Bad Love in 30 Songs Or Less

Synopsis of the story thread follows after the playlist:

Horrible Love Story

Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars
You start the pursuit of a partner way out of your league. If you get her, you'd have no idea what to do with the catch.

Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
Will you become just another boy screaming her name over the rags of her graduation gown?

R.E.M. - (Don't Go Back to) Rockville
Something better happen soon or it'll be too late.

Eric Clapton - Layla
Down on your knees, boy. This is obsession.

Dusty Springfield - You Don't Have to Say You Love Me
... just let me hang around, okay?

KT Tunstall - Black Horse and the Cherry Tree
The girl doesn't even want to fall in love.

Santana - Black Magic Woman
But she's got an evil hold of your heart.

Offspring - Self Esteem
Yes, even when she sleeps with your friends. Wait, what?

Rod Stewart - First Cut is the Deepest
The beginning of the end.

Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet
Could we just give this one more shot?

Nirvana - Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Do I really want to know?

Sublime - Santeria
Daddy's got a new .45! Believe me when I say that I've got something for his punkass!

Fleetwood Mac - Go Your Own Way
Okay, so this is goodbye.

The Beatles - Ticket to Ride
Going, going ...

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Tuesday's Gone
... gone.

Radiohead - High and Dry
The best thing that I've ever had has gone away.

A Fine Frenzy - Almost Lover
Didn't we almost have it all?

Alanis Morrissette - You Oughta Know
Forget about stages of grief -- I'm just furious.

Green Day - Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)
Hope you had a good time breaking my heart, honey.

Kelly Clarkson - Because of You
The hurt runs deep.

Counting Crows - Anna Begins
And then she begins to fade away.

The Pretenders - Chill Factor
Poor girl, really. See if I care.

Rufus Wainwright - Hallelujah
Love is not a victory march - it's cold and it's broken.

Hinder - Lips of an Angel
What if I run into her again?

Beautiful South - Don't Marry Her
Fine -- let's just go play the field again!

Tom Petty - Refugee
And it doesn't matter to me how much you are hurting.

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed
I used to care, but ... things have changed.

Sheryl Crow & Kid Rock - Picture
Light at the end of the long, dark tunnel?

Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs

Image by Jeff Cushner via Flickr

The book Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs by Judi and Ron Barrett has been a grade-school favorite since its publication in 1982. Now it's an animated movie, and I've got some good and bad news for fans of the book:

• The bad: The movie version is very, very, very different from the book.
• The good: You will probably love the movie too, just for different reasons.

Many of the changes simply adapt the material to the film medium, and to modern sensibilities. In the book, it;s a grandpa telling tall tales about food storms. There's no hero, no girl to get, and no plot. That's fine for a bedtime story, but wouldn't make for a very interesting film.

In the movie version, we get to see why it's raining hot dogs and pizza. It's a cookie-cutter plot superimposed on the town of Chewandswallow from the book -- the hero changes the weather, falls in love, and then has to fix the huge mess he made. So far, so bad, right?

But here's the thing: from script to post-production, the people who made the movie love it and dare to go all the way with every wacky idea. If this was Shrek, you'd see the spray-on shoes joke exactly once, and the whole thing would be a cavalcade of throwaway pop-culture jokes. In Meatballs, every one of the potentially one-off jokes becomes a running gag with real importance to the plot.

I loved all the in-jokes and references to movie history, and my kids were laughing at the rat-birds and food fights. I would love to see sequels built around inventor Flint Lockwood. That franchise wouldn't build on the Barrett's only follow-up, but could grow into a pop culture phenomenon all its own. And that's just fine by me.

5 easy stars on a five-star scale!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Where the Wild Things Get Cloudy (with Meatballs) (thismommygig.org)
• Making movies in your head (blogs.suntimes.com)
• The Kitchen Thinker: children's books (telegraph.co.uk)

How to Find a Poetry Market

Cover of Walking to Martha's Vineyard

Aspiring poets need to find markets that would publish the fruits of our loving labor. Here's one trick:

Go to the library, your bookshelf, or a bookstore. Pick up a recent-ish volume of poetry where the material isn't too different from your own. Then skim the front and back matter for a list of acknowledgements.

For example, the Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard by Franz Wright was published in 2005 and it contains a single page of acknowledgements. Wright thanks a number of publications for publishing the peoms that ended up in this book:

• Can we have our ball back
• Field
• Gulf Coast
• Long Shot
• nowCulture
• Perihelion
• Salmagundi
• Slope
• The New Yorker

Now, we hit the Web with searches like (perihelion poetry) and ("Gulf Coast" poetry). As it turns out, a couple of these publications have closed down entirely, and others no longer accept new submissions. Bummer. How can you tell? Some journals post a final "goodbye" and others just freeze up. Can we have our ball back was last updated three years ago, so it's a safe bet that the submission window has closed.

But a select handful are open for business and have proper submission guidelines posted on the Web. The links above go directly to those guidelines for your convenience.

So there you have it -- a short list of poetry fora that are actively accepting submissions and may appreciate my voice.

Have any other market-finding tricks to share? Please let me know in the Comments below.

How To Write A Song

Image via Wikipedia

Methods of songwriting are surely as plentiful and varied as the leaves on the streets of Boston in the fall. Here's yet another -- several, in fact.

Step 1: pick an existing song. It could be Itsy Bitsy Spider or Bohemian Rhapsody; New York, New York or I Gotta Feeling -- it really doesn't matter. Whatever inspires you is fair game, regardless of genre, tempo, style, or age.

Step 2: write your own lyrics to that song. You can reimagine the message you see in the original version. You could take off on a tangent from some poignant line that pushes your buttons. Or, of course, you could throw the whole original out and start over. Your source will provide you with a rhythmic framework, like the sonnet form's iambic pentameter guided Shakespeare. You have that framework. Now cover it in fresh words.

Many songwriters stop right there. Some of the greatest songs ever written are little more than a fresh take on an old melody. That's okay. But you can go further, too.

Step 3, in that case, is the reverse of step 2. Now you have your lyrics. Then throw out the old melody and sing those words to a new tune. Or, if you're more of a lyricist than a musician anyway, this is where you hand your lyrics over to a melody writer, or submit your material to a lyrics writing contest, or what have you. Sure, you wrote those words to fit a specific cadence, rhythm, and melody. But that doesn't mean that you can't find an even better musical stage on which those words can shine. And, if you come up with both lyrics and melody, you don't have to worry about who owns the copyright to Itsy Bitsy Spider. It's your own song now.

If you decide to try this method out, I'd be very excited to hear -- or at least read -- what you came up with. Drop me a line at bylund AT gmail.com, or use the comments box below.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Some directors push the envelope of good taste in a desperate attempt to snag the young male demographic. That never works. Exhibit A: The Ugly Truth.

Others simply take their jokes to the next level in a fearless cavalcade of T, A, and insults. It works, because it's funny.

Goods star Jeremy Piven may be interchangeable with Truth stud Gerard Butler, but they're working with vastly different material. Butler's film was formulaic and tedious, and the R-rated bits felt forced. Piven and his supporting cast -- yes, this is a one-man vehicle -- simply goes way over the top with every joke in a simple story.

This is Animal House on a used car lot. It's funny and smart, and not PC at all.

Stay home if you're thin-skinned. This movie serves up insults to everybody, whether you're a woman or a man, Asian or black, war veteran or nerdy musician. No punches are pulled, ever.

When The Goods hits the DVD market, I expect it to be a cult favorite at frats and bachelor parties. It's perfect fare for a night of beer and Buffalo wings with the guys.

Epic Rock

Have you noticed how many of the finest rock songs ever written are more than just straight-up rock?

I've put together a little playlist with some of the best examples of this phenomenon I could think of, and I'm happy to explain exactly what I mean -- track by track:


Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody

• It's opera. It's folk rock. It's heavy metal. It's so much more. Not only that, but Freddie Mercury and the gang deliver great examples of every style they touch here. Bohemian Rhapsody is the archetype of what I mean by "epic rock."

Derek and the Dominos - Layla

• Eric Clapton's hardcore guitar duel with Duane Allman segues into a sentimental piano ballad, capped with a chirping slide guitar. One of the greatest love songs, and Clapton did get the girl -- at least for a while.

Heart - Crazy On You

• The acoustic guitar intro is a classic on its own, and then the real song begins. The Wilson sisters move with ease through hard and soft, raucous and slow, desperate and passionate rock.

Wings - Band On the Run

• This song starts out slow and traditional, but then goes through two snapping breaks and becomes the kind of anthem you'll scream at the top of your lungs after about six beers.

Metallica - One

• Now we're really rocking. No band has mastered the art of epic rock like Metallica, where nearly every song is a study in contrasts. This anti-war missive is more nuanced than most, though.

Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road

• Thunder Road doesn't do sharp style breaks, but still manages to somehow transform from a gentle ballad to a heartbreaking stadium rocker. You could build a career on trying to copy this song over and over.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird

• Like Band On the Run, Free Bird starts slow but takes a drastic turn into blistering rock. I can't help but whistling along with those legendary guitar riffs -- no matter where I am or what I'm doing.

Fleetwood Mac - The Chain

• Not too many rock standards started with a bass riff, but that's what Fleetwood Mac did here. Take one John McVie bass groove, add one unfinished Stevie Nicks lament over endless love unrequited, and wrap the whole package in the layered backing of an all-star band for the ages. This is what you get.

Pink Floyd - Time

• Parts of this song aren't even music. That's not a bad thing.

The Who - Baba O'Riley

• Lead-heavy guitar rock. Irish folk fiddle. And in the background of this glorious style contrast, there's the incessant melodic tapping of early electronica. What's not to love?

Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

• Most people recognize the eerie intro from The Exorcist. Beyond that, Oldfield plays everything from Bossa Nova to Russian folk on a variety of guitars, glockenspiel, pipe organ, and the eponymous tubular bells. It's in two pieces because you had to flip the LP over at some point, or else I imagine Oldfield would have simply filled an entire CD with one song. You want epic? You want Tubular Bells.

I probably missed your favorite epic rock anthem. Tell me off in the comments box below.

Superb Submission Missives

Image by Aaron Gustafson via Flickr

Some submission guidelines are better than others.

These are a few of my favorite freelance submission guidelines from magazines and journals. Some are witty. Others are refreshingly honest. And how often do you see a magazine giving you a list of articles on which to model yours?

N+1

We will do our best to answer all queries, but if you don't hear back from us within 6 weeks, assume the worst.

The Believer

The Believer invites correspondence from one and all, give or take.

The Sun Magazine

Please, no journalistic features, academic works, or opinion pieces. Other than that, we're open to just about anything. Surprise us; we often don't know what we'll like until we read it.

Narrative Magazine

We want writers to have every possible opportunity for success, so we're willing to risk losing a story we want when someone at another magazine may have done their reading before we have, and in that case we'll be sorry to lose the piece but happy for the writer.

Sierra Magazine

Examples of feature articles that display the special qualities we look for include Daniel Duane's "Savoring Wild Salmon" (May/June 2008); Paul Rauber's "Life in Abundance" and Matthew Taylor's "Burned Out on Burning Man" (July/August 2008); and Tomas Alex Tizon's "Rotten Fish Tales" and Debra Jones's "Six-Dog-Power Engine" (November/December 2008).

The Pedestal Magazine

We are currently accepting submissions of slam, spoken word, poetry with music, and performance poetry. For this category, we are not interested in "straight" or "traditional" readings of poems.