approach the exploration however they choose, either through autobiographical reflection, or oral history, or music criticism, or...anything, really. Meloy's book is a remembrance of how the Replacements' seminal album helped connect him to a musical scene far away from his native Helena, Montana. I enjoyed it as much for the insight into his life and childhood as for his thoughts on the album; the wandering, strange history of Neutral Milk's classic, penned by Kim Cooper, was not as enjoyable. It make me like the album less, actually--very 'Zine-y, it basically only served to make me feel like I was on the outside of an inside joke.

Zeitoun by Dave Eggers

Er, go buy and read this book. Right now. Eggers has decided to convert his celebrity into social awareness lately, by writing novel-styled nonfiction biographies, focusing on the lives of men who've slipped through the cracks. What is the What was very good--but I seriously prefer Zeitoun, the story of a Syrian-American, his caucasian wife, and their family just prior to, during, and post-Hurricane Katrina. The things done to him are frustrating beyond belief--but this book succeeds because it isn't an airings of grievances. It's a narrative that starts well before FEMA illegally imprisoned Zeitoun, and the purity of the streamlined narrative is what carries it; and, not coincidentally, also what makes those wrongdoings so hard to stomach. A real achievement--I don't think I know anyone who wouldn't get something good out of this book.

Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Mitchell

I posted one poem from this collection a little while back, and I wish I could just post the whole thing. It's beautifully translated (Mitchell will make you think German is actually pleasant on the ears), and Rilke's meditations on death are somehow both somber and lively. He writes with more skill about writing (as is obvious from Letters to a Young Poet) than maybe anyone in history. Take these two lines, from "Requiem": "For somewhere there is an ancient enmity/ between our daily life and the great work." Anyone who's ever worked on a novel while holding down a full time job agrees. His masterpiece, though, which I'd never read a word of, is the Duino Elegies, 10 elegies that somehow find something new to say about life, and death. I don't read as much poetry as I wish I did--Rilke's refreshing, century-old verse makes me feel even more idiotic for that habit.

Books Bought:

Magic Kingdom of Landover series

We're a bit short on money, but just days after I vowed not to buy any new books, a new Magic Kingdom of Landover book came out--the first one in fifteen years. This is a fantasy series I read in middle school that I completely geeked out about. So, I bought the new one, and am currently in the process of rereading the first five books! Wahoo!

When the Passion Dies Down

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 08:53:00 +0000

I've got a few stories, and my Books Bought/Read for August cooking, but Shar is out of town right now so I've been driving my old car around the streets of Long Beach in the middle of night, as I am wont to do when Shar is out of town. I've been thinking a lot, about life and, more specifically, what I want to do with mine, now that I'm 25 years into the damn thing.

When I was 12 years old, I decided (or realized, depending on where you're standing) that I wanted to be a writer. More specifically, I wanted to make up stories, with every spare second I had, for the rest of my life. For six or seven years, that desire was unwavering, and consuming. In college, it may even have grown, as I realized that I enjoyed writing non-made up stories too—if not as deeply.

Lately, while the desire hasn't wavered, it has evolved, into something different. I've been grappling with the question: as I get older, is it okay for that desire to be less consuming? Can I still remain faithful to it if it's no long the sole driving force in my life?

It's a difficult problem, one I think almost everyone who's grown up knowing what they wanted to be has had to deal with. I am lucky enough that the desire, and the passion are still there—but it's disorienting to me to think about how muted it is in comparison to the way I felt in high school. Then, I would come home from school and lock myself in my room for two or three hours writing; I wrote on notebooks I kept tucked into my pockets, I wrote on napkins in restaurants, I wrote during class and during lunch, on the bus and in the middle of movies. I never stopped.

Now, I write sports for a living, which I enjoy—but I also have a wife, I have more than the three friends I had in high school, I have an apartment and a bank account, I have a big TV, I have the internet, I have a laptop, and a shitload of books and movies. I have a big, fat, adult life, the specific kind I hated the thought of when I was in high school—I hated it because, with all that cool stuff to do, how could anyone hope to get any honest writing done?

I do still get a good amount done—I'm working on finishing a novel, and I'm working on a few stories I'm hoping to get published, along with the few stories I've already had accepted lately. But when I work on these things, it's in small pockets of time I stash away in between working, and spending time with Shar or my family or friends. It's in small moments that I can steal from the rest of my life. And when I'm writing, I no longer feel the rest of the world drop away, and feel myself sucked into whatever it is I'm working on. I feel satisfaction, and enjoyment, but rarely the same exhilaration.

But: that's okay.

I enjoyed this point in my relationship with Shar, when we stopped having the burning need to be around each other every second of every day, and started being happy to see each other, but not devastated to part for a while. It made it easier to be together, more relaxing, and more fulfilling. "Easier" and "more relaxing" are not ever words I thought I'd use to describe a positive shift in my relationship with writing, but hey—here we are.

In high school, writing was a holy thing, and my desire to do it an enormous force that dwarfed everything else in my life. Now, the "everything else"—Shar, friends/family, job, money, entertainment—is a lot bigger than it used to be, and the desire much smaller. But, for that change, I think it's stronger too, more grounded without the desperation. And, in a life where large forces suddenly have to be navigated, I think I prefer the nimbler size—but I guess I won't know till I either get where I'm going, or don't.

STORY: The King of Pain

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:48:00 +0000

His mother died during childbirth—his father, heartbroken, left him in the hospital, where a kind nurse took him in. Or, she'd planned to, but a cruel nurse snuck him away that night, and sold him to an infant broker, who sold him as part of a cross-Pacific labor bundle to a warehouse shoe manufacturer in China. There, he toiled through adolescence, sleeping at his work station at night, weaving tight stitches with his calloused fingers during the searing heat of the daytime.

Eventually, he escaped, but at every juncture, heartache and misfortune clouded his intentions, and blocked his path. With every death of a friend, with every broken bone, those around him would tell him the same thing: "It could be worse." It could be worse than going hungry, than getting scabies, than getting an allergic reaction to a bee sting in the middle of his eye? Worse than being friendless, orphaned, and penniless?

"Yes," they said. "It could always be worse."

Then on the eve of his fiftieth birthday, huddled under a thin socialist newspaper in the midst of a crushing rainstorm, a man approached him with a soggy telegram. He opened it to read—

"Dear sir.

We have reviewed the circumstances of your case, and are pleased to award you a spot in our latest edition, under World's Most Miserable Man.

Sincerely,

The Guinness Book of World Records"

And so he knew—it couldn't get any worse. He fumbled the newspaper off, and over his head it seemed the sky was growing a little lighter, the rain a little less piercing. He smiled. At least now he had something to hang his hat on.

Goodbye, Greatest Summer Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 21:58:00 +0000

Summers to me are always like birthdays--every year I feel like I'm having my best one. Yes, Summers in middle school and high school, playing video games and sports on Ladoga or seeing a new movie every day were great. But the last two months off, after a long year of work, was rejuvenating and relaxing in a new kind of way. I can't remember the last time I was so comfortable doing nothing--just cleaning, sleeping, and writing a little, here and there.

Now, as the Fall sports season starts back up, I'm excited to get back to work--but also a little sad to see Summer recede, with all its free time and scattered vacations. As I'm reading a great volume of Rilke (translated by my new favorite translator, Stephen Mitchell, who has swiftly unseated Stanley Lombardo), I thought I'd put up this brief poem, which captures my current mood better than I could hope to do in such a compact space. Hope the onset of Fall (which feels silly to write, as it's 94 degrees outside) finds everyone in good speed.

AUTUMN DAY

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.

Command the fruits to swell on tree and vine;
grant them a few more warm transparent days,
urge them on to fulfillment then, and press
the final sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now, will never have one.
Whoever is alone will stay alone,
will sit, read, write long letters through the evening,
and wander along the boulevards, up and down,
restlessly, while the dry leaves are blowing.

- Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Stephen Mitchell

How Long It's Been, and Some of What Has Happened Thus Far

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Guardabascio) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:09:00 +0000

The chronology of the journey Shar and I have taken together so far is a strange one. I was born on February 29, 1984—less than twenty-four hours later, she copied me, on March 1st, 1984. Fifteen interminable years intercede. We met in tenth grade, at Poly—it took me three years (and three unsuccessful attempts) to trick her into going out with me, in the Summer after we graduated. Over a month lapsed between when I asked her to be my lady and when she said yes—talk about interminable.

Since the first day she came over in that shocking capacity, August 24, 2002, seven years have passed. That's 364 weeks, 2,550 days, 61,152 hours, and 3,669,120 minutes—though it seems sometimes like it's been about ten seconds. Six of my family members have passed away since then. I've attained one college degree, one College Experience, and dropped out of grad school once. I made the round trip from Long Beach to UCLA hundreds and hundreds of times. There is a hole in the ozone layer with our names scratched into it like a weathered tree trunk. I wrote three books. I've been blessed to attend dozens of her shows, gigs, and even a few concerts.

We've been to 45 states together, three countries, and slept in the same bed in two dorm rooms, three apartments, and one of our mothers' homes. We have had 26 fights, and have made up significantly more often than that. I proposed to her once and she said yes once. We got married, on August 31, 2007. If you are reading this, there is a decent chance that you were there.

I've had six jobs since we started going out—Shar has had five. We have read all of each other's favorite books, and seen nearly all of each other's favorite movies. I do not know how many times we've gone out for dinner, or how many books we've bought—this is probably for the best. We have been in four car accidents between us. I have gotten two speeding tickets. She has gotten one ticket. We have Disneyland Annual Passports.

Before we started going out, I wanted to write for a living. Now, I do. Before we started to go out, Shar told me she didn't know what she wanted to do—she still doesn't, but she says she wants to do it with me, which on most days is probably more work than it should be anyway.

I taught her how to drive, and how to enjoy football, and she taught me how to love new kinds of music, and that religious prejudices I'd been carrying for a decade weren't any less prejudices than any other prejudice a person could carry inside of them.

At one point or another, I've regretted or second-guessed just about everything I've ever done in my life. I've never regretted asking her a fourth time, I've never regretting driving to LA so many times at the expense of so much else, I've never regretted a single minute I spent with her. It's been seven years. I'm still not itchy.