Noiseless Chatter Archive

Alright, so, I need to apologize for a bit of a quiet stretch here. I have a bunch of half-started drafts, and I’ll get to them. And god knows I won’t bail on ALF reviews because the day I claw my way out of that horse shit is the day I can face my own reflection again. But, as I mentioned last week, I’m writing fiction again. Fiction, without exaggeration, has been the most important thing to me for the majority of the time I’ve been alive. I went through a long dry spell, wondering if I’d ever write again. There were reasons to be doubtful. Maybe I’ll discuss them at some point. I had a small spark of inspiration, though, and a story that had been brewing for around seven years finally clicked for me. My problem with fiction is never coming up with a plot…it’s coming up with an interesting way to frame that plot. I have a thousand ideas for stories that I could start writing tomorrow…but I’d get bored the day after that, because anyone can write a sequence of ev...

  ALF Reviews: “It’s My Party” (season 4, episode 13) ALF  has tried many times to tug at our heart strings, to affect us, to make us feel as well as laugh. Most notably we had “ALF’s Special Christmas,” which legendarily overreached in every direction imaginable, leaving us with a sappy pile of ostensibly touching horse shit, but we’ve also had smaller, more successful attempts, as demonstrated by “Night Train” and “Alone Again, Naturally.” Perhaps best of all we had “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow,” a fantastic late-game showcase for Jake, and one of the few times we’ve been allowed to give a rat’s ass about a character that wasn’t made by turning a jacket inside out. None of these compare, however to the emotional gut-punch of “It’s My Party.” This is the episode that will choke me up the most, without question, even though it might not seem that way on the surface. As much as  ALF  has tried to make me feel sadness, pity, wonder, or anyth...

David Bowie died yesterday. I was tempted to write something about his passing, but, ultimately, I decided instead to post something he’d already inspired me to write: a chapter of my still-unpublished novel, Detective Fiction . You can find a little background on the project here , which may help with context. Every sequence in the story was inspired by at least one piece of music, and Chapter Twenty’s flashback to the time Billy Passwater met a girl whose life he is about to ruin — the calm before the calm before the storm — was inspired by one of Bowie’s. I’m posting it now to share with you, if you’d care to read it. And his passing reminded me, and inspired me, to keep writing. I’ve started another project this very evening, and it’s the first fiction I’ve written in over a year. It’s a productive mourning. Thank you, David. CHAPTER TWENTY When he heard from Helena that night, he was in his car outside of the Thornweed house where, as ever, nothing was happe...

  ALF Reviews: “Fever” (season 4, episode 12) Season four had two episodes that I was actually looking forward to. One of them was “Mind Games,” which shouldn’t surprise you at all because that was a Dr. Dykstra episode, and I tend to like those. (That tendency was broken with “Mind Games.”) The other was “Fever,” simply because its premise was solid: ALF contracts a common Earth cold…but since he’s not from Earth, he ends up in real danger.* Obviously, this opens up a lot of reliable avenues for comedy; how many sitcoms have you seen about one of the characters lying around sick, driving the others crazy with his/her requests? It’s a common plotline because there’s a lot that you can do with it, and because it relies on character interaction…interaction which is specific to each show. ( Frasier Crane’s  cold is going to go differently from  Larry Appleton’s , not only because of who these characters are, but because of the characters they’re surrounded by.) Of course,...