I would like to give you the impression that my culinary life is one amazing adventure after another. The truth is that much of the time I eat pretty boring food. But when I do have a food experience that I think could conceivably give the impression that I am living the high food life, I like to blog it. For a Chowhound, the ultimate food experience is the unexpected, the hole in the wall that turns out to be great, the different.

Once in awhile it happens just like that.

Many months ago, Bob and I read an article about a restaurant called Little Thailand. The legend is that Dick was in Vietnam back in the day and married a Thai girl. He brought her back to the states. It didn’t work out. But somehow along the way he ended up marrying another Thai girl and building a restaurant/bar called Little Thailand. She cooks Thai and he makes the steaks and Hungarian Goulash and the hot sauce.

A framed review on the wall calls Little Thailand ‘a trailer park temple to authentic Thai food’ and that’s probably as good a description as any. The restaurant is in the front of a low ceilinged building out past the airport. We drove into the Texas dark, out into country where Austin has not yet become cool and found it under the Garfield water tower as promised. It’s the kind of place that has handwritten signs stuck on the wall that say things like “Killer Thai Bloody Mary’s Awesome and Lip Smacking.” Bob orders one.

It is the spiciest-hot Bloody Mary either of us have ever tasted. It is the first time I have ever had a drink that required a glass of water to go with it. Read More »

I’ve got a radio interview about Jumper (the movie and the book) that will play on our local NPR affiliate KUNM, tomorrow morning (Feb 14) sometime between 7 and 8 am (MST). Locals can hear it on the ether but if you aren’t local, you can also listen to it from their streaming server available here.

Russia

Read More »

Stephen King (yes, THAT Stephen King) says:

And speaking of Entertainment Weekly, I saw a great movie last week called Jumper and I can’t write about it for them because the executive producer also happens to be the guy who got me the EW gig. It would look like log-rolling. Probably this does, too, but I don’t care. It was the fun movie I hoped for last summer when Transformers opened (the only pic I walked out on all year; it offended even my low standards). Jumper is about a picked-on teen who discovers he can teleport. So if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to eat lunch on the head of the Sphinx, or take your girlfriend on a make-out expedition into the catacombs below the Roman Coliseum, this is the movie for you. You may have also wondered what Samuel L. Jackson would look like in a 1940s-style bathing cap. If so…check out the ’do.

Now you’re probably wondering, Uncle Stevie, how much did you get comped for this? Answer: not a penny. I’d tell you I liked this movie if Hugo Chavez was an executive producer. (Come to think of it, I’ve never seen Hugo and my pal Ralph in the same place, so maybe…) Aw heck, think of this as my little Forry Ackerman turn and go see the darn movie.

He’s talking about the movie, not the book and, for complete and total disclosure, the Ralph he’s talking about also happens to be my agent, but still, I mean, Stephen King!

This piece was published in the Tor Newsletter but it answers so many of the emails I get that I want to post it here.

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As the movie version of my book, Jumper, approaches, more and more people become aware of it. For the last month there hasn’t been a day when I don’t get an email or phone call saying something like, “Dude! I saw the trailer for Jumper in front of American Gangster,” or “Ohmighod, your movie had a commercial during the Sugar Bowl!”And, as a result, fans of the book have also started emailing me.And while some are excited there are others who are quite unhappy.Before I go any further, let me say, I am incredibly grateful for anyone who likes my writing. Even before money, this is the thing writers crave and work for. So, regardless of your feelings about the movie, if you like any of my books–thank-you, thank-you, thank-you.But. (You knew it was coming, didn’t you?) Some of you have some misconceptions about this whole movie thing. I’m not making any of these statements up. They’ve either arrived as emails or been posted in public blogs or forums.

They are ruining the book!

Late in his career, James M. Cain, author of Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, was asked by an interviewer, “How do you feel about what Hollywood has done to your books?” “Hollywood has done nothing to my books,” Cain replied. “They’re right over there on the shelf, exactly as I wrote them.” And I’ll add: because of the movie and the movie publicity, tens of thousands (maybe more!) of people will read the books who would never have read them. This is a good thing.

The movie is diverging from the book!

Well, yes, it is. A quick scan of the official movie website will show you that they’ve changed things and added things. Books are not movies. Books tend to be a bit too long to adapt easily. I can only think of a few faithful yet successful book-to-movie adaptations. Mostly, I can think of adaptations where trying to be too faithful to the book made for a mediocre or bad movie. And Jumper is a first person, mostly interior, novel. I’m not sure how you would adapt it exactly without some sort of moronic voice-over or guy who talks to himself.

You should have exercised more creative control!

Excuse me? What control? Movie studios do not tend to give creative control over their hundred-million dollar projects to persons with no track record in making successful movies. Doug Liman has a that track record. I don’t.

You sold out–you should never have sold the rights without control!

I see. While I live for my readers approval, I also have a mortgage, children who will need to go to college, and a desire to have some form of retirement. Oh, yeah, and have some time to write more books. Before the movie deal I held down a full time job and wasn’t getting much writing done. Do you know how few writers get this opportunity? It’s very much like winning the lottery–you have to publish something to buy a ticket but how many lottery tickets hit?

Long before the movie deal I was in the habit of saying, “I want somebody to make a commercially successful, bad movie from one of my books. That way I’ll get some money and people will say, ‘But the book was so much better!’”

I’ve come to a different place, now. Millions of dollars and hundreds of people are involved in creating a work whose genesis is my writing. This is incredibly cool. Yes, they’re going other places with it but even in the trailers I see lines and scenes right out of the original. Yes, the movie won’t be the book, but there is a good chance that at the end of it people will be saying, “The book is different but the movie was really good, too.”