When Students are Dragons and Dragons Play Football

So for the second week in a row I have followed Boise State Football-- I have watched them fight like dragons. And it's weird to watch ESPN and remember when the Safety, who just about ripped some other guys head off, sat in your class and wrote poems about their grandma. And now they are dragons on blue turf. Bedroom eyes and in the post-game interview. Burning enemy villages and taking no prisoners.

The best part though? 5 friends in my living room drinking wine and eating my food.

Now, today, the full-grown dragons. Lofa Tatupu. Patrick Kearney. Woo.

Drag Queen Dragon Queens

I've been "teaching" dialogue for my fiction workshop (oops... fiction nonworkshop) this week. I don't really teach anything so much as poorly construct diagrams on the whiteboard and hope that I get little high off the dry erase marker while doing so. But I wanted to make the point that realistic dialogue in writing is good, but that's a lot different than real-life dialogue (which is often mundane and cyclical), because writing dialogue has to do other things. You know, like tell a story or advance the narrative or characterize a dragon. And a lot of times, "realistic" dialogue in 206 shows up with a lot of "Ums," and "What's ups?" in phone conversation, and just things that probably aren't necessary for telling a dragon story. So I was thinking about recording conversations and talking about how they would be useless in stories for the most part. And suddenly I started to become hyper conscious of whether anything that I said would be useful in a story, which is tricky because I'm already hyper conscious of how 10% of things I say are actively dirty and probably another 50% could be construed as dirty. It was overwhelming, so naturally I passed this concern onto Amber N. on our excursion to Target, aka TheTarg, and to see Funny People on the first ever Cheap Movie Friday.

Alas, my teaching strategy backfired. Here are some lines of dialogue that would be useful for any writers of fiction, from James Joyce to John Grisham.

"You know what I did today? ....Watch My Fair Lady."

Amanda: "Here are those Junior Mints I mentioned."
Amber, in response: "Our lives are better than most other people's."

"There's a man smoking in the dumpster at the Big Bun."

And imagine if there was exposition! and crafty detail! Ah jeez! Such narrative excitement!

Drunk Dragons & Other Dragon Tails. Oops! I mean Tales...

Drunk dragons like to do feats of strength to prove their virility, including but not limited to:

a) punching perfectly lovely human beings in the ear and neck;
b) attempting the yoga frog stance to go into a full-fledged head stand, only to land into a back bend, and on a second attempt, strain the neck & spine;
c) attempt to teach friends tai chi when said dragon is too drunk to perform these functions themselves;
d) run around the block;
e) pass out spooning with a pretty girl;
f) wake up sore and ashamed.


Recovery from said sport, for Dragons, includes much needed coffee, water, and heavy foods to saturate the morning alcohol burn. Friendly conversation and later forced social-isolation helps incline one dragon away from more alcohol induced embarrassments.

Now, Dragons watch Jonathan Rhys Meyers pretend to be Henry the 8th and get laid. A lot. It's a good thing he's sorta pretty. Something has to make up for his performance. I mean, aside from all of the fabulous outfits.

BSU football lands Thursday. Go former students! (...and all of their teammates of course...)

Atlanta is a beautiful, hazy thing in the distance. With fried foods and collard greens and cornbread. Dragon sustenance.