Jessica update!

After my big weekend of Jessica Simpson reporting last week, here's what finally made the pages -- at least the web pages -- of Us Weekly:

Madonna's soon-to-be ex-husband Guy Ritchie wants serious cash. "Guy is going after money now," a source told Us. "He wants to be paid back for these ridiculous expenses he had to help pay for."

Plus, Jessica Simpson couldn't resist gushing about her boyfriend Tony Romo at a packed casino gig in Seattle. "I just got off the phone with my boyfriend!" she gushed. "He's at home in my bed right now. I hope he's not going through my journals! But everyone knows what kind of girl I am. He should know what went on in the past!"

Watch above for details on Kate Walsh's fried-food diet, why Jennifer Aniston won't sleep at John Mayer's house and inside scoop on Anne Hathaway's low-key new love.

I wrote a lot more than that. Let that be a lesson to me.

Not for the first time ...

As regular M&M readers know, "unprecedented" is one of those words that drives me crazy. I've managed to read right over it nearly every day for the past year or so, since I last registered my gripe, without complaint.

But my kettle boils over. After finding two instances of "unprecedented" today in the same story -- an otherwise excellent essay by Time's Joe Klein about Barack Obama -- I've decided to start a new M&M category -- unprecedented -- to track appearances of this misused word.

The rules: I won't go looking for "unprecedented" but if I run across it I'll note it here.

That's some stare decisis shit right there, so other writers should get with the program. You might have to go back to Marbury v. Madison to find a decision of such significance.

So with that, I present Exhibit A, from Klein's "Why Obama is Winning":

But the Senator from Illinois had laid down his marker: if elected President, he would be in charge. Unlike George W. Bush, who had given Petraeus complete authority over the war — an unprecedented abdication of presidential responsibility (and unlike John McCain, whose hero worship of Petraeus bordered on the unseemly) — Obama would insist on a rigorous chain of command.

And Exhibit B:

But one of the more remarkable spectacles of the 2008 election — unprecedented in my time as a journalist — was the unanimity among Democrats on matters of policy once the personality clash between Obama and Hillary Clinton was set aside.

Two unprecedenteds in one story. Not unprecedented, but not a good example.

More to come, usage geeks and fellow crabs.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Every day I try to write a page or two after work on my new screenplay project, which I guess isn't all that new anymore. I can't remember exactly when I started it (it's probably noted somewhere here on the blog) but I'm up to 35 pages, and into the first section of the second act.

Right now I'm doing what professional writers call "procrastinating." Still others call it "blogging."

Three weeks ago and counting I sent my last script off to an agent, who promised to take a look at it in "2 weeks."

You know, agents, right? Of course two weeks doesn't mean two weeks. But I can't help myself. At the end of every day I say sadly to myself, my agent didn't call me again today. Sigh.

(I'm hoping that if I keep calling him "my agent" the power of my words will magically sway him across the thousands of miles to actually agree to be my agent and sell my screenplay to somebody.)

Every once in a while I go back and check the cheery email in which he promised to get to my script, like I said, in "2 weeks" just to be sure I'm not mistaking the date. September 3. That's right. At least a whole week more than two weeks.

As a friend at work would say, Chillax! I mean, he'll probably say no, right, so what's the point of getting all worked up?

As you can see, I just can't help myself. Look there. Now it's been three weeks, two days and 11 hours since he said he'd take a look.

Another week gone, and still no call from my agent.

Sigh.

Cool Screenwriter Blogs

This post is for Gina, who is struggling with trying to write screenplays in her spare time just like me. I'm on page 17 of my new project while waiting for an agent to get back to me on what he thought about the last one; Gina's starting out on brainstorming for her new screenplay while cutting together the final edits on her last movie -- which she wrote and directed -- Stella.

So for both of us, here's a list of cool new screenwriting blogs I just found tonight:

Going into the story:Big time screenwriting dude, teaches as UCLA Extension, where I used to take fiction writing classes. Great Program, great price. UW should consider starting up something this accessible. (price-wise) This guy recommends you read these 14 scripts in 14 days. (The scripts are online behind this link.)

The MovieQuill: I like this guy. He writes about the life of a screenwriter in screenwriting format.

Unknown Screenwriter: His latest funny post looks at whether his screenwriting habit is an addiction.

John August: Smart looking dude.

Jane Espensen: She used to write for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Cool.

Heck of a guy

Latest in my semi-retirement victory lap of lunches with old friends and colleagues was yesterday in Olympia, where I was happy to dine with Denny Heck, the onetime boy wonder legislator whose impressive post-politics resume includes becoming business partner of Matassa's favorite journalist.

Incredibly, Denny and I go back nearly 20 years now, to my tenure as a capital bureau reporter for the Seattle Times. By the time I got to know him Denny already had come and gone in the Legislature, having been elected at age 24 as a representative from Southwest Washington and eventually becoming House majority leader. In my time at the Capitol, Denny was chief of staff to the popular Democratic governor, Booth Gardner, and I'd characterize our relationship as cordial but wary -- both ways. He was somewhat aloof, sometimes a source, sometimes an antagonist, always a protective advocate for and adviser to his boss the governor. We had our disagreements about my coverage, I remember that, but I always respected him as incredibly smart and politically astute and -- probably, under that partisan armor -- a good guy.

Somehow we stayed in touch after Gardner left office, I left Olympia for Seattle and Denny left politics to found and run TVW, which is this state's version of C-SPAN. Later, when I decided to leave the Seattle Times and, with my friend Emory Thomas, start my own Web-based news-aggregation business, PersonalReader, Denny signed on as an angel investor.

Without his backing we really couldn't have gotten PersonalReader too far off the ground. High among the many disappointments of operating an ultimately unsuccessful business, I regret I was never able to show Denny a return on his investment.

So, when we reconnected recently via Facebook and Denny asked about the vaguely referenced health crisis that sent me into semi-retirement, I was only too happy to meet him in Oly to fill him in.

That boring subject out of the way, we enjoyed a nice meal at a cool downtown restaurant (new since I lived there) called Rambling Jack's -- turkey sandwich for me, calzone for Denny -- and gossipped and kibitzed about politics and newspapers. He just got back from the Democratic convention in Denver, and he was rapturous.

We also talked about what we both do in our retirement. Uh, I think Denny puts his time to better use. He wrote and self-published a mystery novel, "The Enemy You Know" -- not autobiographical, he says, although coincidentally about a retired Olympia pol who discovers a body at an Eastern Washington lake where the real Denny also happens to own a cabin -- and he has just written and stars in a one-man play, "Our Times," about an older character named Denny Heck who looks back on 30 years of Washington's political past.

Well, write what you know, they say.

There is one more performance of "Our Times" scheduled, in October, and I'm hoping to see it. I've also asked Denny if there are any remaindered copies of "The Enemy You Know" lying around; it's out of print now otherwise.

When he talked about both writing projects, but especially the book, his enthusiasm was infectious. Almost enough to get a junkie gambler off his lazy ass and sit him down at a keyboard. We'll see about that. Denny also claims to be a killer cribbage player. Maybe we'll see about that too.

Saving the enemy

Well, OK, the Seattle Times isn't exactly my enemy, only the main competitor of my last paper, the P-I. And I'm not exactly saving it. But I did agree -- not foolishly, I hope -- to take part in an online discussion at Crosscut on the topic "How to turn around the Seattle Times."

Chuck Taylor, my friend and the editor of Crosscut, asked a large group of former Times reporters and editors to join him in the virtual roundtable following the news this week that the paper is cutting 200 jobs, including 30 layoffs in the newsroom.

Chuck began by laying out a somewhat radical view of what the Times should do, including giving away the paper for free at newsstands and raising the home subscription price "until it's cheaper for people to buy and own an iPhone." Then my old colleague Peter Lewis chimed in with a few ideas, and last night I added some thoughts too. So far, with the exception of a meager comment thread from readers, that's the extent of the discussion. You can read it here if you're interested.

I had some trepidation about offering what could be construed as advice to the Times, having last worked at the P-I and holding out some hope of returning there. (Not that the Times would listen anyway or, for that matter, that I came up with anything particularly novel.) Anyway, I hope my former bosses aren't offended.

Meanwhile, in clicking around this morning I ran across this funny cartoon by Rob Tornoe at a new site called PolitickerWA.com.


PolitickerWA, about a month old now, is part of a growing national network of "Politicker" sites. In fact, I read just yesterday about PolitickerCA at LAObserved, one of my favorite sites, and looked to see if there was a WA version. Sure enough. Its managing editor is James Pindell, whose bio lists political reporting, editing and blogging gigs at several web sites and papers including the Boston Globe.

So far the content is a bit thin but it looks promising. The more sources for this kind of information the better, and I wish this enterprise well.

(Cartoon used by permission)

Nicolosi: One Writer's Journey

My friend Michelle Vranizen Rafter from way back in the Orange County Register days (1990-1999) asked me a couple of days ago if I'd answer some questions for her cool blog, Word Count.

I did, and she just posted it here.

One day I stopped blogging

This stupid blog began five months ago yesterday, when Michelle noted that something seemed to be missing in the weeks after our excellent World Series of Poker trip and she offered the first post: One day I couldn't stop blogging.

In the months since, Incremental Updates has been a little miracle of fun and community, a kind of gravity center for our awesome friends and family and a running account of the insignificance that makes up our lives. I've loved it. But as a few regulars have pointed out, I've stopped contributing much in the past week or two.

No, Kaye and Ronelle and Michelle, it's not just because I've deluded myself into thinking I truly am a guitar hero (although I just read that Slash was bragging about beating "Guitar Hero" on the medium level; hell, dude, I did that, and without the benefit of being the lead guitarist with Guns N' Roses or Velvet Revolver). But as I was telling Mom the other day on our drive down to Eugene, I felt like a I needed a little break from blogging. Even though I enjoy it, I was spending a lot of time in front of the computer and neglecting other important things, like my poker game.

But now it's a new year. I feel refreshed and ready to rejoin M&M.

That's it; I don't have anything else to say just yet. I just thought I'd issue fair warning that I'll be back around from time to time.

So Happy New Year everyone, and thanks for the nudge.

Morning Script Meeting

Mark and I were chatting this morning about writing a script for a new superhero vs villain movie (think Superman, etc). I was saying it's time for a great really terrible woman supervillain. The closest I think we've come was Catwoman, and she wasn't really all that terrible.

My first stab at the idea is this villain is a woman whose face is half beautiful and half grotesque -- frozen in place like a terrible death scream. When you see her from the right, you think, hmm, what a hottie, and then when she turns to face you you're all eeww, gross!

I offered the backstory that she got a pimple behind her ear one day that hurt a little, then a little more, then turned out to be infected by a bacteria that tranformed her into horror bitch. (Frozen Face is our working name for her. I think we need to work on that.)

Mark argued that her disfigurement would have to come through some character flaw -- like, she was beautiful already, but wanted to be even more beautiful, and so the horror face was a result of cosmetic surgery gone wrong.

Mark argues that evil villains need to start out evil, and when bad things happen to them it's because they're evil.

I argued that people can become evil because the bad things that happen to them seethe in them and make them rotten. True, he says, but America won't buy a super villain that became evil by accident. America likes their comic evil to be evil, and good to be good, with no nuance, he said.

Personally, I think that the fact that the accident has been the reason behind so many superheros (Accidente! A spider bites a boy and he becomes spiderman! Accidente, Two guys kill Bruce Wayne's parents, making him become Batman!) means that the same accidentalism could succeed as the transforming backstory for villains. What think you?

Precisely

One of the things I liked best about working at the Los Angeles Times was the paper's thoughtful, thorough, and thoroughly enforced ethics policy. I believe that for all the handwringing we do in this industry about declining readership, competition from the Internet, the waning interest of the public, etc., newspapers often are their own worst enemy. At least, they don't do themselves any favors by appearing to be -- or being! -- biased, unfair, on the take, or even imprecise.

Sadly, not everyone I've worked with, especially outside the Times, has shared that concern. In fact, some of my morning news meeting diatribes on this very blog began as newsroom rants about hyperbolic writing, or getting too cozy with sources, or accepting freebies, or winning a writing "award" from an organization being covered.

The LAT has a new online section by its readers' representative, which will include discussions with reporters, editors and other staff members and a place for the readers' rep, Jamie Gold, to answer questions. But what caught my eye today was publication of the paper's full ethics guidelines. It's a terrific document that could be used as a model for other newsrooms.

Among my favorite sections is an entry on precision of writing. This isn't always considered an "ethical" issue, but as it gets to the writer's (and the paper's) credibility, the Times includes it here.

One short excerpt:

Superlatives such as “biggest,” “worst” and “most” should be employed only when the writer has proof. It is the responsibility of assigning editors and copy editors to challenge all questionable claims. The burden of proof rests with the writer; it is not the desk’s responsibility to prove the writer wrong.

It is unacceptable to hedge an unverified or unverifiable assertion with words such as “arguably” or “perhaps.” Our job is to tell readers what is true, not what might be.

That's what I'm talking about. Plenty of good reading throughout.

If I'm reading this right ...

... M&M meets all the criteria to be a Washington Post blog.

Check out this interesting Post memo on blogging, courtesy of Washington City Paper.

Things to do:

1. Get good idea
2. Work hard on it
3. Publish book
4. Repeat

I just stumbled on this cool blog today by Sasha Cagen, a San Francisco writer who began collecting people's to-do lists a few years back, turned them into a blog and a small magazine and now has published a book reproducing them and pondering what they tell us about ourselves. Smart.

Examples on her site run the gamut from cleaning the house to contemplating boyfriend criteria. I like this list of possible screen names (lifted from todolistblog.com):


Good for Sasha. I hope she has a big hit with her book.

First time for everything

I've never been in the New York Times ... until today!

Unprecedented, you say? Not so fast.

As I've said before, "unprecedented" is one of those words that drives me crazy. So when I noticed this week that the New York Times editor who oversees language issues for the newspaper was responding online to questions from readers, I jumped at the chance to register my gripe. Today they used my question.

Here's my published exchange with the editor, Philip B. Corbett (that's his mug above, from the NYT):

An Unprecedented Question

Q. First, thank you. The current discussion is very interesting, and I admire the evenness of your tone and the thoughtfulness of your answers.

My question concerns the use of a pet-peeve word: unprecedented. A favorite editor, discouraging the word's use, once told me there's a precedent for almost everything. I agree, and yet I seem to see it cropping up more and more. The Times isn't as guilty on this score as many other publications, but even in your paper I see Moscow imposing unprecedented restrictions on election observers, an unprecedented federal aviation survey, unprecedented numbers of uninsured patients, and dairy costs at unprecedented levels. And that's just one day!

I've had trouble getting reporters and editors in my own newsroom to address this language tic. Or maybe it's just me. What do you think?

— Mark Matassa, Seattle

A. Mr. Matassa is in good company with this pet peeve. Al Siegal, who literally wrote the book on The Times's style, also discouraged use of this word, for the same reason. Our stylebook elaborates:

UNPRECEDENTED means for the first time. Do not modify the word with a term like very, rather or almost; either something is unprecedented or (far more likely) it is not. Use the term rarely, and only after verifying the history. Then carefully specify the aspect that qualifies.

It may be that since Mr. Siegal's retirement last year, our vigilance on this point has eroded. I'll keep an eye out.

There! See that, people?

Anyway, Mr. Corbett's entire "Talk to the Newsroom" Q&A is very good. I recommend it for language geeks, news hounds and anyone interested in good writing.

Journalism, literature, psychoanalysis

This tight little piece on New York Times editor Bill Keller and "War and Peace" is good. Thank you, New York Observer.

How journalism's supposed to be

I just stumbled across this excellent obit written by Bill Dwyre, the Los Angeles Times sports editor who always impressed me during my short time there.

His subject is Shav Glick, a sportswriter at the Times for 54 years who I didn't know but, from Dwyre's column, can tell I would have liked. Here was a reporter.

Can you yell 'fire' in a crowded blog?

Kicking off a truncated news meeting this morning, I point you toward Kaye's excellent post on coverage of the crazy Southern California wildfires, and the LA Times' smart use of Google Maps to help keep readers updated. Very good.

I notice on LA Observed that the fires prevented the LA Daily News from delivering to most subscribers today. Glad the Internet still works.

Lastly, in an era of so little straight talk -- everything's either larded with false sincerity or reduced to mean partisan squabbling -- I appreciated Lee Siegel's tough but fair pan of Alice Sebold's new book in yesterday's New York Times Book Review.

"This novel is so morally, emotionally and intellectually incoherent that it’s bound to become a best seller," he writes.

Ouch.

Aside from delivering a punch, though, Siegel has something to say about a trend in fiction that feels true and like an observation that may gain more currency.

Sebold is mining a popular and lucrative vein in contemporary fiction: peg your book to some heartrending tragedy or act of violence and you’re almost sure to be greeted with moral seriousness, soft reviews and brisk sales. Whether it’s because the American novel is becoming Hollywoodized, or because the disjunctive tone and disassociated content of the news have numbed us to disjunctive and disassociated fiction, or because we’re losing the capacity to imagine other people’s pain, writing callously and sunnily and profitably about tragedy is now an established American genre.

I liked Sebold's first novel, "The Lovely Bones," but I see what Siegel's saying, even in that one. I'll probably skip "The Almost Moon."

By the way, if you're looking for a good list of bestsellers, my favorite is still USA Today's -- they mix fiction and non-fiction, hardcover and paperback all into one list so you can really tell where everything falls. This week's top 5:

1. Eat, Pray, Love. Elizabeth Gilbert. Paperback memoir. (This is on my coffee table waiting to be cracked open.)
2. Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food. Jessica Seinfeld. Hardcover.
3. I Am America (And So Can You!). Stephen Colbert. Hardcover n/f.
4. Love in the Time of Cholera. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Paperback fiction. (Oprah's choice)
   
5. Clapton. Eric Clapton. Hardcover autobiography.

Fair warning: misanthropy alert

At the risk of killing yesterday's cool M&M vibe, I begin today by inviting the wrath of all good-hearted, sympathetic people, of whom there appear to be legions.

What I'm talking about is my weeks-long repulsion by the Seattle Times' coverage of Gloria S., (Seattle Times photo, right) a local girl with brain cancer. One of their sports columnists, Jerry Brewer, somehow stumbled onto this case and wrote many long, maudlin pieces about the girl and her disease, then expanded the coverage by launching a blog in which he chronicled not only her progress and the feelings of her family, but also his own emotions as he wrote about and interacted with them.

In a word, barf already.

There's nothing new about this kind of "journalism." Newspapers and TV have been doing it forever, and it sells. I've always hated these pieces though. And I hate the cliches of the genre: how people "battle" cancer; their x-long "fight" with the disease; the "cancer survivors." The stories themselves always feel so manipulative and cynical and just, well, gross. And I say that knowing that most of the reporters and editors producing them -- and even the patients and families who are their subjects -- are sincerely moved. Even so.

Ask anybody: These hearts and flowers stories have always made me sick, long before I got tumors of my own and became, I guess, a potential subject. That's why Mich famously mocked me by suggesting I get a dog: "Makes for a better picture," she said.

So now poor Gloria has died. I'm not without compassion, really. I feel bad for her family. I'm sure the girl suffered and I gather that she was a strong and gutsy little kid. I'm sorry for them all, really I am.

But the coverage this weekend has made me reach for my nausea meds. For weeks, as Gloria was in and out of the hospital and consciousness, her family and friends (and Brewer, and his prolific e-mailing readers) prayed for "a miracle." When she died Friday the family issued a statement, blogged by Brewer:

"After a four-year battle with cancer, Gloria received her miracle this morning, passing into our Heavenly Father's hands."

OK. Maybe it's because I'm a heartless atheist in addition to being a heartless, cynical journalist, but to my friends who have offered their prayers for my own condition: Please spare me such a "miracle."

This morning, I notice, the most read story on the Seattle Times site is Gloria's obit.

The opposite of sharp

My Mom, our loyal M&M reader, just mentioned that Roger Ebert also liked "Eastern Promises," so I went and read his review. Which is fine, until he gets to this observation in the final paragraph:

"I write little about casting directors, because I can't know what really goes on, and of course directors make the final choice for key roles. But whatever Deirdre Bowen and Nina Gold had to do with the choices in this movie, including what might seem the unlikely choice of Mortensen, was pitch-perfect."

I'm glad this came in the final graf, so I only had to miss one sentence when I stopped reading at that dreaded phrase "pitch-perfect." Man, I'm so sick of this. When did everyone start saying pitch-perfect? The irony is that it's such a "tone deaf" expression. Falls flat every time.

Writers and editors who have worked with me know I have a long (and always growing) list of pet-peeve writing tics, and pity the fool who hands in a story without consulting it first. So I hereby add pitch-perfect to a few other all-star selections:

unprecedented
indeed
to be sure
tone deaf
it is what it is
[the overuse or imprecise use of superlatives]

OK, get back to work you tone-deaf geniuses.

Running out of excuses

Yesterday this excellent-looking book arrived in the mail from our good friend Kay in Long Beach. I take this as a gentle nudge to get cracking on our proposal for Blue Highways, Big Deal, or whatever it'll be called, our book idea mentioned in an earlier post.

Michelle tells me that Kay says our friend Donna Wares in Seal Beach, who knows plenty about the publishing world, recommends this as the book to guide you through writing a proposal. That's a great recommendation and a great gift. Thanks to all.

It might take me a minute to read this before I get down to business.

Our next big thing

I think it's cool that Michelle started this new blog. We've both missed our old Vegas blog since that awesome trip, and even if we don't have a big, focusing adventure like that was, it'll be nice to have a place to record what's going on.

But in fact we have been talking about a big new adventure, almost ever since that last one ended. Our idea is to take a long, leisurely trip across the country and write a book that's part travelogue and part user's guide to the nation's card rooms. Sort of Blue Highways meets the green felt, or something like that. Blue Highways, Big Deal.


It needs refining, but I like the possibilities in combining two of America's enduring traditions: poker and the road trip. Between us we know enough people in the publishing world that I'm confident we could get someone to look at a proposal. And several friends already have offered to help us refine a proposal when we have one.


So, as Michelle reminds me every morning before heading off to work, it's time to write that up.