Incendiary Lit

Please allow me to slip deep, deep into geekdom here, I apologize in advance.

Read this.

Now, anyone familiar with the series, or who’s hung out with me while drinking SoCo and Coke (not SoCo and lime,  that’s my “The Jungle” adaptation rant I believe) knows that Robotech is the perfect source material for an Odyssey of a movie/live action series. But that is only after skewering away the fatty material of the series. Here are a few things you two had better do, or I will be a sad sad panda:

1) Fix Minmei. And I mean that like they fixed Luna before we adopted her. I’ve had unfixed cats, and they act (and sound) like the Minmei of the series. She was loud, obnoxious, screechy, and friggan obnoxious. But she had some honest moments where the obnoxiousness dropped away, like when she found out that Rick was MIA during the reconnaissance mission with Lisa Ben and Max. Don’t ask for an episode number, though I could look it up on IMDB, man… I don’t know if I could stand sounding like an even bigger geek than I’m going to sound by writing a list of demands for a badly dubbed 80’s anime… but I grew up on that show, damnit. Minmei should be modelled, mainly after Miley Cyrus I think… though by the time the movie’s made she’d be too old, and more importantly, we’re toning down the annoying, so please get someone more normal who can act like a whiny little brat on command, but still remain a sincere human being when the devastating occurs… not just a brat who can’t act. That’s the character, not the actor you want.

2) Roy Fokker’s death. Holy crap was that traumatizing as a kid. That should be a keystone moment, end of the first act. It propels Rick into his military career, and ultimately into the arms of Lisa. The two couples (Roy and Claudia, and Rick and Lisa) are a sort of parallel that can be drawn, the military hero couple that makes for legends, and what more do you want for the future fate of humanity than legendmakers protecting you? But this point was about Roy Fokker. He was the big brother. He was pulled away by a war he thought he was fighting to make everyone back home proud. But once you’re in, you’re in, so even after he discovered that the war wasn’t something to make them especially proud (as Rick says in the pilot episode (hehe, pilot) “you’re proud of being a killer?!”), he couldn’t leave the army… He feels like, though what he did was right, that he abandoned Rick, and he’s constantly trying to make up for it with grand gestures… his racer repaired, getting Min Mei to see him, saving him on the destroyed Macross Island during the initial invasion. Wow, geek overload on this point. Roy’s a conflicted, important character that you should latch onto immediately, and like terribly, then be pained terribly by his death, then glad that Rick’s finally beginning to step into his shoes. Period. Got that guys?

3)  Get the ages right. Rick and Minmei and half the crew of the SDF One are kids. 15-16. Why? It was a training academy, and it was in the midst of a long-raging world war. Populations were devastated. The standard age of soldiers (18-45) would have been greatly depleted, and the spaceship was still years away from being “ready” though the technology still decades from making sense (at least)… so it only makes sense that for this new ship the children would go study to work… I think it’s important to keep that the same as the movie. Many things that happened, and really had to happen, are because of immaturity, rashness, and lack of foresight, especially in non-combat. This is because they’re really just kids, many away from their parents and on their own at a very young age.

4) The Dinginess factor. OK, sorry, I’m a Firefly fan. But that’s kind of how I see the Zentraedi ships. They don’t know how to repair their ships, they don’t clean (except one sweeps up broken glass from Rick’s Veritech I remember), and the humans, the perspective is tiny, so they’ll see allllll the dirt and grime that a quick swish with a mop or broom wouldn’t fix. Gritty and realistic (despite being grand and ominous) are the Zentraedi. And they’re also a tragic race, really, created for one purpose and they’ve found themselves with purpose (the Invid) but losing the resources to even defend themselves… Holy crap. Geek.

5) Is this just one movie or two? I could see the first saga spanning two, or even three movies easily, and since the majority of the scenes are either internal or CGI (in the spaceship or out of it) with some Macross stuff that could be shot on a soundstage, because that would be how Macross actually was (great 4th wall potential there, especially with Minmei’s acting career), an outdoor scene indoors, it could probably be shot for a very modest budget… keep the actors young (but be get friggan good actors, not just cute teenagers for once in an action movie) and the budget should spread well, right?

6) Minimize the storyline with Rick and Minmei in the ship. Keep the essentials, the shower, the rat, the miraculously airtight pilot jumpsuit and absurdly large tuna (maybe have some inconspicuous explanation in early exposition about genetically modified fish that help feed the base or something) but Minmei is inherently annoying, and I think that little storyline which brings them together should bearas little burden of screechy/childish annoyance in the first run through as possible. There should be those flashbacks later, and they should show the more annoying side of Minmei later on in the Rick/Lisa storyline.

7)  Hire me. As a consultant or ’staff writer’ or producer or something. Please.

I don’t normally post about that, but it’s been a little while. Since the Spring when I was in school and busy. Now there’s been a couple months, and granted not during a regular reading period, but it feels good, you know? Makes me want to type a :). Anyway, look for my prose poem “The Fan” in the Georgetown Review (in 2010 or 2011, haha. Dampers the excitement a little, like my first big acceptance, The Southern Review, which was also about 2 years between acceptance and publication).

And not just because, or as a ventriloquist , but as a singer and an impersonator. Here are some clips  of him being awesome. Go see his show in Vegas at the MGM Grand next year.

His first appearance on America’s Got Talent’s stage: seeing/hearing is believing. This guy is amazing.

One of my favorites. What a Wonderful World

He even does Garth Brooks

Just friggan entertaining. Here’s him doing a non-AGT Michael Jackson. And bear in mind, none of these are previously recorded or anything. That’s one guy singing up there, even when it’s a female voice. The guy’s awesome. Support him.

So I hope you have your Poet’s Market dog-eared, Duotrope and New Pages bookmarked, and a pantsload of postage ready. To refresh on what you really need to submit: a manilla envelope large enough to not have to fold your submission (it’s a professionalism thing, which I learned from an editor at the Iowa Review, thank you Nic, for helping a yound writer out) a standard business sized envelope (for your Self Addressed and Stamped Envelope. (That’s right, M. Doughty, join the 5% Nation of SASE), a brief cover letter that says the bare essentials of information for your submission (name, address, phone, email, like a 30 word bio, the titles of the piece(s) submitted, and you know, a little schmoozing goes a long ways. Now, don’t go overboard and gush and gush about a journal you’ve never read, but if you have read it before and can remember a piece from it, mention liking it. It’s just a little coutesy to the editors who have no clue if people are liking what they’ve chosen to include. Or, if you are familiar with an editor’s work, let them know what you liked. As a writer myself, I know the very few times I’ve ever heard about my work I’ve glowed about the compliment. It’s a rare thing to get an unsolicited compliment about your writing, and editors are people and writers too. Be kind to them. Great Writing- If you haven’t read much contemporary poetry, or fiction, try to read a copy of the journal you’re submitting to. Now, with the smaller journals especially, it can be hard to get ahold of one, and buying 20 different sample copies may be a little difficult, but at least, at least read a couple sample pieces on the journal’s website. Most have a couple posted to cut down on the inappropriate submissions. I’ve been guilty of submitting inappropriate work to journals, I think it’s part of the trial and error style of submissions that most novice writers go through before they learn the ropes from either an editor, a fellow writer, or another source (I highly recommend Poet’s Market for poets. It’s a tactile, and very helpful source that you can flip through while bored. It even lists a few writers who’ve been published there, so you can have something of a gauge even before you read it what they like, though most journals are ridiculously ecclectic. And finally, stamps. Here’s a simple guide: it is $1.17 for 3 ounces first class postage for your large manilla envelope along with a single page cover letter (for your own bennefit, don’t even come close to hitting a second page), and 6 more pieces of paper. Be it four single page pieces and one 2-pager, one six page piece, or whatever, 7 total pieces of paper. If it’s one more piece of paper you have to add an additional $.17 stamp. If you have 15 pieces, again, add another $.17 stamp, and so forth. Get these stamps from the post office, or wait in line to weight each envelop and mail them like that if you’re unsure about the postage. And never send it certified… journals don’t sign for submissions. It’s just not how they do it. Trust in the USPS, at least a little. And finally, you need some understanding of the journal publishing world. You don’t need experience, but knowledge that most journals can only (and I mean they only have the page space possible, regardless of quality) accept under 10% of the work submitted to them. So there will be a lot of rejection. Even famous writers… David Kirby’s poem “At the Grave of Harold Goldstein” was rejected on 17 separate occasions before it was finally accepted at Parnassus, and then it went on to be selected for that year’s Best American Poetry. So don’t let some rejection bother you. Maybe it had been an especially competitive month, or year even. Journals will get spikes in good submissions some years, and the bar for acceptance will be significantly higher. Sometimes you’ll have an editor in a bad mood, or if you’re lucky, a good mood. Editors are people too, and they are flawed, and subjective. Realize that, and be cool about it. I’ve probably got at least 300 rejections in my files. Maybe more. It happens. But it makes those acceptances all the sweeter. Have at it guys. Get organizing and figure out who you want to send which pieces. Huzzah!