Monthly Archives: April 2008

Jack Cameron’s Tacoma: The Parkway

Posted on April 13, 2008 | Leave a comment

A few years ago I lived in an apartment in a building called The Ivy House on North 3rd and Yakima in the Stadium District of Tacoma. Like any good Tacoman, one of the first things I did was find the nearest bar. As luck would have it, just around the corner was the Parkway Tavern.

 

With a bunch of microbrews on the tap and a set of hot and/or friendly bartenders, The Parkway Tavern quickly became my drinking spot of choice. Not only was it a great place but it was stumbling distance from my apartment. Suddenly the pricey rent was worth it.

 

When I first found the Parkway, it wasn’t much more than a neighborhood bar and anyone who hadn’t been inside would have just assumed that it was a dive bar. This kept the bar nicely quiet and I liked that so much that I rarely told anyone besides my friends about the place. It’s not often you find a bar with a good beer selection, reasonable atmosphere, and a great staff that isn’t packed any given night.

 

So why am I writing about it now? Because the secret is out. About a year and a half ago, the Parkway began a renovation that has turned the Parkway from a nice little neighborhood bar to one of the best taverns in the country. This isn’t just my opinion. They’ve been profiled in Esquire. Since I can’t keep it quiet, I figure I might as well put my two cents in.

 

Yes, the Parkway is significantly busier than it used to be. But part of their renovations included creating the Red Room. The Red Room is located directly behind the Parkway’s kitchen. There’s a big flat screen television, a fireplace, and various skins and maps on the red walls with Zebra-print seats. If this sounds nothing like the Parkway I’ve been describing, you’re right. The Red Room is almost like a bar within a bar in that it doesn’t feel like anything else there. Consequently, it makes the place feel bigger than it is.

 

On weekends, the Parkway serves breakfast and for the past couple years I’ve made it a semi-regular habit to show up on Sunday mornings with some friends, have some food and hang out with friends. My personal favorite is the breakfast burrito which is exactly what it sounds like. The best way to start off is with the Pear Cider. It’s a nice fruity concoction that fits with the morning and makes you not feel so bad about drinking before noon.

 

If it’s later in the day or if you’d just prefer to start off with a real beer, I suggest the Laganitas IPA. They almost always have it on tap and it goes well with just about anything. You’ll also want to ask what’s new on tap. Sometimes they get in kegs of limited microbrews that only last a few days. If you’re feeling a bit adventurous, try whatever they have on cask.

 

The Parkway is such a great place that I still end up  meeting up with friends there despite the fact that I no longer live anywhere near it. If you’re near Tacoma and you prefer your alcohol in beer instead of hard alcohol The Parkway is the place to go.

 

Next week we’ll go to the opposite end of the spectrum and I’ll tell you about the best dive bar in Tacoma.

-Jack

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Just A Thought (Short Fiction) by Jack Cameron

Posted on April 11, 2008 | Leave a comment

I’m not a violent man. I know that’s hard to believe, but I never wanted to be here. It’s not like they say. I didn’t ‘just snap’. That’s not how it works.

 

Once in high school this girl on crutches was going down the stairs and missed a stair with her crutch. I was right behind her. And I stopped her from falling. The thing is, there was a tiny part of me thinking what it’d be like to watch her just fall. To do nothing. It’s not like it would be my fault. I didn’t make her put her crutch in the wrong place. But I saved her.

 

That tiny part, well, over time it got bigger. And the thoughts went from simply letting bad things happen to making bad things happen. Like I would be driving my car and I’d see a car coming from the other direction and for a second, I would think about swerving right in front of him and shattering both of our lives. These thoughts didn’t bother me. I mean everyone thinks like that from time to time. Right?

 

So last Tuesday, when I thought of tossing Dean Kaplan through his corner office window during our weekly meeting, I didn’t think anything of it. Just another ‘out there’ thought. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good idea. I could see him going through the window. Falling…falling…and then splat. He kept talking about ‘action items’ and ‘plusses and deltas’ and other things that I hated that I understood. I smiled slightly.

 

I don’t remember grabbing him but I know I did because the next thing I remember is trying to get Dean Kaplan out that damn window. It didn’t work how I thought it would. I mean in my head, he wasn’t trying to stop me. He acted like a rag doll, too stunned to do anything at all. But that’s not what happened. I managed to slam him into the window, but it didn’t break. He punched me in the nose and tried to run. It took a second to figure out what happened. I hadn’t been hit in years. I grabbed his chair and pushed it. It wheeled across the floor and knocked him off his feet. I grabbed him. I was still thinking about the window. That’s when the security guys came in and tackled me.

 

Then they put me in this cell and now they’re trying to figure out whether or not I’m ‘competent’ to stand trial. Everyone thinks I’m nuts. I’m not crazy. I mean, after all, it was just a thought.

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Involved

Posted on April 10, 2008 | Leave a comment

My son recently had some trouble at school. The next morning I called my son’s principal. She said that she was ‘thrilled’ that I was so ‘involved’ in my son’s school life. It turns out that she’s much more used to parent’s not being involved. At all.

 

I used to work for the police department doing police records. One day a month I typed up Child Protective Services reports. I have typed up the worst things people can do with children. I have read reports of children being used in ways most people wouldn’t use their favorite hammer. I know that there are very bad people out there who do very bad things that should never be condoned or forgiven.

 

I am a very active parent and I am acutely aware of the fact that not all parents are. What bothers me is the fact that apparently the majority of parents are not like me. Parents complain that video games, the kind of music they listen to, the violent movies they watch, are the reasons for bad kids doing bad things, when in fact the place to look most often is in the mirror. Sure, there are bad kids out there that would probably be bad no matter what, but the fact still remains that ignoring a child is the best way to create that nightmare kid nobody wants to have.

 

Being a parent is not like being a pet owner. You can’t just go to work, come home, feed it, go to bed, and repeat.

-Jack

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In Treatment Review

Posted on April 10, 2008 | Leave a comment

One of the things that made the Sopranos so successful was the Tony Sopranos sessions with his psychologist. People talking about their problems with psychologists are almost always fascinating…at least on TV.

 

In Treatment takes this idea to a new level. The half hour show from HBO follows one psychologist over the course of nine weeks with four patients. Each week, each patient has one episode with a bit of overlap. On the fifth day, the psychologist goes to see his psychologist. There’s no way in hell I would have watched this show if it weren’t for the guy playing the lead psychologist.

 

Gabriel Byrne plays Paul,  the tormented and talented psychologist. Byrne is one of those actors who is riveting just by sitting and staring, which is good, because he does that a lot in this series. I think the first time I noticed Byrne was when he played Keaton in The Usual Suspects. He’s very good at playing the uncomfortable tough bastard. He looks like he’s lived a hard life. He looks like someone who might know something we don’t and so he’s the perfect counselor. He’s the sort of guy you’d want to get advice from.

 

The week begins with Laura. Laura, played by Melissa George, is a young hot thing with issues. One of her biggest issues is that she’s in love with Paul. Whether or not he feels the same way becomes one of the major plot points of the entire season. Listening to her latest sexual escapades makes for good television, but at the same time, right around week three I knew where this storyline was headed.

 

Tuesdays are with Navy Pilot Alex (Blaire Underwood). Alex is a perfectionist and a serious military man who doesn’t like having all these pesky feelings and whatnot. He’s entertaining as hell because he doesn’t really want to be there, but at the same time feels like he needs to be. This was probably my favorite storyline just because these two actors are fun to watch.

 

Wednesdays Mia Wasikowska plays Sofie, the sexually abused and suicidal 16-year-old gymnast. Like Laura, it’s fairly obvious where her storyline is going to go, but watching her get there is impressive. Again the acting is what makes it worth watching and the writing isn’t bad either.

 

Thursdays Josh Charles and Embeth Davidtz are the horribly screwed up couple Jake & Amy. This storyline is probably the most interesting and the whole time you end up feeling like you’re glad not to be in a relationship that screwed up.

 

Fridays Paul switches it up and goes to see his own shrink, Gina (Diane Wiest). Throughout the week we get bits and pieces of Paul’s life, including his wife Kate (Michelle Forbes). Paul has a history with Gina that is frequently hinted at and it’s clear that while he often disagrees with her, he respects her.

 

I like that HBO took a chance on airing a half hour show five days a week for nine weeks. And since the show is 80% on one set, production costs were probably still fairly low. The only major problem with the show is that while its first season is almost twenty hours, I can’t imagine spending that amount of time watching it twice. It’s good and entertaining and I watched all 43 episodes, but once I was done, I was done. And this is coming from a guy who has watched the first season of West Wing four or five times. I’m a big fan of good dialog and good acting and while this is good, it’s just not that good.

 

HBO is continuing to put out some of the best television out there and this is better than just about any other half hour show currently airing, but at the end I didn’t feel like the sum of it was more than its parts. I didn’t get that amazing feeling I got when I watched the first season of The Wire. I got the feeling I had when I watched the first season of Grey’s Anatomy: It wasn’t a waste of time, but it would be the second time around.

-Jack

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Thoughts on Being a Writer

Posted on April 8, 2008 | 1 Comment

Here’s the thing about being a writer. It’s not like being a plumber or a customer service representative. It’s a lot more like being a musician or an actress. What I mean by that is that you don’t actually have to do anything to call yourself a writer, a musician, or an actress. Most musicians, actresses, and writers don’t get paid anything, aren’t known by anyone, and will likely never even see one million dollars. The truth is we can’t all be Aaron Sorkin, Bruce Springsteen, or Julia Roberts. This of course will not stop millions of us from trying.

 

The truth is I’ve written a lot of short stories, two feature length screenplays, a bunch of short screenplays, hundreds of random thought things like this, probably fifty essays, thousands of letters, and a book that has made me just a little more money than I put into it. That’s right. I’ve been writing stories since third grade and I’ve yet to make any money.

 

There are those who would say that with a track record like that I should stop calling myself a writer and actually do something with my life. Those people would have a point. On the other hand, there are people in my life who’d literally beat the hell out of me if I stopped writing. They have joined me in my belief that I really am a Writer and not just some guy who types a lot. But the truth is I’d write even if everyone I knew told me to stop. Like Charles Bukowski said once, “I can’t stop writing, it’s a form of insanity.”

 

And since I can’t stop, the thing to do is become the best writer I can and in that way, writing is like everything else, the more you do it, the better you get (or at least that’s the theory). When I feel like packing it in and quitting, I just remind myself how 90% of Jack Kerouac’s work was already written when he hit it big with On The Road. I think of how Tarantino already had written True Romance and Natural Born Killers when Harvey Keitel walked into the video store he worked in and said they should make Reservoir Dogs. I think how Robert Rodriguez literally let people experiment on him in order to get money to do El Mariachi. All of these stories are inspiring to me.

 

Someone asked me if I wanted to be the next Quentin Tarantino and I said, “No, I want to be the next Jack Cameron.” All of the people I’ve mentioned got where they are because they were talented, persistent, and more than anything else, original. Originality can’t be taught. We all start out imitating. When asked how he felt about people imitating Aerosmith, Steven Tyler said he didn’t mind because when they started out they were trying to be the Yardbirds. And that’s how it goes. You learn by imitating and then if you’re good, you move on from there. And more than anything else, you don’t stop. You keep beating your head into the wall until one of you falls down because if you’re like me, giving up isn’t an option.

 

The trick to writing is that you don’t write it for anyone other than yourself and by doing that, you make it universal. I know that doesn’t make any sense but if you’re any good, it works. The stuff I’ve written that really resonates with people is the most intimate personal stuff and though I’m not a musician and my acting isn’t all that great, I’m pretty sure it applies to those fields as well. Hell, for all I know it applies to plumbing too.

-Jack

 

 

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How About We Call It The ‘Fairly Constant Flame’?

Posted on April 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

Today the Eternal Flame was extinguished in Paris and put on a bus to avoid protestors for the upcoming Olympics in China. While you can read all about this on news sites all around the world, the one thing you won’t read about is how the Eternal Flame of the Olympic Torch was almost extinguished in the City of Destiny back in 1996.

It was a sunny afternoon in Tacoma. I was driving down North 21st Street in my White Volkswagen Bus. Above me, I saw and heard a helicopter. I tried to get a look at it as it sounded a lot like it was going to land on me. It was a news helicopter. It was maybe a hundred feet in there. And it appeared to be following me down 21st Street. I had no idea what the hell was going on. 

As I looked up at the helicopter, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Suddenly I realized there was something in front of my van. I slammed on the brakes just in time to watch a man carrying the Olympic Torch run by on Pine Street. That’s right. I almost ran over the Olympic Torch runner and extinguished the Eternal Flame. In front of a news helicopter.

That clip would have been played over and over for years. I would have ended up being the guy who killed the Olympic Torch Runner and that’d be that. Nothing else I did would matter. I could write a best seller that’s turned into a multi-million dollar blockbuster and if I ended up on Letterman, he’d say, “So you killed the Olympic Torch Runner, right?”

-Jack

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Cow

Posted on April 4, 2008 | 1 Comment

Here’s some short fiction.

Cow

by Jack Cameron 

The cow wouldn’t die. Glenn and I are target shooting and a ricochet hit it. It’s head turns. It seems to groan a little and then it falls down. Just as we get over to the damn thing, it gets up. We both figure it would be best if we put it out of it’s misery. I aim the shotgun. There’s a reason no one hunts cows. They’re too stupid. There aren’t many animals you can point a gun at and they just stare at you. It barely seems fair. I remind myself it’s for the best.

BANG.

Buckshot all over the cows face. No blood. Not a drop of blood. “Holy shit, man.” Glenn has a gift for profanity. The cow keeps staring at us as if it wonders what we are going to do next. Glenn walks over to the side of the cow and finds the bullet he hit her with. It is just slightly imbedded in her skin. Glenn pulls it out. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

I don’t know what to say. I know that the farmer who owns this place is gone. If he wasn’t, he would have come out when we first started shooting. We came out here to fire off Glenn’s gun collection at a bunch of old television sets. We loaded up the guns (three pistols, two rifles, and a shotgun), bought some old broken TVs from a couple of thrift stores, and a case of beer.   This is our way of letting off steam. We aren’t the sort that plays raquet ball.  Glenn drops his rifle that he’d hit the cow with and pulls out his pistol. “Fuck you, cow!”

Glenn fires again and again. The cow doesn’t even flinch. I begin to wonder why it had fallen down in the first place. It’s then that it occurs to me that maybe the cow didn’t fallen at all. Maybe it just sat down.

Glenn loses it. He’s emptied his pistol. I’d shot it at almost point blank range with a shot gun. He’d hit it with his rifle. Now he is hitting it with his fists. I just stare at the animal. It just stares at me. I can understand where Glenn was coming from. When you shoot an animal, it usually dies. If it doesn’t die, it at least has the courtesy to bleed. This makes no sense. Glenn is not the kind of person that believes in things like unkillable cows.

Neither do I really. It’s just that I’ve seen enough strange things in my life that I don’t go nuts and unload my pistol when I can’t figure something out. People say that I’m smarter than Glenn, but they’re wrong. I’m just a different kind of smart. Let me tell you, if your car breaks down, you want Glenn with you and not me. However, when your cow won’t die, I wouldn’t recommend bringing Glenn to help.

It occurs to me that maybe this isn’t a problem. We’d walked over to put the cow down after we thought we had wounded it. It’s clear that the cow isn’t wounded. Let’s go back to shooting TVs.

But it doesn’t work that way. Glenn has stopped hitting the cow and is now just staring at it. He begins to cry. He puts his pistol back in the holster and picks up his rifle. He starts walking away.

“Hey, Glenn…” I don’t get a chance to say anything else before Glenn is screaming at the top of his lungs. He drops the rifle again and runs at the cow, who has started to eat some grass. Glenn hits it like a wall. The cow doesn’t move and after he falls, neither does Glenn. I watch him lay there and I begin to wonder if he’s seriously hurt. I can invision trying to explain this one to the emergency room doctor: “Well, you see he had been trying to kill this cow that he shot…” Somehow I just don’t think that would work.

I walk over and see Glenn is still conscious and he’s started crying again. I’m not sure how to deal with this. I’ve been through a divorce, my dad dying, five or six car accidents, getting stabbed in a bar in New Orleans, and accidentally shooting my best friend Jerry in the arm with a flare gun, but nothing has prepared me to deal with Glenn having a mental breakdown next to an immortal cow.

“You ok, Glenn?” Stupid question, but it’s the only thing I can think to ask.

“What the fuck, man. Do we need a goddamn bazooka?”

“Hey, what if we just go home?”

“What?”

“We don’t need to kill the cow. That’s not even why we were here in the first place.”

“You think we should just leave it here?”

He seems to be coming around.

“Yes. I think we should just leave it here. A cow in a field. Sounds good to me. Besides, even if you manage to kill it, it won’t fit in my Dodge Neon.”

Glenn finally laughs. He gets up and stares at the cow. Glenn looks at me. “Why won’t it die? Why? We shot it. I hit it. I tried to charge it. Maybe we should hit it with your car.”

We walk away from the cow and gather up the ammunition and the rest of the guns. It’s dark by the time we’re ready to go. We both look at the cow. We can see the cow look at us.

“Can we hit it?”

“No, Glenn. If I hit that thing with my car, it’d probably fucking explode and I don’t think ‘cow collision’ is covered by my insurance.”

“Fuckin’ Cow.”

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Posted in Shot of Jack

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Holy Shit (Okay, Actually Religious Shit)

Posted on April 3, 2008 | 1 Comment

As you may notice, you can leave comments on any of these posts. Last night, someone did just that. You don’t see it because I didn’t approve it. Every time I think of taking comment approval off, someone like the guy last night writes in.  

It’s said that if you want to start controversy, all you have to do is talk about religion or politics. The reason people say this is because if you want to find the outright whack jobs in this world, you’ll find them heavily involved in one or both of these things.

So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that someone wrote in to tell me I was wrong, but I was surprised. I guess I just assumed that insinuating that people who bomb abortion clinics are bad was a safe enough thing to say. I was wrong. Someone left a comment that went on at length about how I’m a horrible baby killer and that people who bomb abortion clinics are heroes. This guy was about as Christian as Osama is Muslim. They both claim to be that, but really aren’t at all. And everyone with a brain knows it. 

I can understand the anti-abortion crowd. I get that. What I don’t get is where they say killing doctors who perform abortions is okay in one breath and say all life is precious in the next. That’s hypocritical psychotic thinking and it’s not the sort of thing I want to encourage and that’s why you won’t see his comment here or have me mention his website.  

Hate isn’t a value. It’s just hate. And using your faith to shield your hate is about the worst kind of cowardice I can think of. 

Assuming standard Christian doctrine is right, you simply can’t call yourself a Christian and advocate blowing up buildings without really pissing off the guy upstairs.

Feel free to leave a comment or if you prefer write me at jack@jackcameron.com

-Jack

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Posted in Religion, Writing

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Faith

Posted on April 3, 2008 | Leave a comment

A couple days later and I’m still thinking about that faith statement my dad’s wife made. I spoke with a friend of mine about it today and mentioned much of what I wrote previously. She didn’t like the idea that I though faith was a potentially bad thing. Part of this has to do with the fact that she’s Christian, I’m sure. Another part of it is that faith is rarely seen as a ‘bad’ thing. I see faith like any other powerful thing; it can be used for good or bad. 

Faith can be an inspiring and admirable trait. I tend to have faith that everything will work out in any given situation I might be in. It drives people nuts, but it also keeps me sane. I’m happy to have that sort of faith. At times, it’s the only thing keeping me happy. I admire the faith of certain friends of mine who despite whatever happens to them, still believe it’s all part of God’s Plan. I know a couple of people who will literally tell you that faith saved their lives. 

But then there’s the flip side. Faith is what made things like 9/11 possible. Faith is what helps people who bomb abortion clinics sleep at night. Faith is what covered up the history of molestation in the Catholic Church. Sure you can say that these are examples of people being crazy, but that’s exactly what faith looks like to the non-faithful.  

My favorite quote about religion is from Sting’s ‘All This Time’: “They go crazy in congregations. They only get better one by one.” It’s true. In the history of organized religion, no group has ever all of a sudden attained enlightenment. It’s always an individual. Faith can be a wonderful thing, but blind faith is dangerous.  This is why what my dad’s wife said bothered me so much. If you don’t at least occasionally question your faith, then I’m not sure that’s faith. That sounds a lot more like fanaticism.  

I’m not against organized religion or Christians or any other given group. It’s just that I have a serious problem with those who refuse to even entertain the concept that there might be another option. People seem to forget that the Greeks and the Romans had Gods that they believed in every bit as devoutly as the purest Christian. These were not stupid people. And as anyone who has ever been at sea during a storm can tell you, it’s easy to believe in a God of the Sea out there.  

Faith can be a great thing, but it needs to be tempered by reality.

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Posted in Religion

Overthink

Posted on April 2, 2008 | 2 Comments

I over-analyze things. I always have. I’m not kind of interested in anything. Either I’m obsessed or not interested at all. If I’ve seen a show, I’ve probably seen every episode. If I find a website I like, I’ll pour over every single post. If I have a story idea, I’ll attack it from every possible angle.


This tendency to obsess is what makes me paranoid. Last night I awoke to the sound of a chair moving in my kitchen. As I woke up, I started thinking of all the possibilities of why that chair moved. Did one of the cats move it? Was there someone in the house? Is it a burglar? Why would a burglar move a kitchen chair? What weapons are near my bed? The only reason to move the chair is to sit in it. Why would someone sit in a chair in the dark in my kitchen? Maybe they want me to come out. Maybe they need to talk about something. Maybe they’re just crazy. Maybe I should wake my wife and see what she thinks. There! It moved again! What the fuck! I’m going out there right now to check this out…and there’s the cat. 

Now while I was thinking all of these things, I knew most of them were unlikely, but I thought them anyway. Not just because I’m paranoid and I over-think absolutely everything (though I am and I do). It’s because somewhere in there, I might find something for a story or a scene. There might just be something in all my crazy thoughts worth writing down.  

This is pretty much the best use of my over-analytical mind. The fact is the more you think about something without getting more information, the greater the tendency to leave reality. A friend’s girlfriend once remarked to me the day after I saw her without our significant others around that she thought it was ‘awkward’. I didn’t think it was awkward. Why would she? What would have made that situation awkward? If I was sexually attracted to her that would have been awkward. She’s sexually attracted to me! Shit. She’s my friend’s girl and I’m already attached. How can I make it less awkward next time? Well, if there’s sexual tension the only thing to do to get rid of it is release it. But I don’t want to mess around with my friend’s girl. Maybe I should tell him about it. No, I don’t want him to get mad at me or dump her. Wait, maybe she just felt awkward because she’s used to seeing me with her boyfriend around. That’s what happens when I let my mind run with something. 

There is the other side of it though. When I wrote my first feature screenplay, first I outlined it, then I built the characters and all of their back stories, then I outlined it again, then I wrote the whole story from each of the central character’s perspectives, then I wrote the outline again, then I did it scene by scene, and then I actually wrote the screenplay. This made it so my screenplay had absolutely no plot holes because I knew who the characters were and what the story was for each of them and how the story made sense for each of them. It’s probably one of the tightest stories I’ve ever written because I thought and thought and thought about it so much.  

While anyone who knows me is well aware of my paranoia and it’s not always the best thing for me, I don’t want to get rid of it or change it because it’s also one of the things that makes my stories work. So instead I just try to remind myself of what the reality of a situation is compared to what my imagination has made it into.

-Jack

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Posted in Writing

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