Following up on my last post, I know there is no way I am going to hit 50,000 words on NaNoWriMo this year, nor am I even close; but I have had fun working on some writing again with Johnny Demonseed, and I have already done well in the Nerd Olympics this year.
For the third surprising year in a row I have met the challenge of reading 50 books in a year and this time I finished with a month to spare. I think I'm going with The Boy Detective Fails as my favorite book that I read in 2010, and that's not just because I happened to meet Joe Meno in a small, spooky town called New Harmony down in southern Indiana and got to ask him what the hell he was thinking during the writing of this strange, magical work.
I also liked The City and The City by China Mieville, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, The Keep by Jennifer Egan, Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, Clans of the Alphane Moon by Philip K. Dick, Rule of the Bone by Russell Banks, and London Boulevard by Ken Bruen, to name a few.
On my second try I managed to visit six ballparks this summer, beating my old, inadvertent record of visiting five in one summer. When I concentrated last year I only hit four so I decided to zen it out again this year and ended up at six.
I went to my hometown Richmond Riverrats in Richmond, Indiana a few times; saw the Evansville Otters in the ballpark featured in A League of Their Own on a very hot summer day; saw the Dayton Dragons for a friend's birthday, probably now one of my favorite ballparks; went to see the Reds with my dad and got a Chris Sabo bobblehead but also got walloped in the eye either with a fist or a foul ball, I'm still not sure which; caught the Durham Bulls for the second time with friends and ate great Carolina barbecue; and, on the last day of the season, went to see the Indianapolis Indians with my wife and daughter, who surprised me by asking if I wanted to go and break my record at my other favorite ballpark, which they were happy to join me at if I would buy the beer.
But writing again must have put something in the karma bank because I have spent the weekend helping judge the United Kingdom's National Student Film Association's Screenwriting Competition. It was very flattering to be asked, but I felt sorry for these poor youths who obviously got turned down by every legitimate screenwriter on the European continent and thus were forced to forage in America's Heartland for another judge. But it was cool for once and probably for only to be mentioned in the same breath as BFI and BAFTA.
Until later I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.
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