A Man for All Seasons, Songs, and Drugs

Back in the mid-1990s, I ended up behind the microphone doing stand-up for a couple of nights (don't ask). Part of my act consisted of putting on fake sideburns, sunglasses, and reading Elvis Haiku.

You didn't know that Elvis wrote haiku, even from the grave? Elvis was an extremely messed up, brilliant man. He could do it all.

Inspired by tblue and his sudden affection for haiku (I highly recommend you sample his fine work), I dug up these untitled gems from lo these many years ago, some great, some lame, but all worthy of the King.

feeling so happy
wearing my rhinestone jumpsuit
met Richard Nixon

it's hot in Vegas
took blue pills before the show
I passed out on stage


Nixon was impressed

When I found out who
had taken my daughter's hand
I killed the fucker

nobody knows that
inside Sun Studio, I
took a dump all night

codeine, dilaudid,
demerol, uppers, quaaludes,
fried-lard sandwiches

had these funny thoughts
they said it was Oedipal
but I want my mom

Dr. Nick would not
unlock the trailer of drugs
karate kick hurt

I shot my TVs
Box of Ex-Lax for dinner
Col. Tom was there

I had been divorced
put a hit on Pricilla
watched "Gidget" instead

my dead twin brother
was buried in Tupelo
amphetamines, sure

singing "Burning Love"
totally felt the music
my dick was on fire

on August 16
I went like a King should go
sitting on the throne

Thank ya very much. Elvis has left the building.

The Chili Egg-Puff

Many years ago, an acquaintance of mine went to visit his brother at college. The dorm cafeteria was having a special "Steak Night," and passed out tickets at the door -- one person, one steak. The brother wasn't feeling well, and gave his ticket to my friend, who went back to the server for a second slab of beef.

The woman serving the food behind the counter apparently resembled your stereotypical high-school cafeteria lady: heavy, pasty skin, hair net wrapped around a beehive. And also stubborn and rules-obsessed.

My friend went up and presented her the ticket, but she shook her head.

"No, you were here before," she said. "You don't get another steak. You get the chili egg-puff."

Another story, more recent: a friend of mine was in town, and we met up at a bar with a friend of my friend (FOMF). The FOMF, who writes for a living, was interested in Wife's and my fiction-writing career. Actually, let me correct that. When he inquired about my publishing credits, and I replied I barely had any, FOMF's interest in me dwindled to bubkus and all of his attention was paid to Wife, who has published extensively.


No steak for you

Now, aside from being p.o.'ed by the whole thing, this is what I see as a nightmare scenario for the following week, yes, spent in Vancouver at the AWP conference. I meet someone. They sound interested in my novel. Where I have I published? Almost nowhere, I reply. Their interest dwindles. Their attention drifts elsewhere. They thought they were getting a steak. But it's the chili egg-puff instead.

Now, I can hear you saying, "Enough with this whiny, neurotic, narcissistic crap about this stupid f-ing conference. Just go out and get tanked and throw up on the jerk! Shut up, bitch!"

I figured that Wife would be sympathetic. When I relayed my neuroses to Wife, a loving, supportive person and all-around good egg, she proceeded to laugh in my face. "You know a lot of people already! I'm going to be there. You're going to have fun!"

She's right of course, but the albatross does not leave my neck of its own volition. If there is one thing that makes me crazy -- or rather, feel humiliated -- it's being ignored, dismissed, or otherwise disrespected because of my lack of credentials. Without going into a long, vitriolic resuscitation of my life's neuroses, let's just say it's happened more than once, and not just with writing.

I realize that I am not the first person in the history of civilization to suffer such a fate. It happens every day, and I am probably guilty of it myself. If it were to happen to Wife or a friend, I'd say, fuckit, they're assholes, you don't need to know them. You don't need strangers' approval for validation, for god's sake.

So that's the attitude I'm trying to take with me to Vancouver. They're assholes. Everybody's an asshole! I don't need to know them -- in fact, why should I even go? Maybe I'll just stay here. That'll show 'em!

Ach, 40 years and so many stupid thoughts.

Our Nation's Greatest Jurist

My Fellow Cybertravelers,

It is without shame or hesitation that I write today, without the slightest trace of irony or cynicism that marks my usual correspondence, and our society as a whole. It is with the utmost sincerity and civic-mindedness that I type these words.

I would like to tell you of someone who has the power to change us, to help our society, and to make us better people. Someone whose straightforward mien and forward-looking attitudes can change people's lives. Someone who does changes peoples' lives. A person larger than life. A person who is my hero. A person whose spirit we should all endeavor to embody.

I speak, of course, of Judge Judy.

Nee Judith Sheindlin, a former veteran of the New York court system, Judge Judy is familiar to us as the star of a television show. Called Judge Judy. I make a point of watching Judge Judy at every opportunity. You should, too. You will be a better person as a result.

I speak not of Judge Judy's directions to the unemployed to obtain gainful employment. Or to deadbeat parents to do a better job of raising their children. Or of her ability to separate the truth from falsehood, her expertise in jurisprudence, and that terrible haircut of hers.

No, Judge Judy's greatest attribute is a simple one: she tells stupid people that they are stupid. She yells at them for being stupid. If you have trouble with "coherent thought," she will call you a "moron," say "you're not playing with a full deck," and that you are "dumb as a pile of bricks."


Judy rules

If you are less-than-stable, you are a "nutjob." If you exhibited temper in an incident that brought you to court, you are "an angry nutjob."

That is not all, of course. Anyone who doesn't work, borrows money, and is overweight is instructed to "get off your fat behind and get a job." If you are overweight and plead poverty in paying a debt even though you are obviously well off, Judge Judy notes that "you have enough money to be well fed." I cannot do justice (no pun intended) to the intensity and vehemence with which she delivers these apt bon-mots.

But this just describes the surface of her depth. Interrupt Judge Judy and risk the wrath of Zeus. She tells people to shut up, zip it, can it. In an extremely loud and upsetting way.

Why, you ask, does this make us better citizens? How does it improve the body politic? It is simple. Because Judge Judy gets to say things to people all of us want to, perhaps every single day, but do not, instead adhering to propriety and the fear such people are carrying a .357 Magnum.

The jerk who pushes his way onto the bus, the backstabbing snake at the office, the blowhard politician telling us that bombing a nation will free it or the fundamentalist telling you and your children how to live your lives. We want to call them idiots, morons, jerks, because they are idiots, morons, jerks.

What makes it worse is that these people often rule our lives. Although some of these folks have the intellect of a small acquatic creature, they have power over us. They're the big bullies who cut us off on the freeway and push us around. They're the bosses who steal your ideas and rule by fear. They're the buffoons in the salad line who pick over every single piece of lettuce like they're doing brain surgery. We encounter these people every day of our lives. They make our lives miserable, but we never tell them of the misery they create.

Judge Judy does this for us. She liberates us. She exorcises the hate from our souls. She makes us proud that somebody, somewhere, gives these people their due by lamenting their stupidity and their rudeness, chafing at their petty scams, screaming bloody murder at parents more interested in partying than giving their children a hot meal.

I understand that those with more delicate natures find Judge Judy herself to be rude and uncouth. That she is nothing more than a big mouth with a gavel. Or that her legal reasoning is unsound. They would rather spend an entire day watching dental surgery on hillbillies or a group of NASCAR fans than one mere episode of Judge Judy.

To them I say, life can be difficult. Watching the truth can be difficult. But someone must say the truth. Someone must stand up for what is right.

On a more personal note, Judge Judy, like Jackie Chan and the Cubs, has made me a better writer. Seek the truth. Describe the real. Don't be afraid to take chances.

It is with this understanding that I officially nominate Judge Judy to the Supreme Court. For a better legal system. For a better America.

Obligatory List Post

Lists. Everybody's doing it, at least on their blog. What a great idea. Instead of trying to write a narrative or something resembling a column, I just have to create arbitrary lists that reflect my opinions, for which the world awaits with baited breath.

The other beauty of this idea is that I can trot it out anytime I am pressed for time or ideas, like now. Any idiosyncratic list will do! I tried to be original.

Limiting this to 10 lists. More exciting, craptastic content to come. This rules!


Artsy-Fartsy Lists

Top 5 Famous Works of Fiction that I Hate or Can't Finish:
1. Middlemarch, by George Elliot
2. Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
3. Beloved, by Toni Morrison
4. Cathedral, by Raymond Carver
5. Molloy, by Samuel Beckett

Don't get into an argument with a buncha female lit majors about Middlemarch. You'll get slaughtered.

Top 5 Highbrow/Pretentious Intellecual Pleasures (Music Division)
1. Beethoven
2. Schubert
3. John Coltrane
4. Just about any opera
5. Dizzy Gillespie

Classical, intellectual jazz, opera: what more pretense could you ask for?


Listen to an expert

Top 5 Lowbrow/Guilty Pleasures (Music Division):
1. Spinal Tap
2. The Ramones
3. AC/DC
4. Frank Sinatra
5. "Convoy"

Actually, I'm not ashamed of any of these. Except "Convoy."

Top 5 Books by Wm. Faulkner, Even Though I Might Not Have Finished Them:
1. The Sound and the Fury
2. Intruder in the Dust
3. Absolom, Absolom!
4. Light in August
5. As I Lay Dying

I couldn't tell you precisely what happened in Absolom, but it's a great book.

Top 5 Bogart Flix:
1. The Big Sleep
2. The Maltese Falcon
3. Casablanca
4. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
5. Key Largo

"Go ahead, scratch it."


Painful Memories Lists

5 Stupidest Catchphrases Used at My Suburban High School in the early 1980s:
1. "____ totally wales!" ("Def Leppard totally wales!")
2. "____ totally rules!" ("That Adrienne Barbeau poster totally rules!")
3. "Choice _____, for sure" ("'Spirit of the Radio' is choice Rush, for sure.")
4. "Totally awesome." (self-explanatory)
5. "No s--t, Sherlock."

Inane stuff, Sherlock.

5 Cool Words/Insults I Thought I Invented in High School, But, As It Turned Out, Did Not:
1. "Likmeister."
2. "Bizzart."
3. "Dingus." ("You stupid dingus!")
4. "Chucklehead."
5. "Jabutt." (contraction of "Jabba the Hutt.")

My cup overflowed with brilliance.

5 Cringe-Inducing Memories From High School:
1. My hair
2. My acne
3. Profound awkwardness around girls
4. Every losing sports performance/game
5. Failing my driver's license test the first time

See how different and special I was than every other teenage boy?

5 Worst Things Told to Me on a Date (absolutely true, NONE involving Wife):
1. "Black mothers don't take good care of their children."
2. "I don't read much."
3. "Is that fat-free?"
4. First (& last) date: "I could fall in love with you."
5. "No, I won't sleep with you. Never."

Can't do worse, except maybe what I said to dates.


Top 5 Most Painful Moments as a Sports Fan:
1. Cubs Choke in '03 Playoffs
2. Cubs Choke in '84 Playoffs
3. Cubs Choke in '89 Playoffs
4. Cubs Choke in '04 Regular Season
5. Cubs Choke in '05 (in progress)

Can't say why I keep going back, like a battered wife.

Bookfraud

Suicide Watch, or Cubs Spring Training Edition

I am so desperate for something, so pressed for time -- job, writing, slave to Wife -- that I threw this together a few weeks ago and am now slapping it up with some minor changes. I expect about 2 comments.

The blogger comments sections on many blogs is fubar. But you already knew this.

Spring is here, hope springs eternal, and only several months until Cubs Suicide Watch.

Already Kerry Wood (see below) has thrown a scare into Cub Nation by getting an MRI for shoulder tightness, one of many maladies the young hurler has suffered throughout his career. Cool and calm people that all Cubs fans are, we're interpreting "shoulder tightness" to mean "probable amputation."

Eggheads and faux-poets love baseball, if only because most eggheads and faux-poets are too short for basketball, too wimpy for football, and too disinterested in hockey. There's a reason George Will and the late Bart Giamatti and millions of unathletic braniacs write about baseball -- it's because they feel some psychic/intellectual connection because it looks so easy. All this crap about the poetry of the game is a crock. That bonehead Will once said some shit about the "craft of baseball." Made me want to blow my nose on the man. Craft is for macrame, butthead.

Now, I know all of you are wondering: how do the 2005 Cubbies stack up this year? Don't give a shit, you say? Well, then how does the starting lineup's projected 2005 compare to my writing? Still don't give a shit, you say?

I don't care. It's all about me.

HERE'S YOUR GET BOOKFRAUD'S HOPES UP THROUGH SEPTEMBER AND THEN CRUSH IT LIKE A PIANO DROPPED FROM THE TENTH FLOOR ON A SOFT DOGTURD 2005 CUBS!

Starting lineup:

Corey Patterson, CF -- Lots of potential, but can't lay off high fastballs. I can't lay off high fastballs or cheap, wacky plots that ignore character development.

Todd Walker, 2B -- Streaky hitter with power. Sums up my writing abilities nicely.

Nomar Garciaparra, SS -- Fantastic hitter, good fielder. Super-sensitive, however, and can't lay off the first pitch. I'm super sensitive to criticism, and neurotic to boot.

Amaris Ramirez, 3B -- OK fielder coming into his own as a hitter. I'm an OK at pretty prose and am continually coming into my own as a writer.

Jeremy Burnitz, RF -- Replaces a legend, strikes out too much. Unlike predecesor, is not on steriods. I strike out a lot, gave up steroids when my testicles shrank to raisins, and as a writer, chasing too many legends to count.


Delivering us from evil

Derrick Lee, 1B -- Excellent defensively, good combo of power and speed. Slow starter. I've got a good combo of humor and sharp characterizations. Slow starter, as evidenced by my continuing efforts to publish the novel.

Todd Hollandsworth, LF -- Steady and hard-working. Gets hurt a lot. Sometimes I'm steady and write plenty. Other times I become a Law & Order zombie while my computer sits fallow.

Michael Barrett, C -- Good bat, fair defense, lousy with pitchers. I've got a good word processor, am fair with description and lousy with making stories compelling.

Starting pitching

Kerry Wood, R -- Electrifying fastball, curveball that breaks 12 to 6, slider that kills. Inconsistent. Me, same: flashes of brilliants overshadowed by prolonged mediocrity. (Kerry, please, don't get hurt. Please, just win 15 games, screw that tight shoulder. 15 games. Is that too much to ask?)

Mark Prior, R -- 96 mph fastball that moves; is unbeatable when can throw breaking balls for strikes. My fiction is unbeatable when I can flesh out characters' motivations. Which seems to be rarely.

Carlos Zambrano, R -- Best pitcher for Cubs in '04. Throws 95 mph fastball and 93 mph sinker. Young and lets emotions get the best of him. I'm old and let emotions get the best of me, especially when assessing the (seemingly) endless successes around me.

Greg Maddux, R -- Four-time Cy Young Award winner and future Hall-of-Famer with pinpoint control. Can only go six innings per start. I'm not headed for the National Book Award and I can only go six minutes per writing session before I start surfing.

Glendon Rusch, L -- Not overpowering, but good control. Either I'm overpowering or I'm not in control. Neither both.

Bullpen

Mike Remlinger, L -- Crafty lefthander with good curve and changeup. Age and arm troubles a concern. I'm a crafty righthander with a decent curve and lousy changeup. Age and talent troubles a concern.

LaTroy Hawkins, R -- Great setup man, awful closer. Probably the truest description of my writing talents.

Ryan Dempster, R -- Likely closer following injuries. I'm a likely novelist following years of frustration.

Joe Borowski, R -- Question mark following shoulder injury. Doesn't have raw stuff for closing role but makes it happen. Sweats a lot. At night. In air-conditioned rooms. We have this in common.

Next: real interesting stuff, promise.

Beer and Groaning in Vancouver

After much soul searching, money grubbing, and suppression of anxiety through massive amounts of serotonin-uptake regulators, I have bought the airline ticket and decided to attend the AWP Conference in Vancouver.

Wife will be there, as well as her writing posse (said posse name is not for public consumption) and various acquaintances from the fiction mafia. Another writer I know and admire has summoned me for a drink. There will be scores of others, varying in talent from the Truly Amazing to the Simply Awful, and I can comfort myself in the knowledge that I won't be the worst writer there. The conference features at least 1,439 workshops and panel discussions in which I can hide, if necessary. Everybody's minibar will be empty of liquor by the middle of the first night, and the air will be scored by drunken choruses of "I love you, man," and "And I love you, man."

What's not to like? Why am I not ecstatic at this four-day orgy of fiction fun, at which I will be in the company of friends?

It's all because of the schmoozing, or the thought of schmoozing. I hate it. More than the N.Y. Yankees and the St. Louis Cardnals combined. More than right-wing religious nutjobs. More than rectal exams and dental work, done at once.

I am certain that one reason so many novelists and poets are booze hounds is because that is the only way the get their social courage to a level that allows them to face other people. The writers I know suffer some combination of massive insecurity, being withdrawn and neurotic, or being shy and just plain crazy.


It's OK to be shy, Randy

If we weren't so socially retarded, we'd spend our hours doing things like hanging out with friends. Or reading books for the mere pleasure of it. Or being the life of the party, any party. We wouldn't obsess about not writing. We wouldn't worry so much about how much more successful every other writer is, especially those 15 years younger who have the world at their feet. We would watch television without guilt. We'd wake up Saturday mornings and not dread the afternoon ahead, before a keyboard.

I'm picturing AWP to be one of the many parties through which I suffered as a younger man. I was single, and I'd go to a party thinking there would be hot chicks and one of these ladies would ignore the fact I was standing sullen and quiet in the corner, come over, and talk to me. She'd see the real me and we'd go back to my apartment and make sweet love for the next 72 hours. Instead, I'd stand there sullen and quiet, sipping on my vodka tonic, and the only female attention I'd get would be a lady asking me to move so she could get to the Tostidos.

As a result of these past traumas, I'm picturing one of three scenarios for this conference.

1. I follow the Party Route outlined above, except the hot chicks are hot literary agents and editors. They will see my inner genius without me uttering a single word about it, then they will sign me to an enormous book deal, and just love me (platonically, of course). When this doesn't happen, I just pout in my hotel room, drunk, while Wife is out having a great time without me. Platonically, of course.

2. I get ragingly drunk and try to be someone I'm not, by which I mean the Pseudo-Fratboy, Totally Obnoxious, Aren't I Goddamn Funny And Flattering So Pay Attention to Me, Goddamnit strategy. My success with this tactic has been zero out of a billion times. Often tried during events when I attempt to buddy up to strange businessfolk who I would otherwise find as appealing as raw green flank steak.

3. Don't fucking worry a bit about cozying up to people, making cool friends, or impressing the literati. Hang out and get drunk with Wife, in a safe, caring, sensitive, non-threatening way. Talk about Jackie Chan and the Cubs and which Ramones album is the best and what were the narcotics in Elvis's system when he died (there were 14; eleven were ingested and the others metabolized as a result of the original drugs interacting). Avoid expectations that this needs to Advance My Career and Have Fucking Fun.

Door Number Three makes all the sense in the world, Monty Hall.

Dragging Asssssssssss

My activity in blogworld has been nil the past few days. No new posts, no surfing for the witty and the profane, no commenting on the witty and the profane. A sad week for everyone involved.

I have some good built-in excuses: actually doing work while at the office, trying to write fiction in the ever-dwindling space called "free time," and the first inklings of a virus that has felled many acquaintances with symptoms that have included "catatonic," "near death," and "too exhausted to get out of bed for bowel movements."


Get me rewrite

It's one of those dragging illnesses in which I find even the thought of each keystroke wearying. Fuckdladkdafnoi4ieoraevnakgrh3oierf........................

The Lazlo letters were the most fun I've had in this whole blogging endeavor (even if Wife reads them with a stone face and critical eye), but I've had no desire to continue them or even respond to the nice comments to them. I'm just too tired. I close my eyes at my desk and see beds with feather mattresses. I blast high-volume, no brain heavy metal music to stay awake. Inject the coffee into my veins, please. Please.

There are "real" writers who fashion something of fiction every single day (no bookfrauds they), a habit I usually associate with dead white men like Graham Greene or Kingsley Amis. Of course, there are living, non-white, female writers who hunker down every day, but I can't think of any right now. Maybe because Greene and Amis are Brits, they get automatic passes to the roll of Great Writers.

Will be 100% YAY EXCITED TO BE ALIVE AND WRITING THANK YOU FOR MY HEALTH by Friday, I hope.

I'm going to pass out now.