Posts Tagged "writing"

Video from the LA Times Festival of Books!

Posted by Sharif S on Sep 8, 2013 in Blog Ends, Videos, Writing | 0 comments

If you recall I did a poetry reading at the LA Times Festival of Books.  Finally, here is the video so that you can lie to your friends and say that you were there!  Or if you’re just curious about the type of writing I do, well sorry, but this is mostly just poetry.  But if you want to see the type of poetry I do then here’s the video!

The video is awesome.  There are people laughing and groaning, and there’s a poem about a Roomba, and a humor piece about a heterosexual unicorn, and a sad thing about crows, and something about Laika (the first dog in space), and this thing based on this Noam Chomsky quote about green ideas dreaming furiously.  OH YEAH THERE’S A POEM ABOUT MY LITTLE PONY!

Introduction by Caron Tate (0:00)

Humor List
Uncovering a Unicorn Mare’s Nightmare: Signs Your Son Is Only Attracted to the Opposite Sex (1:11)

Poetry
The Art of Being Expendable: An Instruction Guide (3:33)
Crow Parenting (5:11)
The Roomba Suicide (6:05)
Best Pony (8:00)
How to Treat Your Ideas (13:40)

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The Art of the Dress: Lesson on Criticism

Posted by Sharif S on Jul 25, 2013 in Blog Ends, Writing | 4 comments

As I write this I am recovering from Comic-Con and battling against a deadline where a short story wrote needs to be second final drafted.  After meetings with my adviser she had told me a lot of her comments verbally, and we were largely on the same page.  I was shocked to see that on the written pages there were way more notes, and it was worse than I had thought.

Before we get started, any bronies and non-bronies might want to (re)watch the first part of the song to get the context of this post.

I had a little too much fun writing this story.  I added a lot of avant-garde elements that were definitely too experimental.  Some of the tools were things like excessive footnoting, the pretense of the story being historical fiction from the future about our times, animal dialects, pop culture references, sci-fi fantasy sequences, and treating animal languages as being tools manufactured by their perception of the world (my take on the Whorfian Hypothesis).

It was fantastic for a writer like me who loves the social sciences to create the politics and social dynamics of this world.  And just in terms of technique, and what I needed to earn was one of the most ambitious pieces I had ever attempted.  The first draft was far from perfect, but considering how many ingredients for failure I threw into the mix, I dared this story to fuck up.  Yet with theory I knew how to make it all work, or so I thought, or so I’m thinking.

Regardless of how this turned out, I had an incredible time writing it: minding the intimate details.  It was like I was twirling around my room, carefully cutting all the pieces of the story and watching them magically twirl about until they formed something whole and beautiful.*

Then the song kicks up again, and we enter the nightmare stage.

There’s a lot of “This doesn’t work for me,” and “I’m not buying this element,” and “I think we should remove this.”

For the most part an editor’s job is to provide you with solutions and usually the easiest solution to make the piece work.  My problem was that most of my experimentation doesn’t exist in your everyday story.  So the easiest fix when it doesn’t work is “Remove it.”

My editor an I are both on a firm deadline from my writing program to have this revised and signed off by the end of the week.  The story is a strong enough story to exist without the avant-garde bullshit.  However, the story doesn’t feel right without it.  So I was posed with a moral question.  Do I just send in an obedience draft where I mindlessly do exactly what my editor wants just to meet this deadline and then change it back to what I want before I publish it?  As Rarity puts it, “There’s simply not much time.”

But I thought about something a friend sent me about a month ago.  She said that her screenplay pitch had gotten all these weird criticisms about changing the main character and other such things to the point where they were asking her to write a completely different movie.  I took a look at her treatment and pitch and saw where the real problems were.  It wasn’t that her story was the wrong story to tell, or that she had picked the wrong protagonist, but that her pacing was off.  The central conflict was in the first act instead of the second act, which made it seem more like a different character should have been the protagonist.  I told her:

…[O]ne thing I’ve learned is that the surest way to ruin something is to take criticism at face value.

This is Rarity’s mistake.  She does exactly what her friends tell her to do.  They end up ruining the dresses.  Remember an editor’s job is to find what doesn’t work and find A SOLUTION.  It is your job as a writer to see if this solution is practical.  Also to see if the editor is actually solving the real problem.

Being able to take criticism is a skill that requires a lot of practice and patience.  Some people act like being able to take criticism is just not crying when facing a lion’s den of a workshop.  It’s not just being able to handle advice with grace and poise regardless of how tactless or rude it might be.  It is about being able to improve your work and yourself despite the message or the messenger.

One thing that appears a lot in my notes is the phrase “When/Why does this happen?”  Even though there are entire sections that actually address the whys and the whens in a pretty heavy-handed and obvious manner.  My first reaction to comments like these were rage.  My editor wasn’t reading closely enough.  They weren’t paying attention!  I did my due diligence here, but they ignored it and commented on me as if it was a fault in MY WRITING!

But then I thought, maybe that part was just boring?  That’s why they missed it.  That’s the real criticism.  Instead of calling attention to details again, I just need to make the ones I put in more interesting so they will stay with the reader.  Perhaps by improving the prose or with better imagery, etc.

So for the avant-garde elements of this story, I need to do the same thing.  I can’t make Rarity’s mistake.  This is my story.  When people read it they will be seeing it as a test of what I can do as a writer. I don’t want to have my name on something I don’t believe in.

Remember, it’s about “balanc[ing] style with adherence.”

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Premise Bias

Posted by Sharif S on Jul 3, 2013 in Blog Ends | 0 comments

A few years back I was in a bar with a couple of friends.  M had just gone off to grad school and was giving us reports about the people in her program and their work.  G was her bestest best friend at the time and had already heard all of the shit-talk.  I was sipping a particularly well mixed snake-bite (half stout half hard cider); I put it down quickly and said, “Yeah, so what was so terrible [about their work]?”

M said, “Oh, my God, Sharif! It’s just so baaaad!  I was wondering how they got into this program, you know?”  G started giggling, already aware of the dirt.  “One guy, wrote a poem about werewolves having sex.”  G couldn’t restrain herself and burst out laughing.

I smiled, “So why was it bad?”

M restrained a yell, “It was about werewolves having sex!”

“And was it not done well?” I asked.  G began to stop laughing.

M insisted, “It was about werewolves having sex!”  M noticed that I wasn’t really amused, in fact I was judging her for closed-mindedness.

“Okay, well, hear this one!  Someone wrote a poem about vampires!”  She said a few more things and shot down her classmates, offering little more explanation than premises.  As someone who writes high concept work like a stork who kidnaps babies (“Stork” in Writing That Risks to be released by Red Bridge Press Fall 2013) or a Roomba that kills itself (“Roomba Suicide” Perceptions Magazine of the Arts. Print only. 2013.) I had a feeling that they were indirectly trying to take digs at me.

I asked, “So what subjects can art be about and what subjects are not art?”
Where as M and I were writing students, G was an art/writing double major.  While writing classes do not actually address the questions of “What is art?” art classes definitely do.  G stopped laughing.

M was trying to regain her status and justify her remarks, “No, you just don’t do poems like that.”  This was just like her, to say an opinion like it is fact and expect you to take it on her authority.

“What about a poem about a video game?”  I asked.  Sensing that this was a trap, she didn’t spring it.  I sprung it on her anyway, “What if that video game was Sega Ghost Squad?”  She knew I was referring to the poem by Colette Atkinson, our former professor at our university.  “Ideas aren’t writing.  Anyone can have ideas.  It’s how you write them that determines if they’re good.  Colette Atkinson used Ghost Squad very well to tell the story of a shitty relationship…Just because it’s not ‘high art’ doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

I’m not sure whether they were trolling me or not, but the discussion ended there.

I was reminded of this anecdote when I was talking on the phone with a writer in my program and friend Jonathan Rosenthal (Pound Puppies, Recess, Hey Arnold!).  We were talking about the premise for Pixar’s “Ratatouille,” which is a great film.  Jonathan said, “No premise is bad so long as it has a good answer to the question  ‘And then what happens?'”

Seriously, that is such a FANTASTIC writing perspective that I’m going to quote it again:

“No premise is bad so long as it has a good answer to the question ‘And then what happens?'” -Jonathan Rosenthal

Looking at the premise for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, it is a pretty awful premise.

Princess Twilight Sparkle must leave her land of magical talking ponies and become a human in the human world where she must become prom queen to win back her stolen crown.

It was so awful that people started throwing fits about it, and death threats were given to DHX (the studio that animates MLP).  Before this similar hostility was given to MA Larson for writing the episode where Twilight Sparkle becomes a princess/god/alicorn.  Yet after seeing the actual execution of these premises, people remembered that Megan McCarthy and MA Larson are actually pretty bad ass writers who can handle their shit.

A premise itself, is not enough to judge a work.  If you are this closed minded you can keep yourself from writing the next great novel, or publishing it, or making it into that movie.  Keep in mind that bronies should have never liked My Little Pony.  They discovered that despite the genre, the premise, and the demographics, the execution of the show made it something more than just engaging, but heartfelt and powerful.

I really liked Spenser’s (Brony Clubhouse) video expressing his disappointment with the over reacting part of the brony fandom who should know better than to judge a work by the basic idea alone.

So let’s play a game.  I’m going to put a list of premises/ideas of existing properties.  Your studio has developed a reputation for producing terrible films.  They hired you to try to turn the studio’s reputation around.  You are authorized to make 5 properties, whether it’s a TV show or a movie, or whatever.  You will not be working on the films, your job is just to green light the films you think will be the best.  You must reject 5 ideas and go with the best 5 based upon their premise.  Honor system.  No cheating if you recognize the title.  Remember, your studio is not concerned with money, but quality.

1. Sex-changing martial artist finds himself having to deal with the challenge of having too many fiances while constantly having to engage his enemies on various forms of combat from martial arts Japanese tea-ceremony to ice skating martial arts fighting.
2. A teenager takes a time traveling car back in time accidentally undoing the circumstances of his own birth.
3. A teenage girl finds herself obsessively and dangerously in love with a monster hiding as a human, which is perfectly evolved to be irresistible.
4. A bunch of high school kids from different cliques attend Saturday school together and learn they aren’t so different.
5. A rat who wants to be a chef tries to achieve his dream by controlling a human who is hopeless at cooking by pulling his hair.
6. Unlikely paranormal investigators must save the world from the upcoming apocalypse to be brought about by The Great Destroyer, who takes the form of a giant commercial marshmallow man.
7. A bookworm studying magic is forced to study the magic of friendship in order to prevent the world from being cast in eternal darkness.
8. The last members of a dying planet shoot their baby to a distant planet whose sun gives him super strength, speed, vision, and flight.
9. After a failed attempt to drown himself in a river, a man finds himself stranded on an island in the middle of the city, where he uses trash to adapt to his new life.
10. Things go wrong in a theme park full of dinosaurs causing a life and death situation for the people there.

BONUS: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

 

Ranma 1/2: If you thought of making something with this premise and decided against actually doing it, then you’re not Rumiko Takahashi, at a point Japan’s wealthiest woman, who made a fortune off of Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha.  Both of these series are not just widely popular but are considered classics and a must watch for any anime enthusiast.

Back to the Future:  The way I wrote that premise, I would not have made this movie and I love time travel…and cars.  But the premise just sounded bad or at least like it could go bad at any moment.

Twilight: I have to say I would have put my money on making this.  The premise sounds fantastic!  But are these good movies/book?  I’m of the popular opinion that they aren’t (even though I’ve only read a chapter or two of the books).  That’s the reason I included it.  To show that even a good premise with poor execution will make a bad movie.  Really what we’re learning here is that a writer’s ability isn’t in his ideas, but how he brings them to life.

The Breakfast Club:  This movie does not have a premise that would make me risk investing my money, but it’s a classic.  It resonates with a lot of people…people who still live with their parents.

Ratatouille:   This is the film that inspired this blog post.  At least it inspired the conversation that inspired this blog post.  After the movie was made someone at Pixar was lamenting how stupid the premise was, even though the film ended up being fantastic.

Ghostbusters: Proving that with humor you can really get away with a lot.  One of the better TA instructors at UCI taught me that with humor, camp, self awareness, and lampshades you can make a really enjoyable work which gets away with anything.  Ghostbusters not only gets away with murder with the Stay Puft Man, but they created one of the most recognizable scenes in cinema.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:  Well, without someone buying into this premise, none of us would be here.  I’d probably have a much more cynical blog where I’m just like every other jerk writer trying to establish some sort of platform for himself.  I’d probably be trying to exploit my race or something.  Anyway, without someone giving the magic of friendship a chance, we wouldn’t have followed Twilight Sparkle and friends.  We wouldn’t have discovered that a world of ponies could be so rich with humanity.

Superman:  Coming from one of the dumbest origin stories ever, Superman has become the icon of modern day mythos and American society.  So goes America, so goes Superman.  “Man of Steel,” possibly being the first film to crash airplanes in building since 2001, is really a film about the divided identity of America post 9-11.  Speaking of “Man of Steel” I would argue that this film shows how a movie can be simultaneously excellent and terrible based on execution alone and not the premise.

Casaway on the Moon: This is a South Korean film, so of course they’re obsessed with the effects of capitalism and technology on the human individual.  This film explores the human pain and loneliness while being surrounded by people.  This is profound, powerful, creative, fun, moving, and on Netflix.  It would be a shame if someone passed on this because of the premise.

Jurassic Park: Of course this film made a gagillion dollars.  As a kid this was the only film I saw which traumatized me and made me afraid of getting eating by a T-Rex each time I went to the bathroom.  If that doesn’t make a great film I don’t know what does…other than great characters, plot, tragic elements…

Bonus: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Enough said.

It’s natural for us to create patterns of what will be good and what won’t be.  It’s to save us time and let us know that a movie about a hot tub time machine is a terrible idea.  But keep in mind that good artists are not trying to just remake what has been done, but to break expectations and destroy the established paradigms.  My Little Pony was done poorly a few times in the past.  This My Little Pony is so great, because Lauren Faust broke paradigm after paradigm of what we expect from television for little girls.  Unfortunately, premise bias is strong in the writing community and risk taking isn’t.

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Underrated Never Talked about Skill for Writers: A Rambly Sort of Thing

Posted by Sharif S on May 15, 2013 in Blog Ends, Writing | 4 comments

Today in class I started bringing up theory again.  Recently I’ve noticed my professor looks at me and smiles when I bring up some obscure topics and essays (I don’t know if she did that all semester or just felt nostalgic because today was the last day of class).  This time it was a piece by a Korean feminist talking about masculinity in oppressed cultures.  She said to me, “I’m always amazed by what you can bring to the conversation.”

Later tonight I went to visit a friend in the hospital.  A week earlier she was just an acquaintance.  In the hospital I argued with a nurse about why her pain wasn’t being managed and why the doctors seemed to think post-op pain of a 9 out of 10 was “normal” and didn’t need treatment.  My mom was a pain management nurse and now teaches nursing at a university.  I learned the lingo.  I learned how to ask for drugs without seeming drug seeking.  I learned how to advocate for my friend.

On the drive home I thought about my teacher’s words.  I realized something I decided was probably the biggest gift to myself.

I came up with two rules for myself:

1. Whenever I didn’t know something, I would ask about it.

This includes what words mean, things I claim to be an expert on, and things that people would probably prefer not to talk about.

2. I would let people talk to me about any subject.

I let my cousins and some of my friends teach me about cars.  I’ve let my sister (a women’s health nurse) teach me about different speculum, benefits of clear plastic over metal, and that some of them have lights.  My mom taught me about pain management in hospitals.  I’ve had people talk to me about all kinds of subjects from Apple products to humor theory to rollercoasters to Wutang Clan.

If you don’t want to hear about something, it’s probably, because you don’t know enough to appreciate it.

These rules will help you develop a sense of curiosity and wonder for the human creature.  Something that should show up in your writing.

Now people will go out and people watch.  Wonderful activity, but also very shallow and superficial.  You’ll only get the surface without context.  If you talk to a person, they will teach you about entirely new ways of seeing the world, maybe these ways aren’t always positive.  Of course this is granted they even want to talk to you.

Most people want to talk about things.  Some people will even talk to you about the worst tragedy to ever happen to them.  More people will tell you these things if they feel you’ll listen and understand.

I won’t tell someone to stop talking.  I’ll interrupt, because I’m so excited about the conversation, but I won’t tell them to stop talking.

It’s beautiful.  The human being.  I was with a girl and angry at the world.  I said, “I have never felt so misanthropic.”
She laughed (and not just at how angsty I was being), “You’re not a misanthrope.  You’re an anthropologist.  I’ve never seen someone so in love with people.”  This was a surprise to me.  I didn’t realize this was true.  I also didn’t realize she could ever show this level of understanding about me.  At least I used to think that.  It must be untrue since I fell in love with her.

Talking to people, reading their blogs will expand your mind more than anything (Even if it’s starting to get unfocused, rhapsodize-y, and digressive).  You’ll never know what you’ll learn and from where.  Did you think you would find a passionate, sincere, intellectual blog about the human condition with a bunch of ponies on it?

I’ve talked to a drunk punk rock bassist in the Inland Empire about his view on the world, it was disparate from the views of a privileged girl I talked to in Orange County, but there is always confluence.  We want the same things: love, respect, to feel special, safety, etc.

We all have the fear of time and being mortal adding pressure on our desires.  From this is conflict.  From this we do our worsts to each other and even our bests.  When written with justice to the characters, this conflict will allow you to see yourself in the worst of people as well as the best.  We are all the same, it’s the priorities and the situations that make us different, whether by nature or nurture.

There’s a price to this, the more you learn what people want and their motivations, the harder it is to judge them.  Although, this seems positive, keep in mind that these people will make you mad.  They will hurt you.  You will feel mad and stay awake at night.  You’ll wish you were just wondering why they would do something to hurt you, but you’ll know why.  You’ll know their motivations, what they want in life.  You’ll know that if you were them, desperate for the same petty things, then you would hurt other people for them as well.  It would be hard and wrong for you to hate them for being who they are.  So you don’t take any action, even though you’re hurt.

With this understanding there’s nowhere for your hate and frustrations to go.  You’re stuck with them.

Sorry, where was I?  Oh, yeah, people will reveal more to you than they realize.  They will tell you their ideologies, their secrets, their experiences even if they don’t intend to.  And isn’t understanding how other people think and act what character work is all about?

That’s not necessarily a rhetorical question.  Let me know how you think about anything I’ve brought up.  Clearly, I’m interested.

PS. For more on this subject read Virginia Woolf’s short story “An Unwritten Novel” to get the value of people watching and some of its drawbacks.  For the benefits of talking to people and how you can learn things about their character that they themselves don’t even realize they are saying read Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess”

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Crazy Week

Posted by Sharif S on Apr 25, 2013 in Blog Ends | 0 comments

Hey everyone,

This post will be a little different.  I just wanted to talk about my week, which was pretty crazy.  Mostly my weeks just involve things on Netflix in between homework and independent projects.

Monday:  My short story “Lagomorph” was work shopped by a guest instructor David Francis because our normal instructor Judith Freeman couldn’t make it.  Although, it was very well received and the world was loved, there were a lot of great comments from my classmates and Mr. Francis.

I went home to try to write something like 8 more pages to my already written 2.

Tuesday:  I woke up early and I finished my first 10 pages of my first real attempt at a feature length screenplay.  They were shitty, but entertaining.  I now have a copy of my screenplay with Syd Field’s notes on it.  He mostly wrote that I’m really good at dialogue and my pages failed to have the most important things you need to have in the first 10 pages, dramatic need of your character.  Which I knew I needed.  I’m that guy who is always talking about the dramatic need.  But I panicked to be honest.  Screenwriting isn’t my strongest genre.  So my deadline made me lose my shit.

I work well with deadlines in fiction.  The first draft of “Lagomorph” was finished hours right at the deadline.  Most of which written within 12 hours of it.  But with screenwriting, it is a different beast.  With fiction you write a story logically, and it will flow.  When you write a screenplay it’s like you’re writing a story to a flow.  One is like Eminem on a bus writing words and performing to a beat later.  The other is like George Watsky writing a song to a beat.

Wednesday: I got e-mailed from David Francis.  He was saying how he was still thinking about my short story and was giving me more suggestions about many of my choices in the piece.  We e-mailed back and forth.  Although, many people would see it as “This guy kept messaging me to tell me how bad my work is,” I look at this as, “This author was intrigued enough by my story to keep investing his time to make sure that it becomes something.”  This is both a testament to  David Francis’ character and my draft of the story.

Later someone on Facebook who I only kinda knew from chance encounters in the program, posted something about her thesis being trapped on a laptop which had suffered an attack from a cup of coffee.  She needed help.  Last time something like this happened, a girl I kinda knew needed a ride to the dentist and I volunteered.  She is now one of my closest friends.  So again I offered to help her.  Her hard drive was whirling in the enclosure, but my computer couldn’t access the files.  She thanked me anyway with beer and introducing me to her friend.  So I made 2 friends in one afternoon.

Also I work got a humor piece looked at by one of my writer friends while she was at work.  So she got paid to read my manuscript.  If you workshop with someone who works at a writing center or tutoring service that offers free edits, turn their work hours into a workshop and help them get paid and have more free time.

Thursday: I got a call from my community college tennis coach.  He was asking how I have been and said it was around the time of the Ojai tournament.  He wanted to hear from “The Legend of Ojai” (me).  This title was not earned through tennis ability.  I’ll tell this story at another time in another form.

Most of this day was studying and homework and preparing for my reading on Saturday.  My friend Angie canceled on our plans to play tennis, so I was free to hang out with The Brony Clubhouse who were hanging out at the Buffalo Wild Wings right by my house.  We sang karaoke.  I did “Prince Ali” from Aladdin and at Cayci’s request did “Material Girl” by Madonna.  Some girl thought it was cool to record me.  So if you see video of me singing “Material Girl” kidney punch that bitch.

Of course later Spenser sang “You Got a Friend in Me” and stole the show.  I also got to meet some bronies like Dan.  I got to catch up with other bronies that I’ve met before who are cool and I can never spend enough time with them like Briston, David (Discord), Tyler, Rina-Chan, Nick, and a dude named Jeremy.  I’m sure I’m forgetting people.  Brony Clubhouse crew is like overwhelming with cool people.

While there, actually, some guy approached me to take pictures of some toys people at our table had.  They were custom painted OC’s.  I said sure.  As he was taking the pictures he said, “I’m going to make fun of you guys on /b/.”

I said, “Don’t worry.  Bronies are the internet.”
He said, “You guys are the cancers of the internet.”
I said, “You realize if you post that on 4chan that everyone is just going to ask where they can get their own.”
It was noisy, and I don’t think he heard me.  So if you see OC pony toys on a cup of Sprite, then that was us.

Friday: This day started rad.  I found great parking and I had my first meeting with my thesis adviser, Trinie Dalton.  Getting a thesis adviser is always scary.  I’ve heard horror stories (My adviser never meets with me.  My adviser made me write a horror novel and I hate horror novels!  My adviser was literally on drugs the last time we met).  Trinie was really cool!  She understands what I want to do with my writing.  She knows the type of writer I am and is flexible about my multi-genre thesis.  I decided to push my luck “I want to include a comics section to my thesis.”  She was down.

One problem, she scheduled a meeting right before EQLA.  I told her, “I’m going to a MLP convention and I may or may not have a panel that I may be giving on creative writing.”  She was like BAM!  RESCHEDULED!  YOU TAKE CARE OF THAT MY LITTLE PONY CONVENTION!

Go back to my car to see a parking ticket.  I also noticed that someone hit my car and scratched the paint.  I was on the 110 going home and picked the 101 to Universal Studios in order to cheer myself up and inspire me to write my next 10 pages of screenplay.

I lost my phone there.  I found out when I go to pick my friend Mike (from Westcoaster) up and I couldn’t call him.  He called my phone though:

Woman: Hello?
Mike (kinda drunk): You’re not Sharif!
hangs up.

So I called my phone and it is with the Sheriff’s department in City Walk.

Saturday: Late that night Mike and I watched “Red State,” ovened a frozen pizza and rehearsed for my reading the next day.

Instead of going to awesome shit at the LA Times Festival of Books, I went to Hollywood to get my phone.  That night I read to a packed auditorium.  A small auditorium, but with every seat filled.  Most of the people were my friends, whom I had guilted into coming or who came because they loved me  (more on this later probably).

The reading went really well.  I met a brony named Michael who came to check out my reading of “Best Pony.”  Afterwards he came to me and said that we need to get a reading of “Best Pony” on Equestria Daily.  I might be biased, but I agree with him.

Sunday: More book fest.  More panels.  Worked the MPW booth a little bit.  My friend Mike got some shit signed by the people who do “Knott’s Preserved.”  I dropped Mike at home and did a mad homework blitz.

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