The HR Manager

Sylvia's Certificate of Human Resources Management from Grant MacEwan University came in the mail today! She crammed a full course load into just a few months and worked so diligently that she achieved an A+ average - a spectacular result. I'm very proud of her, not just for scoring near perfection, but for completely switching career gears with utter fearlessness. Great job, Sylvia! 

A Pretty Big Day

Voyager 1 has left the solar system, the temperature reached 32 degrees C in Edmonton today, and most impressively, Sylvia was accepted into MacEwan University's Human Resources Management program! Definitely a day to celebrate milestones.

Project Burger Baron: Jasper Place

The Burger Baron at Jasper Place fades with quiet dignity on 156 street and 110A avenue, kitty-corner to MacEwan University's bright orange west-end campus. It's the Burger Baron closest to our home, and the one Sylvia and I frequent most. In a neighbourhood that's starting to look a little worn, this particular Burger Baron offers genuinely friendly service and a rare menu option: the Denver sandwich.

The Jasper Place Burger Baron features a number of Burger Baron standards: the pizza burger (my usual choice), the royal burger, the Hawaiian, corn fritters and Texas Fried Chicken. Once upon a time this location wasn't open on Mondays, so today I originally stopped at the Burger Baron on 111th avenue first. To my surprise, they were closed (with a wooden board in place of the broken drive-through window), so I went to Jasper Place instead. Apparently their hours have changed, and unless my memory is playing tricks on me, the milkshake sizes have increased.

Not all the changes are positive, though, at least from my perspective; they've changed the French fry formula, and now this location's fries are the sort that have that odd crispy breaded feel. Some people like fries like this, but I'm a plain steak fries or skin-on, Swiss Chalet-style fries kind of guy.

This location appears to be family-run, and they never fail to greet Sylvia and I with a smile and pleasant chatter.

The paint may be cracked and fading, the neighbourhood aging and in need of revitalization, but the Jasper Place Burger Baron is weathering the years with pride, offering reliable comfort food to the diverse denizens of west Edmonton.

Aiieeee, the Jury

When I left the Alberta Legislature behind last May, I suspected that it might be a while before I landed another job. I've been fortunate enough to land some freelance writing assignments and a really wonderful online tutoring job for one semester at Grant MacEwan, but a full-time job still eludes me nine months later.It's been a frustrating process, but I remain grateful because I know other Canadians have far greater obstacles to happiness. I'll find the right position, but I have no right to expect it to happen overnight.

The purpose of this post is not to whine about my job search, but to highlight the little curve balls life tosses from time to time. This morning I confirmed that today's EI payment was my last. Alarming news, yes, but I knew it was coming, and Sylvia and I made plans long ago in the unlikely (or so I thought) event that my benefits ran out before I'd found another job. I filed away the news, returned to my job search, and found five positions that each sounded quite appealing. With another batch of applications bravely assaulting the fortifications of HR filtering software, I felt as though the day hadn't been a total loss.

A couple of hours later, Sylvia asked me to take her to Tim Horton's for her signature medium mocha ice cap supreme. On the way we picked up the mail, and...

"Why do I have a letter from Alberta Justice and Attorney General...wait, are you kidding me? Is this a jury summons?"

I tore open the envelope and there it was: a summons to appear at the Court of Queen's Bench for jury selection.

I can't decide if this is the best timing in the world, or the worst. On the one hand, I'm unemployed, so there's really no better time to do my civic duty. And it's a duty I take very seriously; if it turns out that I'm chosen during jury selection, I'm ready to serve. More than that; I'd be proud to serve.

On the other hand, what do I do if a prospective employer offers me a job while I'm sequestered? "What a great offer! I can't wait to start working for you! Er...can I start six months from now, once this trial is over?"

Of course I'm painting a very improbable scenario. The odds of being picked are very slim. The odds of the trial lasting more than a couple of days are slim. And the odds that an employer will make an offer at the worst possible moment are slimmest of all.

...this is exactly what's going to happen, isn't it...?

Movies I Watched in 2012

Although I've been tracking my reading since January 2011, it didn't occur to me until mid-2012 to track my film viewing. The following list ordered chronologically by film viewed, though it's probably a little off as I didn't start recording until later in the year and had to dig through my memory for films I caught earlier in 2012.

Moneyball (Bennett Miller, 2011)

Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011)

John Carter (Andrew Stanton, 2012)

The Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2012)

The Racket (Lewis Milestone, 1928)
In Old Arizona (Irving Cummings, 1928)
The Divorcee (Robert Z. Leonard, 1930)
Source Code (Duncan Jones, 2011)

The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch, 1929)
Cimarron (Wesley Ruggles, 1931)
Five Star Final (Mervyn LeRoy, 1931)
42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933)
Little Women (George Cukor, 1933)
Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935)
Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
Miracle on 34th Street (George Seaton, 1947)
Three Coins in the Fountain (Jean Negulesco, 1954)
The Last Picture Show (Peter Bogdanovich, 1971)
The Deer Hunter (Michael Cimino, 1978)
Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford, 1983)
Babe (Chris Noonan, 1995)
Good Will Hunting (Gus Van Sant, 1997)
The Cider House Rules (Lasse Hallstrom, 1999)
Chocolat (Lasse Hallstrom, 2000)
In the Bedroom (Todd Field, 2001)
Gangs of New York (Martin Scorsese, 2002)
My Week with Marilyn (Simon Curtis, 2011)

The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002)
Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
Seabiscuit (Gary Ross, 2003)
Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004)
Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005)
The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)
Atonement (Joe Wright, 2007)

Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, 2008)

Thor (Kenneth Branagh, 2011)

Hobo with a Shotgun (Jason Eisener, 2011)

True Romance (Tony Scott, 1993)

Dirty Harry (Don Siegel, 1971)

In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, 2008)

Starcrash (Luigi Cozzi, 1978)

Shanghai Express (Josef Von Sternberg, 1932)

The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931)

The Private Life of Henry VIII (Alexander Korda, 1933)

American Grindhouse (Elijah Drenner, 2010)

She Done Him Wrong (Lowell Sherman, 1933)

State Fair (Walter Lang, 1945

Dodsworth (William Wyler, 1936)

The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille, 1952)

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Sam Wood, 1939)

Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939)

Oliver Twist (David Lean, 1948)

The Philadelphia Story (George Cukor, 1940)

The Music Man (Morton DaCosta, 1962)

Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison, 1971)

Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001)

The Help (Tate Taylor, 2011)

Limitless (Neil Burger, 2011)

The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

The Day the Earth Stood Still (Scott Derrickson, 2008)

Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935)

Mutiny on the Bounty (Lewis Milestone, 1962)

Charade (Stanley Donen, 1963)

A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992)

12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957)

Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur, 1998)

Repo Men (Miguel Sapochnik, 2010)

The Adjustment Bureau (George Nolfi, 2011)

Contagion (Steven Soderbergh, 2011)

The Mechanic (Simon West, 2011)

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)

Clash of the Titans (Lois Leterrier, 2010)

Milk (Gus Van Sant, 2008)

Sucker Punch (Zack Snyder, 2011)

Battle: Los Angeles (Jonathan Liebesman, 2011)

Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard, 2008)

Skyline (Colin and Greg Strausse, 2010)

Drive Angry (Patrick Lussier, 2011)

Chronicle (Josh Trank, 2012)

Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo, 2007)

Arlington Road (Mark Pellington, 1999)

Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)

Mysterious Island (Cy Endfield, 1961)

Midnight in Paris (Woody Allen, 2011)

The Amazing Spider-Man (Marc Webb, 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

Looper (Rian Johnson, 2012)

How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962)

Midnight Express (Alan Parker, 1978)

A Trip to the Moon (Georges Melies, 1902)

Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

She (Lansing C. Holden and Irving Pichel, 1935)

Things to Come (William Cameron Menzies, 1936)

eXistenZ (David Cronenberg, 1999)

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920)

The Green Hornet (Michael Gondry, 2011)

Triumph of the Will (Leni Riefenstahl, 1935)

Star Wars (George Lucas, 1977)

Detour (Edgar G. Ulmer, 1945)

House (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977)

Emotion (Nobohiko Obayashi, 1966)

Magnum Force (Ted Post, 1973)

The Ides of March (George Clooney, 2011)

Melancholia (Lars von Trier, 2011)

Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932)

Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994)

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002)

Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012)

King Kong (Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, 1933)

Hillsborough (Charles McDougall, 1996)

Collision Earth (Paul Ziller, 2011)

Crack in the World (Andrew Morton, 1965)

Gog (Herbert L. Strock, 1954)

Triangle (Christopher Smith, 2009)

That's 116 films, a fairly typical year. A few of these films were part of the curriculum of the popular culture course I tutored in the fall: Birth of a Nation, Metropolis, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Triumph of the Will, Star Wars, Detour. I wish I'd been able to show them some of the others on this list, notably King Kong, Jason and the Argonauts, Island of Lost Souls, Dirty Harry, How the West Was Won and Five Star Final - great examples of adventure, fantasy, science fiction, crime drama, western and newspaper drama. 

On the other hand, I'd probably tell future students to avoid Collision Earth, The Green Hornet, The Amazing Spider-Man, Drive Angry, Skyline, The Greatest Show on Earth and Green Lantern. 

Speech! Speech!

I had a great time talking to students in Derek Drager's speechwriting class at Grant MacEwan this afternoon. They were a great bunch of students with good questions, and it was a pleasure to enjoy a classroom environment again.

Derek asked me to give his students a picture of the everyday reality of a speechwriter, and that's what I tried to do.

I've never had the benefit of any formal training in speechwriting, so I had to learn all my techniques on the fly. I won't reproduce my entire talk here, but here are the two primary lessons I tried to impart:

- Develop your empathic skills. Listen to your client, not just with your ears, but with your heart; find out what's most important to them on a personal and professional level. And develop empathy for your client's audiences; his or her speeches will be most effective if the audience believes that the speaker understands and empathizes with their issues and priorities.

- Speechwriting is a huge responsibility. A speechwriter's words, when delivered by a person of influence, can have a tremendous affect on people. A speechwriter should always use his or her talents for good; he or she should seek and share truth.

Of course there's a whole lot more to speechwriting, but if you keep those two points at top of mind, you're off to a good start.

Today's experience, combined with yesterday's very motivational creativity workshop, have given me an interesting idea: speeches for superheroes! I have a concept in mind already, and I intend to turn this into a recurring feature here at My Name is Earl (J. Woods). The first speech will be delivered by Superman.

40 Trips Around the Sun

Well, I turned 40 at 7:37 pm tonight. I can no longer be a theme-appropriate guest star on thirtysomething.

Today I attended a very entertaining and informative seminar on creativity at Grant MacEwan college - the orange campus on 100th ave and 156 street. Great presentation by Georgian author Sam Harrison - one lecture on how to approach a proper brainstorming session, and another on igniting your creativity. I hope to put what I've learned today to use both at work and on my personal projects, including this blog. Perhaps not tonight, though - it's been a very busy week, with more to come before I get a break.

There was cake for me at work, phone calls and emails from family and friends, and Sylvia found a set of Star Trek Pez dispensers AND a Captain Picard action figure WITH captain's chair, AND Jeff Pitts found me an authentic Flash Gordon movie poster.

Wow - good birthday!

Resolution Update

I feel like I'm doing okay on the resolution front. I'm about to start a graphic design course thanks to Jeff, and I've been working out every weekday for the last four weeks: half hour cardio, plus crunches, weights, pushups and stretches.

Still working on the other items on the list. But oh, in other exciting news - I'll be guest lecturing at Grant MacEwan on February 23rd and 26th, talking to students about the ups and downs of professional speechwriting. I'm really looking forward to that.

paper/cuts

I meant to mention this a long time ago, but better late than never. The latest issue of paper/cuts, the magazine of Grant MacEwan College's professional writing program, came out a few weeks ago, and my "box of bricks" story is included, under the title "They Ain't Heavy." It's great to have something nonpolitical and nonherbilogical in print! Thanks to Leslie for bringing this opportunity to my attention, and to Dustin for moving the box of bricks and thus inspiring the story.

Canadian Authors Share Their Experiences at Grant MacEwan Talk

I don't have much to write about tonight, so I thought I'd share an assignment I completed a couple of years ago for a Grant MacEwan journalism course. If you have any interest at all in writing, perhaps this will be of interest.

Canadian Authors Share Their Experiences at Grant MacEwan Talk

An informal discussion on the life of a typical writer turned into a sometimes-heated debate on the ethics of the editorial process.

Canadian authors Alberto Manguel, Peter Oliva, and Thomas Horton were the guests at the seminar, held at Grant MacEwan Community College on Thursday. The talk was entitled “Calling or Mauling?” in recognition of the struggles authors often face when attempting to make a living as a writer.

Horton began the discussion by relating the experiences leading to the publication of his novel Icefields. “I wrote my own comic books as a kid, but it took me a while to realize that I could actually make a living as a writer.”

Horton said that the first time he’d shown his creative writing to anyone other than family members was at a creative writing course at the University of Alberta taught by Greg Hollingshead. There, Horton began working on a short story that eventually evolved into Icefields.

“It took a while to figure out what the hell I was writing about,” he said.

Horton passed the book on to another noted Alberta author, Rudy Wiebe. A member of the editorial board of NeWest Press, Wiebe recommended the book for publication. Icefields has since become an international bestseller.

Oliva, who operates a Calgary bookstore in addition to his writing career, said that he got into writing because he was “very bad at mathematics.” While studying computer science, Oliva rediscovered his love of stories and decided to change his field of study.

“I have to give some of the credit for my success to my dad, who was pretty famous back home for his different versions of 'Jack and the Beanstalk,'” he said.

Oliva, too, took a creative writing course in university.

“There, criticism was used like a farm implement. You’d wield a pitchfork like a samurai sword, and you had to develop a thick skin.”

Oliva sent his first novel, Dreaming in Darkness, to several publishers. When the post office asked him how much the package was worth, Oliva simply wrote “thousands” in recognition of all of the time and effort spent in creating his manuscript.

“What I didn’t know was that Canada Post sends stuff worth over $500 with armed guards, so the publishers took notice when this package showed up.”

Manguel, a Canadian of Argentinean origin, is the co-author of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, the author of A History of Reading, and a noted anthologist. He noted that his experience had been very different than his younger compatriots. “In Argentina, the notion of having creative writing courses is totally alien. Indeed, no one expects writing to provide financial support.”

He called Canada “a society in which writing is cushioned in every possible way.”

Manguel admitted to being “shocked by the arrogance” of editors. “In Argentina, the writer writes, and the publisher publishes. There is no editor. Indeed, I am enormously wary of the intervention of editors.”

Manguel alluded to a “lost literature” of Canada, the unchanged, unedited works of Canadian authors. He went on to say that Cervantes and Shakespeare certainly never had to endure the interference of editors.

This sparked a heated reply from Rudy Wiebe, in attendance at the event.

“Shakespeare’s early plays are idiotic,” he said, “do we want to live in a 16th century world? Editors make better books.”

“Aren’t writers often editors?” another member of the audience asked.

“The nasty answer is, they’re frustrated writers,” Manguel replied, “but of course that’s not always the case.”

Manguel admitted that editors could have a positive influence on authors, citing his own editor Barbara Moss.

“She would ask me of my stories, ‘Why are you telling me this, a perfect stranger?’ That question always helped me to create better works.”

On the calling of writing, Manguel said “If you ask yourself ‘Should I write?’ the answer is no.”