Defeated...for Now

I've given up on using my tax rebate on flying to the Caribbean.

Armed with a guidebook and map, I started northwest and worked my way through the islands, checking the American Airlines website to see what destinations I could get to this weekend on my miles.

I found a half-dozen places, and started digging around on hotel sites. But there are a lot of islands in the Caribbean, and I was baffled in short order. Some places were simply too expensive. Others, I couldn't tell if I'd need a form of transportation or not. Zora recommended Cancun, but there were no seats available to Cancun. Sara mentioned Bermuda, but hotels turned out to be insanely expensive there. St. Lucia looked most promising, but shouldn't I go for a week if I go there? The Dominican Republic was do-able, but hotel reviews on TripAdvisor scared me.

After three hours spent chasing possibilities around the Internet last night, I gave up in exasperation. I'm so tired of looking that even Atlantic City sounds draining.

The Hyatt in JC sounds pretty good right now. And it has a pool.

Video Puppets On My Side

"Please please please let the video puppets say dik-dik!"

Amanda had mentioned MariesWorldTour in a piece she'd written for a lifestyle-type website. A fact-checker from an ad agency checked with me a week later.

"How do you pronounce your last name?"

Lucky for me, the man was named David.

"The -avi- is like in David, not Javits."

(In 4th grade, the gifted and talented teacher sat me down and lectured me that I said my name incorrectly. I didn't know about the David trick then, so I'd just said "It's Jay-vins, not Jaaa-vins." I probably wanted to cry. I had no defense as she pointed at my name and cited some imagined rule of grammar. But I digress.)

Sadly, the thorough video puppets did not utter the dirty-sounding but utterly innocuous word, dik-dik. But they were kind enough to say my name right. Check it out.

Welcome Over the Hill

Today, my long-time good friend (since January, 1988!) Steve Buccellato turns 40.

Poor man. I promised him that it will get better tomorrow. It's the lead-up to 40 that is so stressful, but the reality is he'll wake up tomorrow, and everything will be normal, and he'll feel a little silly for having stressed about it at all.

At least, that's what happened to me.

Hidden Agendas

My $600 tax rebate is here! Woo-hoo!

If I were a good citizen, I would spend it patriotically and with abandon, on a flat-screen TV or new paint for Henry the Ford Taurus. The plan is for us 'mericans to be encouraged to spend, not to save.

Well, I'm spending it, but it's not helping the anemic economy. I'm going to the Caribbean. Or maybe Bermuda. I'd go to Suchitoto, El Salvador, which sounds interesting but no, in this case, it is utter boredom I seek. A resort may well be the answer.

"Huh?" I hear you and understand. But consider this:

I have this thing called a day job. A start-up day job in a labor-intensive industry. Got an ad that isn't quite the right size for the Indian licensor? Someone should extend the edges in Photoshop. Uh-oh, that someone is me. An Indonesian magazine editor has an error on our iDisk? Well, someone grab the files and upload them again! (Oops, that's me too.) And someone has to read scripts, proofread newspaper stories, and do normal editor work too (like threaten freelancers who better quit reading this and get back to work). It eats up most of my waking hours.

But I have this book proposal that I've been working on for months. And it's almost done. I just need a few days without distractions.

Somehow, that never happens.

My scheme is to use this tax rebate to go for a long weekend to somewhere dull. Somewhere maybe where I have to walk to a hotspot to get online (so no one from work can find me). Somewhere without anyone I know.

It so happens that I despise the beach. This is weird, yes. Most people love the beach. I find it boring, hot, and sandy. Resorts generally feature beaches. I could do some laps in the resort pool in the morning, then get to work. Cuz there's nothing else to do but go to the beach.

A noble goal, this finishing the book proposal.

But what if something more sinister is boiling unspoken, deep within Marie-gut? Could I crave a passport stamp to put Edward Readicker-Henderson in his cheeky place? Am I jealous of C's freelance international lifestyle, something I myself had for half a decade? Haven't I already proven that I am capable of solo travel (just a bit)? Couldn't I just go to some cabin in the Poconos and be REALLY bored?

We'll see. Right now, the entire Caribbean is this mind-boggling blur to me, and I'm overwhelmed with isolating the right destination. Bring on the ideas, but remember, the more social or interesting the place sounds, the less point there would be in going there.

And if it's domestic, forget it. Not that I care, of course.

The question, then, is this:

What's the most boring place you've ever been to?

An Editor's Bonus

This is Noora, a character in the comic book that I edit. The artists—June Brigman and Roy Richardson—drew Noora for a style guide we are putting together, and then gifted me with the piece after we were finished with it. I love it! It's going on my wall.

When June and Roy aren't drawing for me, they are working on Brenda Starr or teaching art classes.

Mission to Burma

Normally, when a crisis on the level of the Myanmar cyclone hits, I click over and give money to the relief effort.

But this time, it's hard to figure out who to give to. A military junta rules Myanmar (Burma). They decide who gets in and who doesn't. Many NGOs limit their activities in Myanmar because it's hard to get the job done under oppressive, corrupt conditions.

And this military government suddenly finds itself asking the outside world for help. 22,500 people are dead. 40,000 more are unaccounted for. Up to a million people may have lost their homes.

But which agencies will be allowed in? I want to give to an agency that has the best chance of getting permission to get across the border, and of course I want the money to go to helping people, not to some kind of fund that the Myanmar government ends up controlling.

I think I'm going with Doctors Without Borders, because they are already in and on the ground. But here's a good list of the charities that are assisting in the relief effort, so maybe I'll go with one of them.

Anyone else have a suggestion?

MJ's NJ Summer Wishlist

When I was writing the New Jersey tent camping guidebook in 2004, I kept running across things I wanted to do here in NJ. But I was on deadline and then I moved to Spain, then went to work at a day job, then to Africa, and so on.

Roberta, Kraiger, and I climbed Mt. Tammany a few years ago, but I never got to do all the other things I wanted to do. What things?

Hike the Batona Trail, a flat, sandy, 49.5-mile trail through the state parks of the Pine Barrens.

Go on a Jersey Devil "hunt" and camp-out.

Visit Wildwood to see the neon.

Spend a night and day at Cape May.

Camp along the Delaware River in a walk-in space at Bull's Island.

Canoe in the Pine Barrens.

Bike the D&R Canal towpath.

Walk the JC section of the Morris Canal.

Camp at the most urban campground in, perhaps, the USA. And if I don't like it, I can walk the half-mile home.

Hike some of the NJ Appalachian Trail.

Canoe the Meadowlands.

I'm going to try to do as many of these as I can this year. I'm off to a good start; I have reservations for the June 21 Meadowlands canoe trip.

World Tour in a Book

It seems like a year ago that I wrote the text for the children's 3-D World Atlas & Tour. Actually, it was in December, 2006. That was a crazy time, when I was selling my condo and moving into an East Village sublet before jetting off to Cairo. I can't believe I wrote a book, did my day job, sold my place, moved all my stuff into storage, and moved to Manhattan and then to Egypt all in one month. Do you remember the few nights I spent at the Newark Airport Hilton, because my sublet ended before my flight to Barcelona, en route to Cairo? (Don't worry, the Newark Hilton is cheap on Priceline.)

The book is finally coming out in November of this year. Andrea (the editor, last seen on this blog wearing white) sent me the catalog with the ad for the book. It was work-for-hire, but I'm still really excited about this book. I've seen the galleys and it looks great.

What, Me, Snarky?

Writer Edward Readicker-Henderson has a new book out. It's called Under the Protection of the Cow Demon and I wrote a pull quote for the back cover.

I wrote something about the book being a romantic poetry of place. Had he, however, already written his PerceptiveTravel.com article on Strip Passport when I sent him my review, I might have written something like this.

"Catch me if you can, but prepare to shiver!"

Check his article out. In it, he lets on that I'm secretly (okay, not so secretly) snarky, and claims that I flew to Bahrain to eat bacon.

Heavy Boots of Lead

Okay, no one asked for my opinion on the movie version of Iron Man,* and this isn't so much about that movie as a complaint about so many comic books and their ancillary products, including the ones I myself have worked on.

The movie itself is entertaining enough. It's got a great cast and enough unexpected humor that it should be a box office hit (except maybe in Afghanistan, ho-hum, what a novel idea to place the scenes of lawlessness there, and hey, let's make it in caves! Everyone knows bad guys live in caves in Afghanistan). I was kind of bored for much of it, because while the character interaction and funny bits were novel, the overall arc was tried-and-true, freshened up by brilliant interpreting of Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. The cast looks like they're having fun for much of the movie.

Did I like this movie? Well, yeah, it was fun. Was I bored? Yeah, that too. Am I amazed whenever anyone finishes anything creative and don't they deserve kudos for things existing and being more-or-less entertaining? Hell yeah.

So what's my beef here?

I am so sick of comic book stories starting with the origin.

And I've had enough of the hero saving the day by fighting off something that only exists because of missteps made by our hero. The Silver Surfer wouldn't have to fight off Galactus if he hadn't brought Big G to Earth in the first place. Iron Man made a big mess and then he had to clean it up. I get that to have a credible threat, writers and editors always have to up the ante, which often means coming up with a threat as powerful as the hero, but can't there be external threats once in a while, where the hero actually has to save the world from something that he didn't create himself?

I know, I know. Finger-pointing. As an editor, I am guilty as charged. But there's so much pressure to tell certain types of stories. Everyone starts at the beginning, with the origin. It's simply DONE that way. To fight it, a team would need the support of creative and corporate interests. (An editor has the unrewarding job of forging compromises between corporate and creative interests, which means it's amazing that anything at all gets published.)

I'm sorry for ranting. I'm just tired of seeing the same structure over and over. Let's try starting the story in the middle, or heck, even at the end. It worked for David Lean.

*Want a great review? Read Heidi's.