Then I remembered the video featuring Christopher Walken and had to look it up. It makes me grin every time.

Having a shitty morning? Relax, turn on your speakers, and enjoy.

Yeah. This is almost better than if he spent the whole video in a wild gunfight.

Almost.

That doesn’t make a good excuse, of course. I wear a helmet, boots, and a leather jacket and gloves most of the time, so it’s pretty silly to neglect my legs. I’m looking at installing crash bars on Lenore, but they’re only going to do so much. Maybe they’ll help prevent a crushed ankle, but they’re not going to stop asphalt from tearing into my ass like a cheese grater if I take a slide. Over the winter I started browsing the web for crash gear just for grins, and I stumbled across Draggin’ Jeans on Amazon.

Made by Fast Company, Draggin’ Jeans are denim jeans lined with Kevlar. In a slide, the denim may give way, but the Kevlar layer holds up and prevents shredded flesh. I’ve been hesitant to buy because I wasn’t sure how well they’d really hold up, but Ruben’s post prompted me to look them Draggin’ Jeans again. This time I hit YouTube and found a good video of guys putting Draggin’ Jeans to the test:

Better them than me. There’s a longer video here, which also offers a better look at the denim damage.

Looks good to me. May have to start rubbing some pennies together and see if I can’t land a pair.

Fact is I’m a busy guy. Between the work, the family, karate classes, kids’ basketball games and concerts, trips, and other events, I have a lot going on. Every weekend this month is booked solid, and last month wasn’t a whole lot better. Cramming in an hour of writing a day is not always easy.

Instead I’ve made it a goal to create something every day.

This plan dawned on me a week ago when I grabbed my Moleskine shortly before bedtime. I had an idea rolling around in my head for a couple of days, and I didn’t get it to the computer so I decided to at least get it into the notebook. As I wrote it down, that idea led to another, and another, and yet another, all connected to the same story. In a matter of ten minutes I had four characters and a rough plot for what could easily be a novel or graphic novel.

The hard part of writing them is still ahead, but now I’ve got something to make that precious keyboard time all the more effective. I can’t afford to sit and stare at a blank page, wondering what comes next, for a half hour or so. This way if I’m working on The Pack book 2 and I’m stuck, I can shift gears to this project and bust out several pages or a few thousand words.

I’ve been working on it for the whole week, and so far it’s worked. I’ve jotted notes, I printed and edited an old short story, and I wrote responses to a couple of interviews. I’ve done some research, which in turn led to even more ideas on another project. Better yet, they were all done in short bursts. They were times I had a few minutes to kill, but not quite enough time to get lost in a page. (If I can’t get a complete thought/scene onto a page, I feel I’ve lost the thread of it when I get back to the keyboard and the narrative turns to crap.)

And I haven’t been beating myself up over note writing. I haven’t been crabby and irritable because I’m worried I’m wasting my time. It doesn’t feel like work (in either a good or bad sense), but it doesn’t feel like failure.

So if you’ll excuse me, I have a little creating to do before I crash for the night.

Black and White and (lots of!) Gray

This time I had two challenges. First was getting my eyes into sharper focus, as the camera kept finding my goatee and knuckles first. Second I tweaked the aperture to properly blur the background, as well as positioned myself to block out the bulk of the shapes behind me.

Two things will make this easier in the future:

First, tracking down the software so I can tether the camera to my laptop. That will help nail down the focus instead of having to do so many test shots (and having to reset the camera between each). Second, I need to find a proper backdrop. I tried having my wife hold my open gi jacket, and while it obscured the background it introduced its own folds and shadows. Our blankets, etc., have patterns, so they wouldn’t have done any good. A simple white cloth and a simple black cloth will probably provide plenty of versatility in the future.

The Photo Friday shots to date can be found here.

The first prank is bad enough, but the second version of the prank near the end is even meaner.

Not that it stopped me from laughing at these poor bastards…

There are a several more pranks here, some funny and some just plain stupid.

Hell, I can show you that in one short video and save you five minutes:

Yes, some cops are dicks. They don’t hand out reason and common sense with guns & badges. However, there are better ways to show your displeasure than setting yourself up for a hassle or getting your ass kicked.

Get the rebound!

I’ve never been a big basketball fan, but it’s fun watching the little guys run around and do their thing. The Midget is having a blast, and even though he’s never played before, he’s learning quite a bit and has improved with every game. There have been several mornings we woke to the “thump thump thump” of his dribbling practice, and he’ll often dribble some more while he watches TV.

There hasn’t been much I’ve been able to offer him in terms of advice. The Wife played basketball in high school, but I wrestled and we weren’t big fans of the pumpkin bouncers. I more or less tuned out during basketball rules lessons in PE, and I constantly got called for fouls that I didn’t even realize were fouls. For example, if I stand firm and the guy with the ball crashes into me and falls on his ass, why is that a foul on me? Why should I have to give up ground for my opponent? I’m not going to give him a free shot at the basket!

I digress. Point is, I tried to give the little dude advice from the sideline once, but the Wife told me that was the opposite of what he needed to be doing at the moment. So I keep it simple now: “Go go go!” and “Nice shot!” That way the coaches don’t look at me like I’m crazy. It doesn’t matter much this year, but he says he wants to play throughout his school career. If that’s the case, I guess I better start learning how this shit works so we can practice in the driveway.

Yeah, we have a hoop. Inherited it when we bought the house. Only time I’ve ever paid attention to it is when I’ve had to mow around it.

Photography-wise, the lesson this week is a lot like last week’s: spot focus is tough at a distance with a low aperture setting. I need a fast zoom lens, but they’re way out of my financial reach. On the plus side, I got up and moved around the gym a bit, exercising a little more sneaker zoom than usual. The habit of staying in the bleachers with friends is one I need to break if I want to take better pics.

Here are some of the things folks have had to say about The Pack: Winter Kill outside of Amazon reviews:

“The Pack: Winter Kill is short, snappy, and about as sweet as a chewed stogie, combining elements of pulp horror, hard-boiled detective, noir, and cinematically fast-moving action.” — LJ Moore, San Francisco’s City Secrets

“Gunfire, claws, and teeth all erupt in one wild melee of mayhem.” — Sheila Merritt, Hellnotes

“The Pack: Winter Kill is a page turner with fast action, succinct dialogue and short chapters. Mike Oliveri races you through the book and you clamber to turn the pages fast enough.” – Ron Earl Phillips, 52 Books

“Winter Kill is an action film made word. Sticky blood. Smart violence. Real characters. This is the kind of book I like to read.” – Weston Ochse, author of Empire of Salt

This is the kind of thing that gets me excited to write the next book. If you’ve been thinking about buying The Pack: Winter Kill, pull the trigger! You won’t be disappointed.

He believes he can fly

Here’s the thing about throws and sweeps, though: they’re not very painful. The first thing you learn in Judo is how to fall without hurting yourself, which includes when getting thrown. Throws like this do look spectacular, but the objective isn’t to inflict damage to your opponent, it’s to get them to the ground and get a superior position from which to work a submission (or to ground ‘n’ pound in an MMA match). Now, there are times one fighter will pick up another and slam him to the ground as hard as possible, and that can be painful, but in general a takedown itself isn’t going to end a fight.

That all said, I’ve been getting more and more interested in judo and its throws and sweeps myself. There’s some judo in the Shuri-ryu karate curriculum, and I picked up a copy of Kodokan Judo to get a more complete idea of what’s involved in the art. I’m also reading a book called Falling Hard, a great book written by a British journalist who took up judo at age 50. I’m about 70 pages in and I’ve already learned a lot of interesting things about the history of the art and its founder, Jigoro Kano.

My karate school offers judo classes as part of the karate membership, so I may take advantage of those classes later this year. I need to concentrate on making ikkyu (first-degree brown belt) first because the last stripe is going to be a tough one. This just would not be the right time to shake up my schedule. Judo should round out my skills, and should better prepare me for my black belt test when the time comes.

If I do hit those classes, though, it’ll sure feel odd to wear a white belt again.