Amano, Jason’s Deli, and The Hunger Games

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The first time I tasted real chocolate was when I was a teenager in Switzerland. Up until then, I’d only eaten American Hershey nastiness or the left over chocolates at my grandma’s that she’d poked the bottoms out of and passed over. You know what I’m talking about: those yummy mystery fillings with weird chewy bits that make you wonder if the chocolates weren’t designed by toddlers with too much food on their plates. As you can see, I didn’t have a high opinion of the stuff.

But in the thin oxygen altitudes of the Swiss Alps, I lost my mind and let my sister convince me to try a big flat bar of Swiss milk chocolate with her. We broke off two little pieces. I prepared myself to yak, picked up my piece, and put the chunk in my mouth. She took a bite of hers, and we immediately looked at each other in surprise. We then proceeded to gobble the rest of that large bar and one other before we realized what we’d done. It was so smooth and creamy, so rich, so . . . hallelujah!

After the heavens closed and I came back to my body, I decided maybe chocolate wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Still, nothing I could find in the States compared, and so the chocolate dream faded. Then I married a girl who came with a special IV that fed chocolate directly to her bloodstream. Needless to say, I’ve had plenty of opportunity to eat all manner of chocolate since then. I’ve even learned to appreciate dark chocolate.

I found that there is chocolate that you eat as a snack (chocolate biscotti with milk), chocolate that can make a meal (chocolate cheesecake with strawberries), and chocolate that’s meant to be savored. We recently found one of the latter. And it’s not a Swiss concoction. It’s made in, of all places, Orem, Utah.

The company is called Amano Artisan Chocolate. According to the company’s website: “In 1996 while on his honeymoon, the founder of Amano, Art Pollard decided that there had to be better chocolate than what was being produced in the United States or that of numerous imported varieties. Thus began his search for the ultimate chocolate, which is not bland or flat, but has superior flavor and texture.”

Of course, my wife and I had to give it a try. I can report that it’s lovely. I prefer the rich milk chocolates; she likes the darks. Again, this isn’t chocolate meant for eating. It’s chocolate meant for savoring. You want to take it slow. Let the taste linger and the secondary flavor notes have their moments. Besides, you won’t need to devour it. My wife, who is about as hooked as any junkie, can get her daily fix of joy with just one little square. If you’re a chocolate lover, you’ll want to give it a try. You can order from their website at www.amanochocolate.com or visit their outlet store in Orem.

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Because we live where we do, we have to travel two gazillion miles each year for shopping, movies, and to watch our kids play sports. After a few trips, burgers make me want to gag. Which is why I’m so happy I found a fabulous fast food soup and sandwich joint. It’s called Jason’s Deli.

No, it’s not THAT kind of deli—one of those narrow little places full of weird smells and coolers displaying things not meant for human consumption. This is a soup and sandwich shop. Tall ceilings. Lots of tables. Yummy smells. And food that is reasonably priced and delicious.

I just dragged my wife to the one in Orem this last weekend. She got a Mediterranean Chicken on flatbread with hummus and loved it. I ordered my favorite, their California Club—sprouts, avocado, cheese, and tender meat on a flaky croissant. I always get it with the vegetable soup and fruit, which comes with a small bit of dipping yogurt. And if I’m really hungry, I get a piece of their strawberry shortcake made with real whip cream, not the canned stuff. When you tire of all the same old joints, go to Jason’s Deli. They have locations in Layton, Salt Lake, Murray, and Orem. You can find addresses at www.jasonsdeli.com.

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A week ago Friday, I brushed my teeth, sat down on my bed, and thought I’d read a chapter or two of a book and then go to sleep. At two o’clock a.m. when my wife came home, I was still reading. She got ready for bed. I moved into the bathroom and told myself I would read just one more chapter. Just one. At four o’clock a.m., I finished the book.

Folks, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is delicious ride from start to finish. It’s about sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in a post-apocalyptic world in the country of Panem where North America once stood. In the book, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event where the government of Capitol chooses one boy and one girl from each conquered district to fight until only one is left alive. The games exist to remind the districts they have no hope of any rebellion. The problem is that Katniss’ younger sister, who couldn’t hurt a fly, gets chosen to fight. So Katniss volunteers to take her place. But Katniss’ troubles only multiply. Not only are most of the other 23 fighters bigger than she, but they include a young man from her community who has been nothing but kind to her.

The book is written to young adults, but this is one of those stories like Twilight and Harry Potter that will please adults as well. It delivers moments of wonder, tenderness, and humor. There’s a love subplot. But it’s the poignant suspense that will literally prevent you from putting the book down.

I loved this book so much, I immediately read it again as an author to see how she pulled it off and found myself having an even more powerful experience the second time. It’s a best-seller and is going to be made into a movie. But don’t wait. I’m not. There are two more books in the series. And both are in the mail (thank you, Amazon). Here’s to two more joyful (and sleepless) nights.

Jolie, Salt, & trading suspsense for surprise

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Last week I went and saw Salt. Wow. The movie started with a bang and was off to the races with lots of great action. Unlike many action films where the characters perform stunts which are simply too hokey for me to buy into, I found myself believing in all but two of Salt’s. So I was wowed most of the time instead of thinking about whether they were using wires or what or that it was all so wrong and geeze don’t these guys have consultants? They weren’t as stunning as the opening of Casino Royale, but what is? 

But it wasn’t just action. The premise and acting were all great as well (yes, I recant, I slammed Jolie a while back as an actress cast only for her face value; and while you know that’s one of the reasons why she was here, she still was convincing in her role). Furthermore, the story had a lot of great reversals and reveals. But this was also its ultimate downfall.

When I got to the ending, I did not feel a climax release. No catharsis. No afterglow. It just ended and left me feeling empty. It’s an awful feeling. Totally unsatisfactory. Such a maddening cut off. 

But why? It was all so good up to that point.

*** SPOILERS ***

As I was talking it over with Nellie I believe I indentified the answer: in their effort to be surprising, the director and writers removed everything that would have built suspense. So instead of getting a Sixth Sense ending where the surprise adds to the climax and gives it a wonderful texture, we got a slap of surpise and then nothing.

For me to feel relief, triumph, and the desire to stand up and cheer–all those great climax emotions–I have to be worried about a character. Stressed, thinking they’re going to fail. They need to fight courageously against insurmountable odds and actually come to a point where it appears all is lost. Where I groan inside. All this creates massive pent up worry and anxiety for them. And at that point, the character snatches victory from the jaws of defeat.

Boom! The climax floods me and it’s delight, relief, cheer, joy.

It’s just like a football game where we bite our nails until the very end. Where our non-ranked team is playing the #3 team in the nation. Maybe we jump ahead in the second quarter, but in the third we fall behind. We make some great plays but can’t catch up. And when we do put points on the board, the other team immediately responds. There are three seconds left. We’ve stalled at the twenty yard line. We have one more play. From the moment it starts it appears to be broken, our QB is going down, and then . . . he passes to a running back who has made some space. Who is standing open in the end zone! Yeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhh!

In order to feel a release a climax, something has to build up. The thing that builds is worry, fret, desperate hope. This is what we mean when we talk about suspense. We know the team’s goal, see their predicament, see the overwhelming odds. See them about to lose it all. The dread of defeat and what will be lost rises.

But in Salt the director and writers went for the effect of surprise instead of suspense and triumph. The moment Salt starts in on the Russian president I thought she was the bad guy. Yes, there was the bit about the spider that had me wondering. Yes, I knew she felt anguish about her husband being killed (that smart little reveal in her expression). I knew all of that. But the movie kept me busy thinking she was the bad guy up until almost the very end. Everything in the film lead me to believe this. Not because I didn’t get it. I got it precisely. It’s exactly what the director wanted. It was the setup for the big surprise/reversal at the end.

But when they went for surprise by not letting the audience know what Salt was really up to, the immediately removed the possibility of suspense. So I didn’t feel any suspense at her infiltrating the old group of spies. No relief at her killing them–that was just her revenge. No suspsense when she went to the White House. Nothing when she chased the president down the elevator shaft. The whole time I was thinking, crap, they really did indoctrinate her. She’s bad.

More importantly, there was no rooting, no worry building to release proportions.

Not until the very end do we realize what she’s been trying to do. Oh, the role reversal with her and Ted Winter (btw, like Liev Schreiber who plays the part) was all a big surprise, as it was designed to be. But the surprise faded and there was . . . nothing to replace it. That’s how surprise works. It’s a relatively short effect. 

Yes, she kills Winter. Yes, he was a threat at the end with his scissors, but I didn’t care that much. I hadn’t been whipped into a fever pitch. Not like I was in Gladiator with the emperor and the lead in the coliseum. There was no pressurized worry ready to burst. There wasn’t any because we hadn’t had any time for it to build and because by that time nothing for Salt was really at stake. The one meaningful thing she stood to loose–her relationship with her husband–was taken away from us in an earlier scene when he was shot dead. So what was at stake? A big old nuclear war. Well, who cares about that? Nobody. It’s too generalized. We cared about Salt and her husband.

The result was that the director and writers traded climax for surprise. Alas.

So here’s my conclusion. Surprise is a relatively easy effect to create. You simply have something unexpected but logical occur. Relief, triumph, climax needs something much different. And surprise can be a part of it. But in our effort to build surprise we must not remove the conditions necessary for please-dear-mother suspense. Suspense requires we root for and worry about a character for a significant period, our unease growing until it’s drawn taut, straining. All the time something significant has to be at stake. Something we can sympathize with. Something personal to the person we care about. Only then can we feel the climactic release. Only then will we stand up and cheer in holy-crap-no-way relief and delight.

Cinefour theaters & the goodreads.com pricer

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I think I could write a horror novel about some dollar movie theaters. The unsuspecting movie goers are lured in. They blindly walk into the theater and take a seat, but, no! When they sit down, they find they’re trapped, their feet glued to the sticky soda floor. The doors close behind them. Outside the theater a man walking by thinks he hears screams. He pauses, alarmed. Those sound like REAL screams, people dying? But no, he thinks, it’s just a movie theater, just a scary movie, and he walks away. Moments later blood begins to seep out from underneath the theater’s exit door.

Too gruesome? Okay, how about this. You go in, swim through a sea of popcorn to your seat only to find that all the seats flop back and leave you staring at the ceiling. This means that while you could listen to the movie, you actually have to crane your neck forward for two hours to see it. By the time the ending credits roll, you can’t walk. Instead, you have to hobble out like a troll. When you finally reach the exit, you swear you can hear the theater owner cackling. A man in a doctor’s coat shows up and slips the owner a manila envelope full of cash. Suddenly, it all becomes clear—it’s not a theater but a medical scam perpetrated by those who sell orthopedic suits and chiropractics. Mwuhahahaha!

So you can see why the dollar theater dread fell upon me when I went up to the ticket counter at Logan, Utah’s Cinefour theaters and found out the tickets were only $3 each. Sweat began to bead on my brow. I looked around for signs of monster cockroaches that might carry me and my family away to feed to their young, but, to my surprise, the theater was, well, clean. When we entered, we found no sea of trash. No sticky floor. And the seats didn’t flop back into the dentist chair position (unlike another theater on the other side of the street). They actually supported our backs nicely.

We sat in the dimly lit theater like the old days when you didn’t watch a steady stream of commercials. We chatted. Then the previews started up, the film ran, and nobody came out to murder us. It was great.

Cinefour. Cheap movies. Nice little theaters. You can take the whole family out and still have money left over to buy a sink at Angie’s.

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If you love books as much as I do, you can easily spend your mortgage on them. Which is why libraries are so very nice. But even though libraries are great, there are still some books I want to own. One of the fab things about the internet is that it allows lots of companies and individuals to sell new and previously read (but in great condition) books for cheap. The bad news is that it’s hard to do comparison shopping to find the deals. But no longer–www.goodreads.com has solved that problem by doing the searching for you.

Simply go to the site and search for a book title. When the search results display, click on the book you’re interested in. When the book’s page comes up, you’ll see a little button below the cover that says “buy for” and lists a price. Click that button, and you’ll see a list of all the main vendors and prices. You can then link to one of the vendors and make your purchase.

So how much can you save? Sometimes a lot. For example, I looked up my own book. Its hard cover list price is $25.99. However, by using the goodreads.com feature, I found a brand new copy for $4.89. I could get a good used copy for one buck. ONE BUCK! Holy schnitzel, that’s a 96% discount. If you want to buy a book, go to goodreads.com to find the deals.

Book Academy schedule

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Thursday, September 30, 2010.

All day writer’s conference at UVU in Orem, UT.

Folks, this looks like it’s going to be an excellent seminar. Larry Gun-Crazy Correia will be there as well as Brandon Mull, Jeff Savage, Traci Hunter Abrahamson, Rob Wells, and a whole bunch of other great authors. You can see who will be doing what and where right here: Book Academy Agenda 2010 PDF. More details on the Calendar.

You can find registration information on the Book Academy site.

Cats and monsters

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My second-to-youngest daughter came in the house telling me that there was a huge line of ants out in the garage.

“Because there’s poop,” her younger sister says.

I groan inside. Cats. There’s the whole wide world and a litter box to boot. They have to do it on the garage floor?

I go out to clean it up before I go on my walk, and there is indeed a thick line of tiny ants. But they aren’t carrying away bits of poop for their fugus farm. It’s some hairball the cat has yakked up. Disgusting. So I get out the square-nosed shovel and scoop it up. But as I do its contents tumble and reveal themselves. There’s a spinal column of something significant with the last bit of ribs clinging to it. There’s hair, and I don’t think it’s the cat’s.

I fling the stuff into the brush and sweep the garage clean.

And then I start thinking.

What if a kid came out and found this long trail of ants. She follows it. To this lump up in the brush. There are two magpies about. One perched on a piece of scrub. The other pecking at the lump. And in the lump is not some animal bones. No, it’s a long segment of human spine. And there’s half-digested Levis or some nylon windbreaker. And the whole mess is dark, compacted, and damp.

There’s something out there that regurgitated this. Not a bear. Not a tiger. Those are too small. This thing has to be large. A dragon. No. Some ogre or troll. Something else. Something from the depths of the darkening woods. Something the villagers had forgotten. Maybe something that’s come through from some other place. But it’s here now. It’s close. And somebody died.