Au Revoir, Disneyland Paris: Paris Part Three

Jeff and I were again up at the crack of dawn for our last day in Disneyland Paris. Everything hurt. My feet screamed at me every time I took a step. I actually had to sit down in the tub to take a shower. My back ached. The sciatic problem in my leg burned like a million wasps decided my tendons were the enemy. We had to walk about twenty minutes to get to the metro station we needed, then get on the train and transfer to the RER in order to get aboard the train to Disneyland.

And it was all worth it just to see that castle again.

It was palpably our final day. We managed to redo all the stuff we’d fallen in love with, especially the whole microcosm of Frontierland, stunningly the best part of either park. We rode the Molly Brown Riverboat – which seemed, indeed, to be unsinkable – and caught glimpses of the Mark Twain Riverboat in dock, which was basically a jumble of splinters held together by warp and woof. I couldn’t resist traveling through Phantom Manor once more, and it kept resonating with me: it’s not only scarier than all the other Haunted Mansions, it’s also a lot sadder. The frontier town buried beneath the house is frightening and fun … but there’s an undercurrent of despair. One of the more desolate notions about revenants is that they’re compelled to repeat the things they did in life. The nature of an attraction like Phantom Manor means that the Audio-Animatronics are repeating everything, over and over, in perpetuity. If you allow yourself into the fiction, allow yourself to be wrapped up in the story, you open up these vistas within. It seemed to me, even though the ride is set on the American frontier, that the emotions and concepts that Phantom Manor conjured are very French: ennui, isolation, and the feel of compulsive déjà vu.

Or maybe I was just sad to be leaving.

We rode the carrousel, and Jeff’s tradition of naming his favorite horse continues. I don’t remember his name, except it was obviously clever and luxurious. The name for my horse? Necromancer du Poulet Rôti. Jeff howled for hours at that one.

You want to know one of the coolest things about most of the attractions? They figure out a very interesting way to make it in French and English. Like the Ratatouille ride. At one point, Remy is trying to choose between three dishes. He mentions the first one in French, the second one in English, and then the third one is a mix. During the nighttime show, Dreams (which is a cross between World of Color in California Adventure and Wishes … sort of. There’s water projections and explosions and it’s all really fantastic.) Peter Pan and Wendy are talking; Peter asks a question in English, Wendy answers in French, Peter reiterates in English. It’s the least invasive way of being bilingual ever.

Speaking of invasive and being French: were you aware that cutting in line is actually a French thing that people just do? It’s not discouraged. But by the last day of our trip, Jeff and I were pretty dang sick of it. We got to the Studios at open, and … I mean, both Crush’s Coaster and Ratatouille were down, nobody had any information as to when they’d be open, and no one really seemed to care. Ah, Paris. Anyway, we made the best of it and made our way to the barren asphalt wasteland that surrounds Rock N Rollercoaster, got in line, and were immediately beset upon by these three underage line cutters. They were behind us and kept trying to force their way ahead. Jeff turned to me. “We’re not letting them by. This is our time!”

I agreed, and we did everything we could to passive-aggressively block their really unsubtle ruse. At one point, the younger girl and boy locked eyes with Jeff and I, and there seemed to be something of a grudging respect there. They knew they’d been bested. Also, when they saw the coaster cars take off at the speed of sound, it was obvious it was that it was their first time there. The girl, in English, shouted, “Oh, SHIT.” Jeff and I then liked them from there on out.

We didn’t want to leave, that was the thing. We eventually got to ride Ratatouille together for the first time, which was c’est magnifique (a phrase I used more often than one might deem necessary). I rode Crush’s Coaster solo and desperately wanted to go on again (but then they were closed, except they weren’t, well maybe they were, no one knows). We rode Big Thunder in the daylight, which meant that the tunnels to the island it’s on felt darker, but the ride itself just isn’t as awesome in the daylight (this is true for all Big Thunders). We discovered that the Indiana Jones coaster, which has a great queue but barely a theme on the ride itself, is a lot better in the front seat. We ate at the Golden Nugget and discovered that the food there was actually passable. Not good; heavens, no! There is no good food at Disneyland Paris, at least in our experience. We didn’t eat at Cinderella’s Royal Table yet, but maybe next time.

Our last event on our itinerary before heading back to the apartment was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. We’d heard raves and were really excited to try it out. Only when we got into the holding area did we realize that the people raving must be lunatics. For the first time, the language barrier, the crowds, and our encroaching exhaustion had begun to catch up with us. We had no idea where we were being seated – a CM in broken English explained it as, “You will have seats. The red section.” Unfamiliar with the setup, I didn’t know where the red section was. Nothing was labeled “the red section.” I was suffering under the added indignity of not always knowing what red is. When eventually we were seated, it was in these stadium seats that were so uncomfortable it was as if we were being asked to feel the simulated effects of saddlesore.

The food came intermittently. No one ever told us how we would be fed, so when half our section got dinner and we didn’t, I wanted to cry. Jeff was just over it. Eventually – an hour into the show – our ribs and chicken were doled out and we dug in, not even caring how bad the food was. But TWIST: the food was fantastic. It was without a doubt the best food I’d had in France thus far … excepting, of course, that long-ago Roquefort. Oh man, I wish I was eating that Roquefort now.

As for the show? Well, it made very little sense. It was set up like a sporting arena and there were simulated stagecoach robberies and at one point we all had to pass a soccer ball around, I THINK? Around the hour and a half mark, actual buffalo thundered out onto the field, and that was pretty cool. I don’t remember much. I was falling asleep and dreaming of Roquefort. The family next to us just stared ahead and had no expression. Jeff thought they were plants. Or robots.

Despite the drawbacks – the bad food, the almost hilarious lack of customer service at times (and I will stress that it’s at times; most of the people there were as kind and courteous as the CMs in America), the oddly shoddy paint jobs in some areas of the park – Disneyland Paris enchanted us. It was different enough, and awesome enough, for us to seriously consider returning before our annual passes are up next April.

But those are dreams for another day. Stumbling out of the parks and onto the train, the thought hit me: I’ve seen Disneyland, but now I’m going to see Paris. Leaning back into my seat and grinning at my friend, I couldn’t help but have a little thrill at what might come next.

NEXT UP: OUR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

I’ll Never Be Sober (Kickstarter poem)

I’ll Never Be Sober

across the table you’ve got your sipping whiskey
the way it passes your lips, splashing over your teeth
I want to fight you for your glass of sipping whiskey
I want to knock some reality into your disbelief

I never drink except when I do
I never know which me I’ll get
sometimes it’s fun times screaming rock and roll
sometimes its fighting and fucking and endless regret
I’ll never be sober in this life
I’ll never not crave oblivion
is heaven an escape from my stupid consequence
or is it just a break from this hell I’ve been living in?

watching you drink is like watching you fuck
the more you do it, the more you let go
you don’t want a drink and you don’t want me
but get some of both in you and you stop saying no

I only drink when I can’t stop myself
fire in my gut, blitzkrieg in my mind
the numbing release of whiskey down my throat
the sweat on your back as we start to go blind
I’ll never be sober even when I don’t drink
I always want more than I can take
I’ll always want you more with whiskey on your breath
I’ll always want to find out just where we’ll break

there’s something broken in me that wants you to suffer
is it me or the drinking that drives me to violence
whiskey makes it easier to contend with myself
whiskey makes it easier for you to take it in silence

I never drink because I can’t stop when I do
this wrong inside me isn’t just alcohol
there’s a darkness outside that I’m always lost in
there’s a pit inside me and I can’t stop the fall
I’ll never be sober and that’s just fine
it’s easier to live when I can’t think
I don’t want to break the cycle of pain and despair
I’m already breaking
good god I need a drink

My Favorite Crush: Paris Part Two

This was our plan: on my first full day in Paris, Jeff and I were going to wake up at 5:30 AM and beat feet to Disneyland, in order to get there in time for Extra Magic Hours. EMH works differently in DLP than at either WDW or Disneyland in Anaheim. All you needed was the annual pass, which we had cleverly purchased the day before, and you could get into Disneyland two hours early. Two hours! How cool was that!

You couldn’t get into both parks early, sadly, and the only lands open in DLP that early are Discoveryland (the steampunk version of Tomorrowland that looks like you’ve stepped into Jules Verne’s fever dreams, in a good way) and Fantasyland, which has all the dark rides, except Dumbo which is under refurb, and “it’s a small world,” which isn’t, but which is inexplicably closed during EMH. Jeff was cool with it; we were able to ride Peter Pan right off, and if you thought the starfield was cool in Disneyland Anaheim, it just goes on and on and on in Paris.

We rode the Carousel, Snow White and Pinocchio (neither of which I can get at WDW), and the teacups before heading into the Castle to have a walkaround fantasy. Did you know there’s a cavern underneath the castle, and a dragon there? A freakin dragon that breathes smoke and has glowing eyes and flapping wings? THERE IS A DRAGON UNDER THE CASTLE. Points to France. We have dragons but only in parades and shows and stuff. A dragon. Wow.

Our big plan was to get to the Studios park as soon as it opened at 10:00 AM. Our first attempt to get in was met with incredulity by the French cast member, who tried to scan our tickets … then moved to another turnstile when they wouldn’t beep. We moved with her, thinking this was her intent. It wasn’t. “Hello?” I called. “Bojour?” Oh, she was there. She heard us. She was just ignoring us.

Jeff asked, “Did she just … stop doing her job in the middle of helping us?”

I nodded at him. “Oh, oui.”

Eventually we got into the Studios, and … how to describe it? The Studios contains four of the best rides in all of Disneyland Paris, and they’re surrounded by a park that can’t be bothered to attempt a theme. The era of the “studio park” is a little tired at this point regardless, but man does the Studios just not try. Immediately, we made our way over to the Ratatouille mini-land, and THAT was charming. It was like the best possible idea of Paris in miniature. The line for the ride snaked out fifty minutes, but either Parisians aren’t as familiar with the concept of Single Riders or there was just no one utilizing that space, we took full advantage. Ten minutes after getting in line for the most popular ride in either park, we were clambering into our vehicles.

I … had some problems with the Ratatouille ride the first time. I think part of it had to do with the hype and part had to do with the cognitive dissonance. It overwhelms your senses. The vehicles move independently, and you get the feeling of being shrunk down and catapulted into a non-stop frenzy while being the size of a rat. It felt almost unpleasant on my first go, the same feeling I got from the Spider-Man ride at Universal the first time I went there. We went on again almost immediately and I realized how much I liked it. We went on a THIRD time and I loved it.

It wasn’t the only thing I loved. Like I said, there’s basically no connective tissue in the Studios, but man are the rides pretty amazing. Tower of Terror is not really any different from the one in Anaheim, but it was still terrific. Rock n’ Rollercoaster, however, is very different, at least in its intent. The ride in WDW has you shooting through Los Angeles after a video of being in the studio with Aerosmith. The one in Paris is … ah hell, why not say it? It’s impressionist. Aerosmith calls out that it’s going to be a roller coaster; the linear “story” is gone. Then you launch and it’s the wild, cannonballing effect of actually being at a concert, done with lights and sound and speed. None of the standup signs that suggest a place; this is all going on feeling. It’s a change in intent but man is it effective.

But none of it compares with Crush’s Coaster, which should be just … just not as goddamned good as it is. It’s just a regular coaster with a spin in the dark, but it manages to be scary, and fun, and exhilarating all at once. Jeff and I waited in line for over an hour to get on it and it was worth every second. We even tried to get back later, but … well, I don’t know if it’s the Studios or France, but first they said it was down for the rest of the day and there was no point in waiting, and then they said it was open again but not the single-rider line, and now the line had stretched another hour. Damn you, Studios!

Back at the regular park, we showed up for our wonderful meal at the absolutely beautiful Walt’s. Each dining room is made up to invoke each of the lands in Disneyland. Originally they put us in the Fantasyland room, which was packed with whimsy, but it was next to a window and it was too hot so we moved over to the Main Street USA room. Beautiful: vintage, a little bit steampunk (every place in Disneyland Paris is a little bit steampunk), and cozy. We were so excited to be there. After so much inexplicably terrible food at Disneyland, we were ready for this place, which got high marks from almost everyone.

Boy howdy, was the food awful. Jeff got … I don’t remember what Jeff got. I got marsala chicken, which turned out to be a cooked(?) chicken breast sitting on top of a thin rime of marsala sauce. I’ll say this: the sauciers at DLP are pulling more than their own weight, because this and the sauce at Blue Lagoon were both amazing. That chicken, though? I didn’t know you could actually make meat both dry and damp at the same time.

As we were leaving the park that night, we came across one of Paris’ weird passions: flavored Lay’s potato chips. I picked up a bag that said poulet roti – rotisserie chicken.

It was the best food we’d had all day long. We devoured that bag on the long, long train ride home. My feet were explosively in pain. My brain was eager to shut down. My body was at the edge of exhaustion. And we had to be awake in six hours to do it all again one last time.

On the Frontier: Paris Part One

I flew IcelandAir, Paris by way of Reykjavik. Immediately I was impressed by the overnight setup - pillows and blankets on the seats. The last time I flew IcelandAir, it was 2001, and we got free, delicious hot meals with real silverware. This time I ate me some pre-packaged sliders and took sleeping pills so I could get to Paris refreshed and keep going. Jeff booked the AirB&B and it was awesome. Everything IKEA and we stood in the kitchen and ate the cheese he'd bought from Barthélémy, the most famous cheese shop in Paris. I made it my mission to get there eventually. Taking my first bite of the Roquefort, it finally locked into me: I was in Paris, my first time in a place where they spoke a different language. I wasn't fluent, but I came equipped with the language of cheese, and we danced in our rented kitchen eating Roquefort.

The trip to Disneyland Paris was about 45 minutes. Two transfers; not bad. I didn't really know what to expect. I had this expectation that it was going to be DIFFERENT, not necessarily BETTER. We stepped off the train and there it was at once: Disneyland Paris (not EuroDisney; that name changed over a decade ago). That was one similarity with Disneyland in Anaheim. The real world bumped up right against the fantasy, and Jeff and I worried if we'd be able to fall into the "bubble," that automatic feeling you get at Walt Disney World in Florida: the sense that Disney is all around you, and that you are fully immersed. We needn't have worried. The second we stepped through those gates, we didn't look back.

I wasn't prepared for how BEAUTIFUL the park was; the landscaping is the best in any Disney park I've seen. (Well, Animal Kingdom gives it a run for its money). It sprawled out in front of us like a glorious dream of symmetry. The castle - Sleeping Beauty Castle, reimagined with a sloping hillside of cube-cropped trees, waterfalls, and a dragon cave near the moat - commands every view. It's asymmetrical, too, which sets it apart from everything else. It's leagues better than its sister castle in Anaheim, and is almost as impressive as Cinderella Castle in Orlando.

Jeff asked if it was important what we rode first. I nearly said the teacups - that's my first ride in Disneyland (Space Mountain is my first ride in Disney World, but Space was closed for renovations during this trip) - but left it up to him. He chose Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the best possible choice. Pirates won us over immediately - logically sound, a little scary, with a storyline that makes more sense than any of the other versions. Plus it skirted a restaurant - the Blue Lagoon - that absolutely prepared us for the biggest crime of DLP, the mind-bogglingly terrible food.

We were unprepared for the biggest shocker of them all: Frontierland (good in WDW, almost an afterthought in DLR) was the best part of all of Disneyland Paris. Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and Phantom Manor (DLP's version of the Haunted Mansion) were not just the best versions of those rides anywhere. They served to anchor a land in which no expense was spared in placemaking, theming, and knock-out beauty. There's a whole coda to Phantom Manor that takes you to honky-tonk hell. Oh, the busts are singing "Grim Grinning Ghosts," but this is scaresville and no fooling. Big Thunder plunges you into pitch black TWICE and then put you on an island to swoop and dip and scream. They are perfect.

We finished off our first night in Disneyland Paris wandering through the steampunk insanity of Main Street and its twin arcades. Our feet were killing us and I was having that cascading exhaustion I get when I've stayed out all night or traveled to Paris from Boston and then immediately went to a theme park. Back to the Air B&B for 5 hours of sleep; we had to be up at 5:30 AM for our first full day at Disneyland Paris, and we couldn't wait.

Hitting My Goal & What Comes Next

First off, I'd like to thank each and every one of you for donating to my book. You're all bastions of humanity and supporters of the arts and I love all of you.

Here's what happens now: I am in the process of finishing my 20th novel, a book called THINGS HAVE CHANGED. When that's done, I have some edits to do on a few of my other books - my last novel, MY AGENT OF CHAOS, and a new version of a nonfiction book called CHART OF DARKNESS. My desk should be clear in mid-April, which is when I will launch into the first draft of EATING ANIMALS.

The through-line (I don't really do plots unless I'm writing a mystery or crime novel) is similar to a few of my other books: people who are roughly my age are trying to deal with love and life, despite the unnerving persistence of the past and their fleeting brushes with success. If you wanted to sum up what I'm about, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. However, there are differences: of the four main characters, two are chefs - a profession I've been wanting to write about for some time. These two guys are also both straight; I've been wanting to write about straight adult male friendships for awhile and one of them always ends up being a woman or a gay dude.

I've written about two of these characters in the past. One of them, Alicia Stander, appeared in two of my past novels - WOLVES IN THE BLACK and THE LEGEND OF JENNY MCCABE. Her journey almost seemed complete. She started off damaged in WOLVES and in JENNY she'd healed herself. I wrote both those books in the Aughts. Wade Gimble, her boyfriend, appeared much earlier, in a short story called, "Last Night at the Bear," which I wrote in the mid-1990s. Wade was an analogue to who I was back then, and when he showed up (completely unplanned) in JENNY MCCABE, it was interesting to catch up on who he's been and what he's been doing. He and Alicia found each other and helped each other. But Wade's been in my mind a lot lately. I've begun wondering if there's a chance for drama - for conflict, for a good story - after healing. I think there is.

There's also a character I want to use who mirrors Kathy in Steinbeck's East of Eden - one of my favorite novels ever. I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to build a character like that without feeling sexist, and I think it'll be a good challenge for me as a male writer.

I'm also delving into stuff like technique and structure in this book. Normally, I start off each book having a vague idea what drives the characters and having some vague conflict they need to deal with. I've plowed through a lot of books that way and it usually works. This time, I want to have an interesting structure, and an interesting way to introduce the main players. My books have usually employed a three-part structure. Most recently, the parts consist of: characters start somewhere / ROADTRIP / come back home changed. This ... likely won't change that paradigm. But I'm going to be dealing with the past of the characters in a more personal way, because Wade's past is MY past.

So that's where we stand on EATING ANIMALS. I'm currently weighing the pros and cons of releasing the novel in segments so you can all read along as I write it. We'll see how I feel come mid-April and it's game time.

Thanks again for giving me the urgency to finish this novel. I already have some ideas for book #22 coming up (it's going to be very short), and I have to start writing it in November, so let's hope EATING ANIMALS has a quick gestation. You've all supported me and the concept of independent writing and publishing, and I can't tell you how gratified I am.

Read well, write well, and let freedom ring!

Migrating Animals

Things were weird for me in 1994. I was living alone in a rooming house, along with a sore clutch of dying old men and junkies literally itching their way into overdoses. I supported myself with two to three retail jobs at the local mall, minimum wage at all of them, and the bus came intermittently - sometimes not at all. The cliche of eating Ramen to survive was my real life - Ramen and store-brand soda and Little Debbie snacks, because they were affordable.

During that time, I wrote a short story about two guys my age - 19 going on 20. It was the first time I used my own name as the lead character's name in a story. Kev was the hero of the piece, sort of. He has a work friend named Wade, a miserable, sad wretch of a guy, who tries to kill himself in Kevin's car. A melee ensues. Things end up okay. Back then, it was wish fulfillment. The last line of the story is, "This kid's got places to go." And I did. I ended getting out of the rooming house I was in and moving into a studio. I got out of the relationship I was in that ... he wasn't a bad guy, we just were wrong for each other. I made my life better through sheer force of will, which made me believe that Kev was the main character, and that knowing he was on the righteous path was enough.

But it wasn't.

Wade appeared again in a novel I wrote a decade later, a very long book called The Legend of Jenny McCabe. He's had a rocky road to get where he was. Along the way, he's discovered some weird sexual stuff about himself. And he's become a chef. It was around this time that I started to realize what that long-ago short story, called "Last Night at the Bear," was really all about. Kevin was who I wanted to be. Wade was who I was. And in 2007, Wade was still who I was.

I'm entering into a new novel called Eating Animals, whose title is a bit of a description and a bit of a metaphor. In the book, Wade has to go back home to confront his dying father - a father he hasn't seen since 1997. And I realized that this was the perfect time for me to actually go back and confront the guy I was back then. I kept records and journal entries and stories from 1997. I want to know who I was then, and how that's shaped who I am now. I want to figure out Wade from two different sides of the spectrum.

I'm nervous to start. That's part of why I decided to set this up as a Kickstarter - because I always finish my Kickstarter projects, meaning that having an advance on this book means I have a responsibility to write it. If you'd like to help me on this journey into my past, why not kick a few dollars my way? Check out the project, watch my goofy video, and consider backing me. I'd really appreciate it, and thank you!

Eating Animals, by Kevin Quigley: A Kickstarter Project

Eating Animals: Kev's writing a new book!

Hey everyone!

The world of publishing is changing, and on my long, rocky trip through it, I'm changing, too. It used to be that publishers, upon accepting a new novel, would provide an advance for the writer in order to keep writing and focus on her or his craft. That doesn't happen as much anymore, and as self-publishing has gained both traction and legitimacy, I think it's important to maintain some hold on what originally made publishing so great.

I write books. I write a lot of books. Eating Animals will be my twenty-first novel. In the past, I've gone the more traditional route with publishers. Sometimes I've gotten published, sometimes I haven't. It's always a crapshoot. You do it because you love the work, you love the craft, and you love the sense of accomplishment watching the stuff in your mind coming together on the page. It's a thrill unmatched anywhere else.

But it sure isn't lucrative.

Eating Animals is a passion project for me. It involves a character named Wade Gimble I've had in my mind since 1997, when I wrote my first short story about him. Since, I've touched on him lightly in other books, but I've never really explored who he was - and, by extension, who I was - when I first made him up. I want to go back to those two young guys, both the nascent character and the nascent me, and find out who they were, and why they needed each other then. It's also a book about chefs, and cooking, and fathers and sons, and the sometimes destructive nature of love. Some of it's gonna hurt, but I'm aiming for laughs.

Why should you support me? Because even though I write my books for free and for me, sometimes it helps to have a little more money to keep the gears turning. I do a lot of work every day, and I don't get paid for any of the creative stuff. It'd be nice to have that advance, in order to keep doing what I love, and in order to feel like what I'm doing is worth it.

Thanks for supporting me, and my novel. Eating Animals is going to be a rollercoaster of writing, and I'm glad to have you with me for the ride.

Eating Animals is on Kickstarter!

The Ink Journals

The why, where, and how of my body art.

1. Bear With Me (May 10, 1999) - Bear Claw

2. Stand In the Place Where You Live (November 13, 1999) - Stephen King's The Stand

3. Man Without Fear (October 4, 2004) - Daredevil

4. We Can Make It If We Run (September 24, 2005) - Bruce Springsteen Sneakers

5. Boldly Going (February 18, 2006) - Star Trek

6. My Flirtation With Obscure Punctuation (April 8, 2006) - Interobang

7. Howl (November 8, 2006) - Cycle of the Werewolf

8. Red and Blue (January 29, 2007) - Blue October

9. Pinch Me (February 18, 2007) - Barenaked Ladies

10. Thou Mayest (July 19, 2007) - Timshel

11. Sorry, But Our Princess Is In Another Castle (January 28, 2008) - Super Mario

12. Lucky Thirteen (June 9, 2009) - Anchor 13

13. If We Can Dream It... (July 22, 2009) - Horizons

14. A Bear Can Rest at Ease (April 2, 2010) - Baloo

15. The Pepper Engine (July 20, 2010) - Steampunk Dr Pepper

16. The Eagle Has Landed (August 2, 2011) - Bob Seger Eagle

17. It's Great to Be Alive (April 14, 2012) - Drive-By Truckers

18. I'm the Wind, Baby (July 31, 2012) - Tom Servo

19. Hardy & Arbuckle (March 29, 2013) - Comedy & Tragedy

20. Don't Panic! (July 5, 2013) - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

21. Dream Baby Dream (August 22, 2013) - Irving + Springsteen = Sketch

22. Like a Grand and Miraculous Spaceship (December 18, 2013) - Spaceship Earth

23. My Unending Fury (February 8, 2014) - Christine

24. For the Love of Moose (April 12, 2014) - Moose Mason

25. Flying Over Water (July 19, 2014) - Disney Cruise Line

26. Heave Ho (December 30, 2014) - Blitzen Trapper

Trying to Be Okay In a Year That Isn’t: 2014 in Review (December / Love the Way You Walk Away)

And here we come to the end.

As I write this, I’m sitting in my favorite Starbucks. Playing Barenaked Ladies because they’re what was playing at ImprovBoston, as I finished my year.

December: I started the month rewarding myself for the trials of the rest of the year. There’s an inherent danger in that sort of reward, and I knew that going into it. You can put too much on the good thing you’re felt you’re owed. You’re chasing a totem, a talisman, something that underlines and underscores that the stuff you lived through and the shit you’ve swum in and the absolute hell you’ve managed to make your own life needs some reward. That’s the way fiction works. It should be the way life works. But life isn’t a book. It’s not a song. It’s not a play or a sitcom or an hourlong drama. It’s life, and sometimes life is hard, and sometimes you don’t get what you want or need. Sometimes you do, because that’s reality, too.

I took in my final Bob Seger concert as December showed November the door. I say last because Seger isn’t doing for me what I need concerts to do for me. I love him, and he’s meant a lot to me over the last few years, and he still means a lot to me, but it’s not what Springsteen or Drive-By Truckers or Blitzen Trapper do to me when it’s live and you’re right there. I had great seats to a pretty good concert, and Seger played all the hits I wanted to hear (except maybe “Still the Same”), and played stuff from his new album I never ended up connecting with. “Hollywood Nights” transported me and that was great, and “We’ve Got Tonite” was moving, and of course “Mainstreet” and “Night Moves” thrilled me. It’s probably not the music. I could blame it on the venue if I hadn’t seen Barenaked Ladies or Springsteen there and experienced the verve and the joy that I need to get from these shows. It’s not necessarily that he’s older. It’s maybe that new album thing. I keep finding stuff to love on all of Springsteen’s new records, and he plays the hell out of those new records in concert, and it feels like a dynamic, rich experience. This was good. This was fun. But I don’t want to go again.

A day later, I was on a plane to Disney World for my longest trip in a good long time. I was meeting my buddy Jeff for a night at Magic Kingdom, followed by a four night cruise on the Disney Dream, followed by four more nights at Disney World. This was what the whole year had been for. This is what I get for living through all of it.

And it started out that way. That first night with Jeff was amazing, and the cruise turned out to be as relaxing and fulfilling as the last one. No one noticed my Disney Cruise Line tattoo, but whatever. One night on the ocean, Jeff and I got dolled up in our finery and sat down to a seven-course dinner at Remy, the ship’s signature French restaurant. I didn’t really feel out of place in my suit and tie, and our waiter was cute and explained everything, and they kept bringing out plate after plate of six-bite delights: tomato soup balls, actual ratatouille (I surprised myself by trying a lot of the tomato and onion dishes, to discover to my actual amazement that … well, that I could be a little adventurous and still not like tomatoes or onions), pigeon, duck, three desserts; exactly the type of restaurant experience I’ve wanted for years. And it was all easy, you know? It didn’t mess with my head. I brought my book into a hot tub once and read awhile. Jeff and I did spa trips and got massages (good) pedicures (amazing) and facials (oh my God, no no no no, never again, no, stay away from my eyes). We rode the Aquaduck water coaster and waded in the warm Atlantic just off of Disney’s private island of Castaway Cay, and I rode a rented bike around the paths and played Darkness on the Edge of Town at top volume from the basket of the bike. It was wonderful. Top to bottom wonderful.

Recently, one of my favorite writers, Lawrence Block, relayed a story about him taking a five-week cruise and writing a whole new novel. That concept thrilled me. The idea of being able to do a five-week cruise thrilled me. Getting my sea legs and keeping them. Writing on the high seas. Making real my imagination in a place with no land, and few responsibilities.

With these thoughts, we disembarked and soon found ourselves in Disney World proper again. And it was great. I need you to know that it was great. I rode Space Mountain probably eighty or ninety (or five) times. I hung out with some great friends, including Paul, and David and Toby, and amazing local Robert. I got to ride Spaceship Earth and casually wander around Epcot and get my last glimpse of the Sorcerer’s Hat. And then … then it all got too much.

Folks, we all have our triggers. Mine come in different guises. I don’t want to go into what triggered my meltdown at Disney World, but much of it was that I needed some alone time and some routine, and that I missed home. I hadn’t written, I hadn’t gone to the gym, I hadn’t had much time to myself at all. Add that to the ethos of pure relaxation I’d been inside for nearly a week, and … well, you know that Stephen King novella, “The Langoliers”? There’s a part that talks about when someone who is used to pressure – who thrives on pressure – is finally pressure-free. Those people tend to explode.

One night, it came to a head. All I wanted was to be home. I called the airline and tried to book a flight, but it was just too expensive. I shut down. All I wanted was to be alone, just for awhile, like Greta Garbo.

Of course I bounced back, but it took awhile. And I hate myself a little for flipping out on vacation, and for putting my friends through the worst of who I am. It’s never my intention to get internal or get overwhelmed. I don’t want to be sad. But sometimes I am, and maybe it’s okay to be sad sometimes, even in the place I go to to be happy. But maybe I need to strike a balance with Disney World. I don’t want to get blasé about it, but making it the panacea to my bad moods is never going to make it the most easygoing place to be.

I’m taking most of 2015 off of going there, in part because I need to reset my longing, in part because I need to figure out what the place means to me and why I like going, and in part because I need to set the Disney Twitter part of my life on the backburner for awhile, and let the negativity drain off fully.

The big show opened. The ImprovBoston Holiday Spectacular launched to a mostly polite (if sold out) Dad audience, and then kept getting bigger and bigger. We ran for eight shows, and only one didn’t sell out (and that was only by eight seats). Audiences responded mostly well, which was a boon for us, because the show was unusual in structure (sketch, improv, and music) and content (we deliberately avoided any holiday clichés and occasionally got weird). I was in the theater for most shows and laughed right along with everyone else.

My Sketchhaus run took off. I was worried (terrified?) that doing “regular” shows after the event stuff would diminish audiences. But the shows kept either selling out or near-selling out. Either the acts were bringing them in, my marketing was going better than expected, or word had gotten around that I was a pretty good producer and that I knew what I was doing. I would love to believe the latter. I also hooked up with my friend John Serpico and standup superstar Kelly McFarland to produce a new experimental variety show called LaughterRisk, starting in January. And my Johnny D’s nights just kept on keeping on.

I hung out with my Dad a lot. Ever since I became a real adult, my relationship with my Dad has been kind of awesome in every way. We drove up to visit my Grandma and Grandpa one weekend before Christmas, and my only regret was that I lost my really nice expensive headphones on the journey. The following weekend, Shawn and I went up and had our nice Christmas dinner and gift exchange with him and my new stepmother Donna. I gave my Dad a book featuring lady superheroes in fetish situations and he got me a tattoo. We’re basically the Waltons.

Our Christmas Eve tradition continued with Tracey and Liz, where we go over there and spend time eating all of the food, all of it, and give each other awesome presents. Early in 2014, I decided to call it “The Year of Christine,” given my Christine tattoo and the movie I showed on my birthday and re-reading the novel. The Year of Christine officially ended when Liz unveiled my big gift – a framed poster of Christine, the film. I could have wept. (For my part, I did make Tracey weep with my intuitive gift of a book of Louisa May Alcott’s letters to her husband. Sometimes, I still have it.)

Christmas, often a tense time for me because Shawn’s friends come along and we have Many Plans involving food and movies and gifts and everything, worked out pretty damn well. Shawn gave me Guardians of the Galaxy on Blu-Ray and a Daredevil action figure (and eventually a new Springsteen live record and my Zelda calendar), and my grandparents had gotten me a Starbucks and a Disney gift certificate and things were good. Easy. I was easing into the end of the year.

The last night of the year, I spent chugging comedy at ImprovBoston, and at the stroke of midnight I kissed a straight bald comedian on the head, because I do those things. It was great, but the capper of the year came three days earlier, when I went to Chameleon Tattoo and met with tattooer Matt, who had never inked me in the past, and got myself my long-sought Blitzen Trapper tattoo – an amalgam of three of their album covers. I wrote an entry about it and took pictures and everyone (including the band themselves) proclaimed it awesome.

I’ve been talking a lot about Blitzen Trapper a lot in these entries. More than Springsteen and more than Drive-By Truckers, both of whom gave me great records and great experiences this year (DBT’s might be one of their best albums, near flawless and a great way to jump into new material after being into them for years), but for myriad reasons, Blitzen Trapper really defined 2014. They were a major bright spot, a reason to believe in being creative in the face of adversity. They broke my depression in half. They were half of the best rock shows I saw this year, and the fact that I could see them with a wonderful friend who had moved far away was even better.

My favorite song this year is one that came out in 2011. It’s a song called, “Love the Way You Walk Away,” and much of the reason I latched onto it was because of a line that goes, “when you find what you’re looking for, you want it less.” It’s a melancholy line, because it describes so much of how I interact with a lot of my life. I can get blasé about the stuff I’ve worked for, and I can get overwhelmed with the places I go, and I can be petty about my victories and sore about my losses. Sometimes when I grab hold of the things I thought would make me happy, it turns out that happiness is as elusive as smoke, as illusory as false memory.

But as I reflect back on the best memories of 2014, another line from the song rises up. In 2014, I rode a bike around Denver with the Rockies in the distance. I saw the Overlook Hotel – the real one – for the first time, with my friend Beemer. I rebuilt my sketch team, constructed a night of comedy out of thin air, took back a different night of comedy, and became the kind of producer people ask for by name. I took a cruise with one of the best friends I’ve ever had and looked out at that giant ocean and had one of the best meals of my life. I learned more about cheese. I went to Disney World with my sweetie and we celebrated fifteen years together. I went to the 12-hour Halloween Horrorthon. I got my own bike from one of my other best friends. I took another friend to Disneyland for the first time. I got free Chuck Taylors and got Shawn an art showcase for his paintings for his birthday. My book of short stories was announced as a paperback. I ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for a novel I finished, and did NaNoWriMo for another novel I’m in the midst of writing. I got big at the gym. I got a new iPhone. I got some. It wasn’t the worst year ever. It just sometimes felt like it.

The other line of the song is the one I want to carry into this new year, the magical, mystical, science fiction year of 2015. It ends the last chorus: “it’s a sign or a symbol for the things in store.” I want to hold onto those good memories, the bright shining spots in a challenging year that helped me be okay and not totally lose myself. 2014, I survived you, but I love the way you walk away.

Let’s go.

Trying to Be Okay In a Year That Isn’t: 2014 in Review (November / This Is Your Sword)

Here’s what I did in November:

I wrote. I wrote until my tendons ached and my fingers hurt and my eyes burned so bad I could barely stand it. I wrote to the exclusion of real life. I wrote so hard and so fast that sometimes I thought I would go insane with writing. I kept looking at the word count and seeing myself pass a thousand-word mark, and thinking, I could get another thousand out easily. Take it in increments. Eventually that count marker will pass the hundred-word mark, and that means you’re close to 500 words, and when you hit 500 words, you’re over the hump so it’s just easy to hit another 500. You know this. Keep writing, Kev. Keep fucking writing.

It was National Novel Writing Month. I’d been looking forward to November first for months. For the uninitiated, here’s the conceit: you write a 50,000-word book in one month. It doesn’t have to be done, you just have to hit that 50k mark. The first year I tried it, I wrote an 85,000-word book called Welcome to Bloomsbury in the month’s time. Since, my ambition clashed a bit with my drive. I’ve successfully hit the 50k mark on three other books, but only two of those became actual novels. The one I was working on now was an old screenplay concept called Things Have Changed. I first thought of it when I was in my twenties and living in my old studio apartment, but never wrote it. The book was going to be one about identity and death and trying to figure out who you were as a person – some good jumping-off points for a good book, but nothing I could really handle back when I first started writing novels.

You could argue that that’s the trend I’m in now. Roller Disco Saturday Night was another one of my teenage novels, but the main thrust is my characters all trying to figure out who they are and where they’re going; discovering that that’s what my main character, Ruth, was missing in my first draft tied the book together. My Agent of Chaos is all about uncovering your past and realizing you used to be a whole different person than the one you turned out to be. Panic Town was picking up characters I haven’t touched in six years and figuring out who they were now, and how they had changed in the real-time years – and in the story-time seven months – I’d been away. So Things Have Changed, with its triplets and double identities, fit right into my explorations. Just after midnight on November first, I launched in and didn’t stop till I hit almost 4,000 words. The next day I woke up early and started writing at once. I nearly hit 10k on that first day. 10,000 words in one day. This novel wanted to be born.

I wrote feverishly for two weeks … but that pace isn’t really sustainable. I know that. For me, the start of a novel almost has to be a huge initial push, to get enough words behind me so that the architecture of the book has a good foundation to stand on. There are exceptions. My longest novel, The Legend of Jenny McCabe, started humbly, only 2,000 words a day, and ended up a thousand page book. Maybe there’s not just one good way. All I knew was that I was having fun. Intense, obsessive-compulsive fun, but fun nonetheless. I attended some NaNo meetings. Did some write-ins. A gaggle of my ImprovBoston friends tried their hand at NaNo so I organized a Facebook group to try to help inspire them to go further and support one another.

I hit 50,000 words halfway into week three. Had myself a little chai party at Starbucks. Rested for about a half hour. Then bent back over my keyboard and got back to work. My pace has slowed. The book is now around 72,000 words, but I’m deeper inside it now, exploring things I never thought to explore when I was racing. I’m intrigued to see where this is going, because I’ve strayed from the outline, and I only have the vaguest idea of how to end this thing. It’s my twentieth novel, you see, and I want it to be good. I want it to be excellent. I want it to be worthy of being my twentieth novel.

But the rest of my world didn’t end just because I decided to give myself over to a fictional music reviewer and two women who shared a name. I finished the new Stephen King novel, which is the first to actually give me nightmares since The Regulators. At Johnny D’s, I tested the limits of my power and put on the Spank Bank Comedy Hour, a standup night featuring only comedians I thought were sexy. Every single one was a straight guy. If I was a straight guy, I would almost definitely not be seen as quirky and fun for stuff like this.

My show Super Gay Comedy Fun Time premiered at ImprovBoston … and sold out. It sold out. This was the third Sketchhaus show and first SGCFT show that sold out since I’d taken back control of the night, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. We turned away people at the door. Turned them away. I wrote this short piece about why the night was successful:

I have to say - I had my doubts about a gay comedy event at ImprovBoston. Last time I did this, it was in June. The weather was warm and it was happening during Pride week, so it seemed like an easier sell. We're edging into mid-November here, and I'm still not sure what the "gay comedy scene" is like, if there even is one. Comedy changes fast, and the umbrella definition of "gay" changes faster. When I was young and there was gayness, it was always either homo dudes or lesbians, and bisexuals were rumored but not necessarily real. Now there's this whole diversity of fluid sexuality, shifting gender identities (or non-identities), a whole new awareness and embracing of trans folk and genderqueer people. And most of them - most of us - don't want to be defined by our sexuality/gender/personal interpretation of who we are. Sometimes we just wanna go on stage and make people laugh at our funny jokes.

There's a lot of reasons why Super Gay Comedy Fun Time was a success last night, not the least of which because we sold out so hard we had to turn people away at the door (it's cool - we have another show next Thursday at 9:00!) We throw around the word "diversity" like it's an eyerolling thing we have to put up with, but wow, that changes when you see all the viewpoints and interpretations on display at a show like this one. Two lesbian standups went up right after one another and had two completely different takes on the world. We had two sketch groups with straight allies who got hit on by dudes. Bisexuals, trans performers, gay guys, standups, musical performers, sketch groups, storytellers, performance art. All of it funny.

Diversity: sexual. Identity. Format. Comedy. We win because being GLBTQ isn't the only thing about us. It's the jumping-off point. What defines us is how fucking hilarious we are.

I began to dig on a song I’d bought early in the year, one from Springsteen’s latest album, High Hopes. Maybe not his best album or his most cohesive, but it’s one of those that continues to find deep pockets in me, music that fills in the hollow areas where you need music the most. When the record first came out, I responded most to the studio recording of “Dream Baby Dream” – a recording I’d been clamoring for since hearing it in concert during the Devils & Dust tour – and “Frankie Fell In Love,” because I love Springsteen’s pop side. But a vaguely Celtic song called “This is Your Sword” had been rising in my estimation, because it champions hope and ambition and love above sadness and cynicism. “Should you grow weary on the battlefield,” Springsteen says, “do not despair, our love is real.”

It was the message I needed to cling to. More rehearsals for The ImprovBoston Holiday Spectacular and my anxiety was ratcheting up. Would this be a good show? Would we have the type of success that we had with Comedy, America? Shawn and I went to visit my father and new stepmother at their dance symposium and saw Hunger Games and listened to Blitzen Trapper and everything was great until I had a full on panic attack.

I have an idea of what the panic attack meant. The keyed-up Kevin who was throttling through Things Have Changed had relaxed a little and could focus on the big show, which could not fail. I was broker than I had been in a good long while, and I had a long vacation coming up. I’d anticipated having more money than this going into the trip, but the holidays were upon us and everything was only adding to my anxiety. I didn’t know that work was planning on paying us a little early next month, and I didn’t know I’d be paid for a proofreading project, and I didn’t know if money was coming from any other sources. All I knew is that I had a nine-day Disney trip coming up at exactly the brokest point of my year, and that fact was settling into my brain. One night at a pretty inopportune time, I got deep into my skull and started ruminating on all the worst possible outcomes to every decision I’d made. At some point, I knew I was being silly … and I couldn’t stop.

Eventually, with Shawn’s help, I climbed out of myself, and began thinking seriously about medication to help with these issues. They don’t happen a lot, but when they hit, they hit hard and mercilessly. November had been a pretty terrific month, and here I was at the tail end of it, having trouble breathing and believing earnestly that the world was worse because of my influence on it. Did I mention it had also gotten a lot colder?

This is how I leave you going into December, which has almost exactly the opposite footprint as November. You’ll see. Spoiler alert: things end up not so bad. But we’ll get there.

Trying to Be Okay In a Year That Isn’t: 2014 in Review (October / Shake It Off)

Food poisoning? To start October off right? You betcha!

At this point, I was taking bad news and maladies as a matter of course. But maybe, in retrospect, it was the best way to start the month, because everything got better from there. Like, a lot better. It was as if my October was airlifted in from another, better year, right when I needed it the most.

Ongoing good stuff: Johnny D’s Comedy Presents was now, somewhat incongruously, an actual thing. Like an event people come to. I started getting superfans, folks who would come every week to see the show, no matter who was on it or what show it was. Stand-ups consistently told me I ran a really fun show and that everyone had such a good time there. By now, my name was a bit of a calling card for good production. I’d done Comedy, America!, Johnny D’s was where it was, and I used to do Sketchhaus at ImprovBoston.

Used to, because I gave up on it at the end of the prior year after two years of success. Another guy, Jake, picked it up and went in a lot of directions I wouldn’t have thought to go in – some I liked, some I didn’t like, at least at first. Then in October, he abruptly announced he was leaving for greener pastures in warmer states. I approached the powers that be at ImprovBoston to see if I could get my old job back. A job that takes a lot of time and energy and doesn’t pay, but something in me was desperate to be at the head of this show again. Sketch in Boston is always a little bit fragile, and it’s always in flux. I wanted to be at the head of things. I wanted to put myself in the thick of it and see if I could put my own mark on it, like I was trying to put my mark on standup and storytelling elsewhere.

I got it. My creative life was in the rebuilding, and it felt great.

One of the things I got handed was another go at Super Gay Comedy Fun Time, a show I’d done the year before to rampant success during Pride Week but had been delayed till November. No big deal … and that in itself was a big deal. I had friends in sketch, storytelling, standup, and improv now. I could book anyone. I rounded up groups and individuals and I gave them places and everyone seemed thrilled at the prospect. More importantly, ticket sales happened almost at once. I was positioning my Super Gay Comedy Fun Time to be an Event, and people were responding to it in kind. At the same time, the new major stage show that Allen and I were launching, The ImprovBoston Holiday Spectacular, had begun rehearsals. The theater side of things was ramping up, and mostly it felt like I was coming back to something that had been missing for a long time. I realized somewhere in the midst of all this that that had been part of my sadness in 2014: stepping away from sketch had caused a void in me. I didn’t know that would happen, or that the void would sustain itself. Now that void was closing, and I was starting to feel whole again.

The first Sketchhaus show happened … and it sold out. Then the second one happened, and that sold out. Not back a month and I was already winning back the small world I’d once ruled. Did I feel vindicated? Yeah, I did. I was good at this. I’d known my whole life I was good at one thing – writing – so to discover this late in the game that I was good at something else was nothing short of a revelation.

I got clearance from Cemetery Dance to expand my chapterbook Chart of Darkness into a real book and got to work at once. Here, again, was something else I’d missed: hardcore research I could spin into words. Nonfiction is slow and hard, but there are so many rewards. Pure research is its own reward – something that was never true in high school but was absolutely true now.

Speaking of writing: I was gearing up for National Novel Writing Month as much as I could. I had the idea in my head – it was a concept I’d been trying to write as a screenplay in my early 20s called Things Have Changed. I was never going to write the screenplay, I’d come to understand, but there was no reason I couldn’t put the cinematic first scene into a novel that would become a lot more internal. I was in the manner of exploring my inside world more and more with my novels, and Things Have Changed would be no exception. I built an outline and waited.

I was also waiting on an agent. I’d sent out a chunk of Roller Disco Saturday Night to a real New York Agent, and she wrote back to me and told me she’d like to see more of the book. That was over two months ago and I’m positive now that nothing will come of this path, but it was one of my best days in October and nothing subsequent is going to change that.

The trips happened: New York City at the Beacon to see my last Drive-By Truckers show of the year. The Beacon doesn’t have a rail, and you weren’t supposed to leave your seat, but I still saw my friends and had fun. Me and Marty, Duncan, Mark, and Jeff didn’t get to Rocky Horror because I forgot that October is sell-out month at Rocky. It was cool. I hung out with my buddies and it was awesome. I had picklebacks for the first time, lost at Tetris to Marty, and found ways to relax.

The end of the month came and I made good on my promise to show my sweetie a good time for our 15th anniversary, which had happened way back in February. His hand had healed enough for him to actually have fun again, and we boarded a plane to Walt Disney World. I know, sometimes, the place overwhelms me and I get in my head about having a good time that my brain works against itself. But this time, I was with my Shawn, and it was the Food and Wine fest, and my buddy Robert was there, and it was nothing but a fantastic time. It’s so rare that I’m completely at ease with myself, and for those five days in Florida, I was. That was cause enough for celebration.

I resist a lot of “generic pop” when it’s happening, only to have it to sublimate my consciousness and own me. It happened with “Roar,” by Katie Perry at the start of the year, and that song ended up being one that made my dedication to standing up for myself in the face of adversity. And then there Shawn and I were in the airport, and Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” was playing, and my big thought was that I could do that if I wanted to. I could brush off all the bullshit that had been clogging my life up this whole year and work against being dragged down by it. Yes. That. And when I got home, the new Stephen King book, Revival, was waiting for me, so right there, it seemed my new dedication was working. I could believe the worst was over. I could believe that the rest of 2014 would be smooth sailing.

…I mean, it wasn’t entirely true, but why not let me have my terrific month?