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For more regular "bloggish tripe" updates, please visit: http://www.livejournal.com/users/antwondotcom/ Intermittent essay-strength writings will continue to be located here.

she rides Antwon / 26 June 2006 / 1:01AM Greetings and salutations! Er, not that anyone is actually reading this— rightfully so, what with my posting layoff, "brief" in the same sense of "humanity's brief existence upon the earth" or "Jesus briefly popped out for smokes before his Second Coming cameo". Clearly, some sort of cosmic and/or geological temporal scaling is implied. But no matter. If a yawning empty void is the only recipient of my greetings and salutations, hey, serves me right. But in any event: antwon.com is back online "for real"! That whole "boy, none of the links I click on seem to do a damn thing" non-feature? Convincing you that, perhaps, this whole "links might actually point to pages located elsewhere on the website" is just a ruse, suitable for prompting a trucker-behatted Ashton Kutcher to emerge from behind your refrigerator, informing you of your newfound "punk'd" status? No more! No, you can once again navigate around the site, delving back into archives of text that likely cause me no small measure of shame and will probably cause some mythical future employer vague unease for me at some point. Voting in polls, surfing through sundry site "features", using the site search to see the eighteen posts in which the expression "britney spears" occurs— all of that featureful goodness is back for your consuming pleasure. Consume away! While I'm at it: please consider my "antwon.com" email address(es) to be the effective equivalent of a shell corporation set up in the Cayman Islands— a facade that notionally exists but does not have any actual honest-to-gosh human beings behind it. Mind you, this is not entirely true, in the sense that I do sift through that there inbox from time to time. Still, it's true enough that I don't look at it frequently, blithely assuming that the only individuals still using the on-domain addresses reside in foreign lands and have vested interests in my mortgage rate, my penis length, or some combination thereof. Actual people I might want to talk to who email there end up receiving pitiful response times; it would arguably be less inefficient to fly out to California, stalk me, jump me from the bushes surrounding my apartment, and manually accost me with whatever your query might be. ("You! Antwon! Tell me if you are pleased with your penis length right now!!!") If you are interested in giving a shout, please use the address in my LiveJournal profile, linked above. (This means you, people randomly encountered at my recent high school reunion who have just now rediscovered me through the miracle of Google!) That address, were I to tell you about it over the phone, would be spelled out as "why oh you aitch ay ess at-symbol gee em ay eye ell dot see oh em". Kindly update your address books accordingly. This BBS link is broken! My apologies! Comments (0) — [permalink]

"Just when I thought I was out...." Antwon / 9 February 2006 / 10:22PM We're back online, after a fashion. Nothing really works at the moment, though, as a brief spate of "let's randomly click around the site and watch NOT A GODDAMN THING HAPPEN" will attest. But I'm still alive, and the site is still here, for what that's worth. Details of a sort— especially for those of you who might also be dependent on this box for hosting— are located over on the TwonSoft page. The BBS, though... not so online. Comments (0) — [permalink]

Of comedy stylings and novel-writin' plans Antwon / 2 November 2005 / 2:20AM If my TiVo is to be believed— assuming that its databanks have not been irrevocably corrupted by half-conscious, three-quarters-drunk late night sessions wherein I vigorously applaud the cinematic quality of Starship Troopers or weep bitter tears over the underrated genius that was the series "7 Days"— I consider both "Comedy Central Presents" and "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" to consitute suitably desirable programming. This seems reasonably accurate, all things considered. A well-timed, well-honed routine from a competent stand-up comedian is always a welcome pleasure, as is watching talented wielders of improvisation practicing their craft. It might seem slightly redundant to make the distinction, explicitly indentifying both of said programs as being enjoyable. After all, at first blush, the twin offerings are rather similar. They're both part of the 43 hours of interchangeably generic programming that Comedy Central rebroadcasts interminably, slathered into the scheduling gaps like so much caulking agent, clogging voids where not even insipid Wayans Brothers comedies and Girls Gone Wild infomercials dare to tread. Both programs are appreciated— but how they garner their respective appreciation is through wholly different means. By and large, stand-up routines are polished and rehearsed. Oh, sure, there's a need to adapt that night's set to the tastes and tendencies of your given audience. If the Sigma Epsilon Xis are going to be there in spades for Skunky But Fantastically Cheap Swill Night, you smurf the bawdy bit about the lost Taiwanese cheerleader back into the routine; if you're performing on the heels of the league bowling tourney, perhaps you trim out the "working a 7-11 is more sport than making a 7-10 split!" shtik, lest you spend the last half of the evening enduring crowd members loosing sixteen-pound projectiles at your skull. And that's to say nothing of lower-key, standard issue performance corrections depending on the ebbs and flows of the evening's comedic chi. A pause here, a sweeping motion there, an extra seven seconds of deadpan towards the audience while the midget frenetically humps your leg— that sort of affair. But still, down at its core, stand-up comedy is storytelling— and it's the telling of a story that one has had effectively forever to rehearse. Yes, I'm sure that there are a few yuk-miesters harangued by beady-eyed snipers who insist on the incorporation of such-and-such routine right now "or else your family will DIE!!!!"... but you kind of figure those have to be in the minority. For everyone else, it's all a matter of scheming up quality bits as they come to you and integrating them into a sublime gestalt performance. Sure, on any given evening, even your most sure-fire, A-list material may meet with wan smiles and polite coughs— fickle audiences happen. But when it happens every night... well, perhaps you ought to step back, take a breather, and spend some quality time scheming up a new routine there, friend. (Ideally one centered around "actually entertaining people" and "not sucking" this time around.) Meanwhile, back at the other end of the spectrum, improvisational comedy serves as something of an antithesis to polished refinement. Which is not to say that improv can't be formulaic— 'cuz boy howdy, it sure as heck can, 'specially at the tail end of an extended run of improv consumption. Hey: you're tasked with making up a song on the spot about banking, your creativity tank was already in dire need of pit stop topping-up four routines ago— you're gonna phone it in a bit with a trite "just makes [sense/cents]!" pun. Your stand-up brethren spin off cheesy observations about "kids these days" and airline food; your kind ladles out knee-buckling groan-inducing "witticisms". Such is the way of the world. But for the most part— especially when talented individuals are involved— improv is nothing if not creative and dynamic. Nimble, on-your-feet thinking and rapid retrieval of relevant ideas is integral to the process. It takes a certain chain reaction of orthogonally derailing trains of thought to get from "first-person shooters" to "trepanation" in a sequence of split-second retorts. (The most probable conversation path steers through the nail gun in Quake, the band Nine Inch Nails, and the song "Head Like a Hole"; your results may vary.) It's not particularly better than traditional stand-up fare, of course, but rather... different. On its own wavelength. A unique and different challenge. Traditionally, when I participate in National Novel Writing Month— happens every November! I'm doing it as we speak! er, once I'm done with this little screed, that is— my endeavor much more closely resembles that of the stand-up comic. I've got it all figured out; I am the man with the plan. Admittedly, "the plan" usually reifies as a series of pseudo-legible scratchings covering eighteen pages spanning four otherwise unrelated notebooks... but in my head, artifacts like "lovably quirky characters" and "a sequence of events which, at distance, could reasonably pass for a plot" have more-or-less congealed together. We all know what's in store; it's just a matter of bringing it to fruition with the level of style I've come to expect from myself. It's a system that works— and works quite well, really. Last year's novel is the single project into which I poured the most carefully-measured consideration and planning; lo and behold, last year's novel is likely the one for which a potential Real World Publisher would thoughfully pause the longest before cackling evilly and tossing it onto a nearby Failed Manuscripts pyre. Sadly, the flip side of "carefully considered design" is "story about which I give too much of a damn to properly churn through with haste in the course of a single month". (You probably can, in fact, build Rome in a day... but not if you take more than the tiniest sliver of pride in what, exactly, "Rome" looks like once the construction crews clock out at day's end.) Hitting NaNoWriMo's 50,000 word target is not the challenge— I've done it before; I'll do it again. Actually getting the whole of the story set to text before that end-of-month chime strikes? Um, yeah, about that.... So this year I'm trying something different. I'm going the improv route: I'm going headlong into the month of November with nothing. No characters, no plot, no preconceived situations. No "wouldn't it be so cute if I could adhere to XYZ" self-imposed challenges; no "while not a Great American Novel, here's a book idea I've been kicking around" noodling. Nothing. Nothing but an empty word processing document and a 30-day span in which I can fill it. It's not something I've ever tried before, frankly. One day into the whole affair, the experience is a decidedly strange one— like trying to perform a weeks-long roadtrip where I don't know where I'm headed, I don't have any road maps, and I haven't the foggiest clue what I'm supposed to do upon my arrival there. Such a sequence could manifest as a glorious adventure, wherein all sorts of wacky mishaps are endured and challenges are overcome as the protagonist makes it back into port safely, older and wiser for his experiences. This could also manifest as aimless drifting in endless circles until the vehicle runs out of fuel, the driver departs the vehicle, and our helpless scamp is mauled and consumed by a passing bear. I'm not ruling anything out at this point. In accordance with tradition, I will be foisting the results of my textual outpourings onto this here website for friend and foe alike to observe, frown thoughtfully at, quietly gnaw upon, or otherwise interact with in whatever way they might see fit. Hey, if something's worth going through all that time and effort to create, you really might as well put forth the token additional effort to share said effort with the universe at large. I mean, what's the worst that'll happen? That the effort will be of such soul-rending hope-smothering putridness that Kyrgyzstani nationalists will employ the work in their torture regimens, making it an integral weapon in the ongoing efforts to gain their military regime an iron grip upon the country's populace? Uh... wow. I hadn't really thought about that. That would be pretty bad. But I'm pretty sure I remember reading that Kyrgyzstan is one of those places where "indoor plumbing" and "culinary options that do not intimately involve dirt" are considered exotic luxuries for which the average barter price is a full-bodied virginal concubine. They probably don't even, like, have the Internet. Not unless they have it shipped in by rail or something. So we're probably cool on that front, too. OK, that's enough chatter out of me. There's a novel to write! Generic tagline to long-since-dead BBS goes here! Comments (3) — [permalink]

I continue to age— in zany MS Paint form! Antwon / 3 October 2005 / 7:42PM For those of you who might have missed it, the latest addition to the antwon.com textual empire: the 6th Annual Birthday Cartoon! Fresh off the digital presses! Now with 30% less mewling depression! Well, compared to the train wrecks that have originated in the deep, dark, Super Fund portions of my psyche during years past, anyhow. I made an active attempt to strive for "thoughtfully introspective" this time around— a sharp contrast to the "vortex of sorrow vigorously crushing the spirits of both close personal associates and innocent Googlers alike" fare that typifies the production. In any case: check it out! Wow: six straight years of doing this whole annual birthday spiel. Not really impressive in and of itself, I suppose... but we are on the Internet, after all, where temporal affairs are governed by otherworldly, hyperinflationary policies. (Such is a side effect of being a domain where something can evolve from "throwaway concept nonchalantly tossed out over coffee" all the way to "meta-meta-referenced parody jaded hipsters are already sneering at" in less time than it takes to grill and consume two medium-sized hamburgers.) An Internet tradition that actually survives long enough to become accurately termed "annual" is virtually an institution; a third consecutive year of operation carries an air of timelessness, the bone-crushing, soul-wearying relentlessness rising boldly from the wine-dark seas of mediocrity, its ominous presence blocking out the sun, causing grown men to quake and weep bitter tears of respect in its wake. (Or, uh, something like that.) Admittedly, on some level, the annual birthday cartoon lacks the panache that it once had. During the site's heyday, the crude animations were a gleefully self-indulgent change of pace, torpedoing website functionality for a day and funneling vast torrents of regular readers into a hideous world of MS Paint-themed renderings. 'Course, that was during the Olden Times, back before I was content to simply sit in my digital ivory tower, sipping virtual mint juleps and posting off-kilter missives at irregular intervals. Now that the readership is down to four-and-a-half close personal friends, a small fleet of Google spiders, and an aresnal of pharmaceutical-hocking comment spammers headquartered in central Europe, it's much more of an "oh, look, Antwon has actually gotten off his ass and generated content!" experience. (Eventually, the long-term plan is to produce no actual posts at all except for the semi-annual birthday and April Fool extravaganzas. As an extra added bonus, they will also serve as effective dead man's switch for the website, the absence of which should be taken as a signal that I have perished or otherwise become incapacitated and that friends and loved ones should begin ransacking my home with a locust-like fervor immediately, lest troopers descend from the black helicopters of the Visa corporation and begin absconding away with all my cool stuff first.) Ah well. On the brighter side of things: at least I'm writing something nowadays. That would be on the LiveJournal page, located hither— the same one linked to in the sickly off-aqua box above. (Because God willing, I am going to use every shade of blue on this website at some point— every shade, even if it fucking kills me.) It's best to think of the LiveJournal as a means of filling the gap between "yearning to get back to a more frequent writing schedule" and "not clogging my 'real' website with aimless, vaguely disinteresting, semi-personal prattle". (I prefer that my website-clogging be done only by well-polished and universally engaging aimless prattle.) You know: writing, and writing with style... but nothing worthy of an essay-style tirade. If you are willing to risk the possibility that any given day may consist of a riveting recap of my lunchtime burrito, feel free to pop on in over there. If you'd prefer not to be saddled with such insignificant details of my personal life, preferring only to wallow in 1,400 word screeds about various aspects of the world, that's cool too. In any event, to recap: Birthday cartoon! Bloggish tripe! Consider yourself informed. Someday, I'll rid myself of these BBS links. Someday.... Comments (1) — [permalink]

The Pompatus of Love Antwon / 5 August 2005 / 9:48PM Chapter 17 "Maybe there's no such object," said Billy, clamboring over the rubble down the ill-lit castle passageway. "Maybe it's, like, a spirit thing. Like something that's inside all of us all along, but only if you know to look inside yourself...." "No, it's real enough," said Professor Wadkins, steadily leading his troupe down the stone corridor. "We know it's here. The symbols inscribed on the doorway match the lunar runes perfectly. We just have to find it." "I still can't believe we've come all this way just to find a goddamned dog," spat Leroy dejectedly. "Not just any dog," said Rory. "A Pompatus." "You mean Pomeranian." "She calls it a Pompatus." "It's just a Pomeranian." "Maybe Pompatus is easier to say." "Maybe she's just a stupid strung-out heroin addict who wouldn't know correct pronunciation if she shot it into her track-riddled veins." "Look, there!" The professor gestured towards a hefty iron chest along the far wall, abruptly silencing the squabbling. "Look at the carving! It's just as they were described in the old man's story!" He ran over to the massive artifact, his hands trembling with anticipation as he fitted the antique brass key into the lock. "Oh boy!" said Billy, bouncing giddily as children are often wont to do. "I can't believe it," said Rory, dazed. "I can't believe we found it...." Rory stood in stunned amazement, simultaneously exhilirated and exhausted at the impending culmination of the quest. Never in his wildest dreams would he have guessed that stumbling upon a ratty old book in the dusty corner of some nigh-forgotten library would've spawned such a non-stop sequence of high adventures. And oh, what adventures they'd been! He'd visited the secret Russian satellite Mir II and become engaged in the high-tech equivalent of an old-school saloon shoot-out. He'd gone undercover and back in time, posing as the notorious Prohibition-era mobster Vito "Cupid" Valentino. And lord knows how long he'd spent in the company of that wizened old... man? wizard? alien with cryptic, genie-like qualities?... who addressed him as "Maurice" for reasons unknown and insisted upon midnight bong-hitting sessions to conclude every evening. It had been a long, fantastic journey— a journey that was finally drawing to a close. "Open the damn thing already!" said Leroy impatiently, snapping Rory out of his wistful trance. "Here goes," said Professor Wadkins, lifting the lid with a tired creak. He peered into the recesses of the trunk, straining to see through the haze of dust disturbed from its ages-old sleep and presently swirling in the air. He squinted, bringing the contents of the trunk into focus. Or lack of contents of the trunk, as the case may be, as the case appeared to house nothing but an utterly empty void. "I..." The professor mumbled, words failing him. "I don't understand...." "Looking for something, boys?" From their position, the troupe could only make out the silhouette of the figure from whence the gravelly female voice had come, but there was no mistaking the entity for anyone other than Courtney Love. "A certain Pompatus, maybe? You trying to get your fucking hands on my pwecious widdle pwincess?" She lurched forward, the half-full bottle of whiskey clenched tightly in her fist clanking dischordantly against the stone railing. "Sorry, Mario, but the princess is in another castle!" Without warning, a hefty figure came bursting through a nearby stained glass window, a hail of shards filling the air. "Oh, you're more right than you know!" The beefy man standing before them, arms akimbo, was unmistakably world-reknowned chef Mario Bitali— the same Mario Bitali they'd left for dead deep in the heart Amazon jungle not 48 hours previously. "Yeah, she's in another castle all right— a White Castle, to be precise. Had her marinated in a nice brine, then coated in a light wine vinegar and gently grilled before being garnished with sauteed mushrooms, a honey mustard sauce, and touch of cilantro." He smacked his lips. "Well, before she got compressed into a handful of generic-looking White Castle burgers, that is." He smiled. "No," stammered Courtney Love, nostrils flaring. "No— no!" Shrieking, she bull-rushed Mario, only to be felled in her tracks by a chef's knife lodging deep within her skull, killing her instantly. "Bam!" said the glowing blue Force-projection of Emeril Lagasse as Courtney Love's lifeless body slumped to the floor. "Bam is right!" said Mario with a fist-pump before exchanging an awkward high-five with his fellow culinary cohort. "But," said Billy, staring at the oozing corpse, obviously upset. "But Mario...." "I'm sorry I had to deceive you all like that, Billy," said Mario. "But to be an effective decoy for Miss Love, you had to think that you were the ones who were hot on the trail of the Pomeranian. That's why I had to fake my own death, too. She figured that her princess would be safer back in her mansion, away from you guys— not knowing that that's precisely where I was hiding out, lying in wait. The plan worked perfectly, although—" "But Mario," said Billy, staring up at Mr. Bitali with soulful blue eyes. "Mario, we ate at that White Castle just this morning...." "Well, then," said Leroy with a toothy grin, "maybe the Pompatus of Love was inside us all along after all!" Breaking into jovial laughter, the group began to saunter towards the exit of the castle and prepare for the long, slow journey back home. These are the sorts of thoughts that come to me first thing in the morning— fever dreams that occur during that sleep-deprivation-fueled window between when my brain's asinine-content-generation lobe kicks online and whenever my higher mental systems get back from their smoke break, or burying the bodies of dead hookers, or whatever the hell it is that's otherwise occupying them at that hour of the morning. These are also the sorts of thoughts that end up forming the central pillars of my NaNoWriMo fare in most years. Which is probably why my NaNoWriMo fare is god-awful more often than not. Oh, sure, these sorts of things seem like great ideas at the time. A snippet from some random song gets stuck in your head... an insight occurs as to how you could integrate lyrics from said song into some variety of semi-plausible story line... and before you know it, you've got an unwieldy, sprawling tome, flitting from topic to topic with a precise sort of aimless meandering, flush with characters whose entire purpose of being hinges around being able to emerge from a climactic scene by tossing off a swatch of middling Lenny Kravitz songsmithing. I'll admit, "plot development via mis- and/or literally-interpreted song lyrics" is not the sort of time-honored tradition practiced by the likes of Shakespeare and company. Then again, Shakespeare never had to bang out his works immediately after being bombarded with his cow-orkers' karaoke renditions of Top 40 hits on Dollar Mojito Night, either, so we'll give ourselves a bit of a pass on this one. Of course, the problem is that "totally awesome referential shtik!" comes to mind much, much more rapidly than, say, the ability to actually instantiate any of those mental meanderings. Breathing life into characters, brow furrowed, trying to elegantly fit together a patchwork raft of events into a single, fluid storyline that does not immediately make your readership long to plunge shrimp forks deep within the eye sockets of themselves and others is slow, laborious work. Falling into bed, half-drunk, suddenly realizing that "dude, there could totally be this girl character who's trying to look at some studly guys, but she can't, so she says 'there's nothing I can do— a total eclipse of the hot'"... not so much. Not that you even know that song, really. (Damn you, Bonnie Tyler! Curse your cold black hearts to hell, off-key rum-guzzling pseudo-acquaintances!) But nor does that lack of knowledge stop you from racing online, performing a few perfunctory lyrically-minded Google searches, and trying to figure out how other facets of the song might seamlessly integrate themselves into your storying process. ("Well, there was going to be that big explosion in the space station scene anyway. And I mean, if this character was there, and I made it so she was trapped in the munitions room with the rogue electrical circuiting on the fritz, she certainly could be said to be 'living in a powder keg and giving off sparks', so to speak....") And so on and so forth, until you end up with the Greatest American Novel Ever. (Or, in my specific instance, chapters like this, wherein the dialogue, if excised from the surrounding text, comprises the All Your Base preamble in its entirety.) So if you ever might have wondered to yourself, "self, why doesn't Antwon ever seem to finish any of his substantial, novel-length pieces?", I hope the above sheds some light on the situation. Also, you now know that if I do ever have one of said works lumber to an eventual completion, you will be adequately prepared to set aside the requisite three weeks to consume the 2800 pages of rambling, Byzantine, hopelessly-interconnected verbiage. ("Accidentally" misplacing your shrimp forks in an internationally-bound FedEx envelope is strictly optional but heartily encouraged, obviously.) Speaking of hopeless and interconnected: come visit the BBS! Comments (0) — [permalink]

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