Bookfraud

Bookfraud Has Moved

2008-02-27T15:18:00.015-05:00

As promised, we've made a few changes here at Bookfraud! The biggest: a new site!

Simply point your browsers and change your bookmarks to http://bookfraud.com!

There, you'll find an all new look! All new colors! My own domain! More posts! More posts about writing! And sex, drugs and rock and roll! Plus, lots more exclamation points!

Yes, it's that simple!

See you on the other side!

Lazy Grab Bag of BS

2008-02-25T20:32:00.001-05:00

This picture was taken a couple of miles from my sister's house in my hometown of Memphis when the tornadoes hit a few weeks ago. She (and her family) were untouched but shaken. My mother was going to the mall that evening where a tornado annihilated a Sears (see below), but decided to stay home, thank goodness.

It's odd seeing one's hometown hit like that. Growing up, there were endless tornado warnings and tornado watches and tornado cakes and whatever the hell the weathermen would say, but a tornado never, ever hit Memphis. It's enough to make you believe in global warming, or Satan.

* * *

I want to tell Neil Kramer of the otherwise fabulous Citizen of the Month blog that a certain post of a few days ago has pretty much come close to ruining my life.

Thanks, Neil.

Update: First it was Neil's blog. Then, this.

* * *

I'm not saying that the Oscars sucked, but when your best joke involves a Wii, you realize that mebee that those striking writers could have helped a little. Jon Stewart is my kinda dude: funny, Jewish, handsome-in-a-not-threatening way (just like me!). But fake news is more of his bag.

I think a team of evil clowns should host instead.

Dustin Hoffman: an evil clown, and he's Jewish!

* * *

A great post from our friend Voix. It links to a site for the British Bacon Council or some such group. My favorite headline from the site: "Regional Competition Winners for Britain's Best Birthday Banger."

I could never win, of course, since I'm American.

* * *

There will be major changes to Bookfraud in the near future. Like a politician, all I can say is that we are evaluating all of our options at the present time, and will come to a decision when the time is right.

One thing I will allow at this point in time is that I'm not quitting. Sorry to disappoint.

* * *

I voted for Barack Obama in the primaries. And once you go black...oh, never mind.

* * *

There was a story in the New York Times a few weeks back collecting the "Views of the Man in the Street" -- more like "Old Fucks Sitting in a Diner, Complaining." The reporter went to a small town in Tennessee and wrote about what these old fucks in a diner (and others) thought of the candidates.

Generally, they had voted for Bush, but were disappointed in him. They didn't like McCain. Hillary Clinton was the devil. Some of the greatest animus was directed towards Obama -- one dude mentioned Obama's middle name ("Hussein") and how the senator was probably in some mosque right at that moment, on the phone with Osama bin-Lauden, trying to figure out how to attack America and forcably convert us to Islam, etc. OK, maybe it wasn't exactly like that, but you get the idea.

And when I read this, all I could think was the following: "Now I know why I had to move the hell out of that goddamned state."

* * *

Once, I ran into Harold Ford Jr., a former Congressman from Memphis who lost in a bid for the Senate, in an airport bathroom. (No, no, not like Larry Craig.) It was crowded, we were standing next to each other at the urinals, and I said, "Congressman Ford, I wish I still lived in Memphis, so I could vote for you for senator."

But, of course, I didn't mean it. The part about living in Memphis.

He smiled and we shook hands, after we had washed them.

* * *
Nothing of consequence in this space.

* * *

Per usual.

What We Write About When We Write About Sex

2008-02-22T17:17:00.002-05:00

Since I’m sick of opining on insects, instead I offer a much more provocative subject. But first, a review and a shameless plug, not to mention some gratuitous name-dropping.

I've just finished An Arsonist’s Guide to Writer’s Homes in New England, a novel that I highly recommend. It’s about a fellow who accidentally burns down the Emily Dickinson house, goes to the slammer for 10 years, and his misadventures after prison. (Which does not include his burning down writers’ homes. Though others may be involved.)

I’ve been a fan of the author, Brock Clarke, for a few years now. He’s published three collections of short stories and a previous novel, all of them excellent. "Plowing the Secondaries“ is certainly one of the best unknown short stories ever written.

(That I happen to know Brock, that he served as my adviser at a conference, and has actually read my novel and offered invaluable advice, really has nothing to do with my admiration of his work. Really. I mean this.)

There is only a hint of eros in An Arsonist’s Guide, which is, despite the title, extremely funny. Most of the copulatin’ is off stage, which I appreciate, since it primarily involves old people who have drank copious amounts of Knickerbocker beer.

Which, commercial message aside, brings me to what I want to write about: sex. Or not about sex.

If there’s anything that can embarrass your typical spinner of tales, it’s a sex scene. I can think of several good ones that come to mind (“come to mind” -- get it? are you embarrassed yet?). Philip Roth is good at this, though most of the time his sex scenes are played for laughs. There’s Steve Almond, whose female ejaculation scene in a short story (and collection) called “My Life in Heavy Metal” is just one of several fresh takes on sex (yeah, I kinda know Steve, too, just a little. He’d recognize me and probably would say hi if I ran into him on the streets of Boston. But it wouldn’t go farther than that).

Buy it, read it, but don't burn it

I even asked Wife, a voracious reader if there ever was one, if she could think of any well-written, memorable sex scenes in literary fiction. She sat and thought about it a few minutes, but couldn't think of any.

As for my writing, I shy away from writing about sex in direct proportion to the amount of time in my life that I have thought about sex. Translated: I never write about sex, and about 99 percent of my waking time has been spent thinking about it (certainly not doing it, save for my brief career in porn, which ended prematurely [“prematurely” -- get it?]).

That’s because I’ve read so many awful sex scenes, in books, online, and especially in workshops. They fall into a few categories: there’s the Penthouse Forum fantasy scene; the Superintenseorgasm scene; the tender-lovey-dovey-sex-on-rose-petals scene; the clinical Sex Ed Insert-Penis-into-Vagina scene; and my favorite, the Unintentionally Hilarious Fuckmaster scene, in which the writer (usually a young male under 25) tells of his protagonist (who bears uncanny resemblance to the writer) bringing his swimsuit model conquest to new plateaus of ecstacy unmatched in the history of mankind. That the writer and protagonist resemble the president of the high school A/V club really doesn’t matter.

Sullied

As for when I am compelled to write a scene resembling fornication or even making reference to it, I go for the crutch that always serves me when I am put into a position of extreme discomfort: I take the coward's way out and go for the jokes, and though Mr. Roth can play this expertly -- in one book, the protagonist masturbates on his mistress's grave -- with most writers, myself included, such attempts (at writing) turn out more leaden than a hippo dropped from a B-52 without a parachute (or more leaden than lame metaphors about hippos).

If you were to ask me about films, I could name a dozen or so movies without thinking that have sex scenes that inform the reader, illuminate the plot, and show shadings of character. But few for literature.

So I put it to you, dear reader -- are there any scenes of physical congress in fiction that aren’t merely titillating, but actually add something to the story, our understanding of the characters, or make us think?

Also, if you want to share any personal stories involving Uma Thurman or Charlize Theron -- better yet, Uma Thurman and Charlize Theron -- that’s cool, too. I’ll pay good money for it, in fact.

Letters From a Marriott Jail, or The Last I Will Ever Write of This

2008-02-18T19:58:00.002-05:00

It's Saturday night, and I'm in the bathroom of a hotel room, marooned.

Wife has retreated to the hotel bar, a place where she assures me she will not drink so many gin and tonics that Baby will get plastered the next time he breast feeds.

For his part, Baby is sleeping in a port-a-crib with the profile and feel of a prison cell: confined space, metal bars, and his very own prison bitch.

That bitch would be me, relegated to the bathroom as the rest of our temporary home stews in darkness to allow my young son to sleep, a state of consciousness that, I might add, he shows no sign of attaining at 7:30 p.m., if his screaming at 232 decibels is a sign.

And tomorrow, sweet Sunday, when I will go back to our place and mop every uncarpeted square inch of our home, so that I don't inadvertently lick up the residue in a few days when I really lose it and drop to my hands and knees,barking like a cocker spaniel in heat.

Why, oh why do I subject myself to such indignities of the soul? Anybody who has glanced at this space in the last seven (!) months knows why: this afternoon, still suffering from a plague of bedbugs, Wife and I had the homestead sprayed with pesticides for the eighth time, a number that turned on its side becomes "infinity," which is beginning to seem like the amount of time it will take us to get rid of these beasties.

The exterminator (the third different one), a voluble fellow who unfortunately stank of a Union Carbide plant, was flummoxed he had to make a return visit from two weeks ago.

"I goddamn soaked the place the last time," he said, thus confirming my suspicion that bed bugs will survive a nuclear armageddon.

There is a positive to all of this, which is...is...aw, fuck it, there's nothing positive about all this except the fact I can appreciate what it feels like to be a refugee while still living in my own home. As a colleague of my college newspaper would say, "It sucks moosecock. It sucks total moosecock."

Dancin' fools

So I'm sitting in the bathroom, scribbling away on a hotel notepad with a hotel pen, like a jailed Eastern Bloc dissident writing on the back of his calves. Right now, as I am sitting on the (closed) toilet, my head leaning upon the sink, the only thought going through my mind is, "I wonder if drinking a combination of Bath & Body Works™ Aromatherapy Orange Ginger Energizing Voluminizing Conditioner plus Bath & Body Works™ Aromatherapy Orange Ginger Nourishing Body Lotion will finally put an end to this." As in, end to my life.

No, the thing one learns from bed bugs is rather Zen: you can't blame anyone, you can't do much about it. You just have to accept it.

Which is a good lesson as a writer, as the novel piles up more rejections than a high school nerd (i.e. me) does with asking out cheerleaders, there's nothing I can do about it.

Well, I guess I can blame society. Or my do-nothing, invisible agent. Or the stupid editors who didn't understand the utter brilliance of my work or the editors who did but said, "This is awesome! But ultimately not for me."

Society made me do it

Such is the hatin' right now that I'm going to have to write a novel about bed bugs to get this out of my system. In it, the protagonist surreptitiously begins production of DDT in his basement, At night, he breaks into homes, bags all the furniture, and sprays bug-infested areas with his illegal homemade pesticide, which kills all bed bugs in the universe.

I'll call it "Boners for Terminix."

Writer-in-Chief

2008-02-15T17:11:00.005-05:00

As usual in every political campaign, my special interest is being ignored in the Race for the White House '08.

In all the brouhaha over superdelegates and Super Tuesday, a voluntary health care plan versus a mandated one, coded racism and uncoded tears, campaign rallies that resemble rock concerts and Rush Limbaugh's head exploding, nobody has really broken down what the next president will mean for writers. Like me.

In literary terms, the three remaining candidates all have major advantages than George W. Bush:

--Clinton 2.0: has authored or co-authored several books, smart, organized, actually reads.

--Barack Obama: has authored two books, incredibly articulate, handsome, actually reads.

--McCain: authored or co-authored several books, white hair, no verbal filter, hot headed, hot wife, actually reads.

It is a rite of passage that any person running for president will have to write a book, or hire someone to do it for them. Still, from a writer's perspective, any one of these candidates has a fine literary pedigree, So what if Hillary Clinton "wrote" Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids' Letters to the First Pets ; at least we know she loves animals and has enough imagination not to name her dog "Spot."

And big deal that Barack Obama is the author of a cookbook. Yes, a cookbook for African-American men. OK, he only wrote the foreward, but still.

Granted, I haven't actually read It Takes a Village (Clinton) or The Audacity of Hope (Obama) or I'm a Military Hero, But Why I Still Favor This Insane Iraqi War Is a Mystery Even to Me(McCain), so I can't accurately judge the quality of their work. It's plain, however, that the one thing that unites these politicians-authors is that they favor non-fiction.

For those of this inclined towards those things fictitious -- novels, plays, political speeches -- it is an interesting thought experiment to imagine just who these candidates would be, if they did write novels and plays.

Not only are these categories random, but indicative of nothing. Feel free to add your own.

19TH CENTURY BRITISH NOVELIST

Clinton: George Eliot

Obama: Charles Dickens

McCain: Charlotte Bronte

PSYCHOTIC POET:

Clinton: The women in the poetry program at my grad school

Obama: Baudelaire

McCain: Sylvia Plath

DRUNK AND DRUNKER:

Clinton: Dorthy Parker

Obama: Charles Bukowski

McCain: Some knight in the 12th Century who came back from the Crusades, wrote about it, got plastered on mead, and choked on his own vomit

MODERNIST:

Clinton: T.S. Eliot

Obama: James Joyce

McCain: Samuel Beckett, Kafka, Inonesco (you get the picture)

FATALIST:

Clinton: Theodore Dreiser

Obama: Thomas Hardy

McCain: The guy who wrote that book about the 'Nam!!!!!!!

I'm a handsome writer

POLE-UP-THE-BUTT MORALIST/PLAYWRIGHT:

Clinton: Ibsen

Obama: G.B. Shaw

McCain: That dude who wrote A Few Good Men

LOST GENERATION:

Clinton: Gertrude Stein

Obama: F. Scott Fitzgerald

McCain: Ernest Hemingway (and Hemingway, and Hemingway)

BLOOMSBURY:

Clinton: Virginia Woolf

Obama: E.M. Forster

McCain: Bloomswhatthefuck?

SHAKESPEARE CHARACTER

Clinton: Lady Macbeth (Ouch!)

Obama: Prince Hal (Double Ouch!)

McCain: Richard III (Triple Ouch!)

EXISTENTIALIST:

Clinton: Sartre

Obama: Camus

McCain: Kafka

If only she had known...

'60s AMERICAN POST-MODERNIST

Clinton: John Barth

Obama: Thomas Pynchon

McCain: In the 60s I was serving my country while you were in diapers and smokin' weed in Hawaii, mister Obama!

MODERN HACKS:

Clinton: Tom Clancy

Obama: Jackie Collins

McCain: The love child of Tom Clancy and Jackie Collins

OTHER PRESIDENT-AUTHOR:

Clinton: Bill Clinton

Obama: JFK

McCain: Richard Nixon

ABSURDIST:

Clinton: Bill Clinton

Obama: Oprah Winfrey

McCain: McCain

Well, the votes are in, but there are some dimpled chads. Feel free to submit your own ballots. I'll declare the winner in time for the next election.

Sir Barfsalot

2008-02-11T10:52:00.000-05:00

Children keep you young, but first they make you old. --Anon.

Kids vomit frequently, particularly on their parents. --Bookfraud

Baby had his first illness a fortnight ago, and it was not pretty for neither child nor parents. In a display so revolting it would make sanitation worker blush, Baby made his stomach flu evident for all to see, and feel. Subsequently, Wife took ill exactly two days after Baby started throwing up. And precisely one hour after Wife got ill, I started heaving. It was, essentially, our own version of "2 Gals 1 Cupp[sic]." (Without the coprophagia).

As Baby sat listlessly while trying to comprehend why he was being forced to drink a nasty fluid called "Pedialyte," his parents basically lost their minds. The mere thought of food made us sick. My body aged about 10 years: it felt as if gremlins were taking a jackhammer to every square inch of my body.

Oh, and the fucking bedbugs are still in the place. They decided to hold a parade through our apartment on the days we were ill.

This all went down three weeks ago, and although the nausea passed after three days and no food later, I've felt as energetic as a Patriots fan at about 11 p.m. after the Super Bowl. And last week, we had the apartment sprayed a seventh time for bed fucking bugs. The exterminator who basically carpet bombed the place. When he was finished, a slick sheen covered our floors. We spent the night at a hotel.

Today, Wife called me to say she'd been bitten (again) by a bedbug, after a few days of bliss. We're going to have the place sprayed for an eighth time Saturday.

INSERT PRIMAL SCREAM HERE

My options are 1. Kill myself; 2. Run off with "Porsche," who I met last night at Club Elegance (and boy, did we really hit it off when I gave her my credit card number!); 3. Kill myself; 4. Drink copious amounts of vodka; 5. Kill myself.

All good options indeed.

Whack the Writer's Strike

2008-01-18T22:51:00.000-05:00

It is too easy to make fun of all things 1970s -- it's kind of like making fun of someone who is fat or unattractive and is altogether a form of self-loathing.

However, in my search for public service announcements (or "PSAs," as us connoisseurs call them), I came upon the following tragic piece of video from the 1970s, a real PSA (or, perhaps, a sex-ed film) about teenage boys' favorite activity:

There are so many things patently false about this scene that it makes me see the light for striking television and film writers: often denigrated, disowned, and under-appreciated, these paragons of verisimilitude would never have stood for the travesty above. I mean, Ricky isn't upset. His mother isn't upset. He doesn't reach for the closest sharp object and slash it across his throat.

Ricky's mom counsels him that he needs to "control these feelings," which is tantamount to saying, "Don't be horny and don't masturbate," advice young men have ignored for as long as they have had penises.

If you really wanted to keep teenage boys from doing what comes naturally, a professional writer -- like those on strike -- would pen the following:

The scene: Ricky is lying in bed, hands under covers. His eyes are shut and his teeth are gritted.

RICKY (moaning): Oh, Mrs. Tasty, Oh, yes, Mrs. Tasty. I want you Mrs. Tasty, I want to take you now, Mrs. Tasty...

Outside, Ricky's mother hears something from her 13-year-old son's room. She turns the knob, but is surprised to see that it's locked.

CLUELESS 70s MOM: Ricky, why are you saying your English teacher's name over and over? What's that about taking her someplace? What is going on in there? You never lock your door!

RICKY: GO THE HELL AWAY!

C7M: Well, I never!

Seconds later, Ricky's mother returns with a key. She quickly opens the door and lets herself in.

C7M: Now, listen here, Eric Miles Bonert, you never talk to your Mother like that...oh my goodness, what are you doing?

RICKY: AAAAAAAAAAAH! GET THE HELL OUT NOW!!!!!!!

C7M: Oh, you're masturbating!

RICKY (hiding under covers): SHUT UP AND GET THE HELL OUT!!!!!

C7M (thoughtfully): So that would explain why you go straight to your room for a "nap" every day after school! And all those yellow stains on your undershirts and your socks. I couldn't figure that out for the life of me! Do you want me to get you something to clean up with, so you won't ruin your clothes?

RICKY: I HATE YOU! GO AWAY!

C7M: Alright then, if you're going to be that way to me, fine. But I don't understand why you feel like you need to submit to your urges.Mother leaves. Dissolve to a long shot of her talking on the telephone.

C7M: Really? Well, I had no idea that what was happening. That's good news. I'll be sure and tell him.

Back in his room, Ricky is freaked out, and has masturbated six more times. His mother enters without knocking.

RICKY: Go away. I told you never to come in here without my permission! I'm 13 already!

C7M: Just listen here, Eric Miles. I really was ignorant about this -- I had no idea that you were going through such things. I'm just glad that you did it in the privacy of your own room. What you did is perfectly normal -- well, your father has a slightly different viewpoint--

RICKY: You told Dad? I don't believe you did that!

C7M: It's his right as a father to know, Ricky. He deserves to know. He'll have a long talk with you when he gets home.

RICKY: What did he say? Did he say it's just a normal part of puberty and adolescence, that he did the same thing I did, like five times a day?

C7M: No, I'm afraid he said "No son of mine is going to be a hairy-palmed pervert meat whacker! He's going to military school!" But that's just your Dad!

RICKY: I'm going to kill myself.

C7M: Now, I was afraid you'd be upset, so after I got off the phone with Dad, I called Mr. Cutler--

RICKY: You told my guidance counselor?

C7M: Only after Mrs. Tasty said I should talk to him. She sounded a little embarrassed that you were moaning her name while you were masturbating.

RICKY: Oh my God.

C7M: Don't worry! I eventually spoke to Mr. Cutler. He didn't want to talk about it except he said it was a normal part of adolescence.

RICKY: I don't believe you called Mr. Cutter!

C7M: But Ricky, I also called Tommy Barnes…

RICKY: You WHAT? You called my best friend?

C7M: Now, don't worry, Ricky, Tommy is a good friend and he proved it when I spoke to him. I asked if other boys masturbated--

RICKY: I'm going to kill every member of my family and then myself.

C7M: …and Tommy said, no, he didn't masturbate. At least that's what he said after he finished laughing.

RICKY: You've ruined my life.

C7M: Just listen, Ricky! Tommy was very nice. He said that although he didn't do it himself, he would call all of your friends right away and ask them so you could discuss it in school tomorrow!

RICKY: I can't go back to school. My life is over in the seventh grade…I'm going to die.

C7M: Now, why on earth would you say that?

(Fade).

Any teenage boy sees that, he'll never bop the baloney again. Unless he's in the shower, in the school bathroom alone, late at night in bed...

You see, in the hands of a savvy writer like myself -- even one with no screenwriting experience like myself -- a delicate, sensitive topic like whackin' off is made real and addressed seriously. Writers are generally considered fungible, but we're not.

Let's end this ridiculous writers' strike now, and write sex-ed films that actually frighten kids from touching themselves.

The reason is clear: about 592 million boys worldwide are masturbating at this very second. And unless we can scare the shit out of them, they're not going to stop until every white T-shirt and pair of socks on this planet are ruined.

Hide the Children: A Tour of Bookfraud’s Brain

2008-01-09T19:21:00.000-05:00

It’s more suicidal than bipolar Finnish sheep herders drunk on vodka and Kierkegaard! There’s less hope there than at an Ibsen festival! It’s feels bleaker than a conference of failed, embittered scribes who think Cormac McCarthy is optimistic and Dostoyevsky’s characters are the happiest folk in the universe!

Are we talking about Romney campaign workers, Ohio State fans, or the celebrity-du-jour-meltdown (of which the latest suffer’s name is banned from this space)? No! We’re talking about the mind of the writer! Specifically, Bookfraud’s mind!

There’s a lot of bizzare crap-ola going in this man’s brain -- but really, can you blame him? Take a plague of bed bugs going on six months, throw in depression that won’t quit, a literary agent harder to pin down than mercury and a baby who at 3 a.m. sounds like Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier, and you’ve got all the makings of a full-throttle mental breakdown!

To make matters worse, Bookfraud is writing about as often as a starving pit bull will ignore a raw T-bone, and what he does churn out is about as readable as Dan Brown in Sanskrit! And let me tell you, his brain is generating all of this mess -- the negative thinking, the emotional meltdowns, the sudden urges to lick the sidewalk.

Bookfraud’s brain is not a pretty place to be these days, boys and girls, but I’m going to take you on a fully guided tour of the vast wasteland of his emotional state and the empty grottoes of his soul! Prepare for the most horrifying guided tour since Virgil led Dante through Hades!

Let’s start at the lower brain, the veritable “reptilian” state of the brain that controls heartbeat, breathing, and involuntary teenage boners. Bookfraud’s medulla is in bad shape -- look at the Swiss-cheese like holes dotting its surface. It’s no wonder that he’s breathing like a 100-year-old stone accordion! And let’s hope that his blood pressure hasn’t skyrocketed to 500/1000!

Abandon all hope

Now, the midbrain. The midbrain links motor functions, eye and auditory control, and the power train a 1968 Dodge Dart. Thus, when Bookfraud sees an attractive femalian, his eyes bug out, his hands shake, and he starts hearing voices in his head -- “Maybe you can do better, buddy! Maybe it’s a good time for a mid-life crisis after all, because there are so many hot 22-year-old blonde babes with enormous gazargons who want to sleep with you!”

Speaking of which, let’s take a look at the hypothalamus, where sexual reproduction is regulated. You may want to hide your children’s eyes for this one. Wow! That’s ugly! It looks like it’s been unused for months -- cobwebs everywhere! It’s rotting from the core! I wouldn’t show that to a medical student unless I wanted him or her to quit school that very day.

Next on the tour is the cerebellum. Motor functions are controlled here, and the pink, red, blue, orange, and black spots are why Bookfraud is constantly dropping things, breaking them, and turning into a 43-year-old ball of venomous bile that sets such a great example for his young son!

But let’s get to main course -- the mass of grey matter you’re all familiar with, the cerebrum, which tastes great on toast, by the way, or in a taco. The cerebrum is broken up into four lobes, all of which have a different purpose. Let’s take a quick look at each in Bookfraud’s messed-up mind:

The Frontal Lobe: associated with reasoning, parts of speech, and problem solving, this part of Bookfraud’s brain looks about as active as a dead squirrel on a stick! He can’t reason, plan, solve problems like “What’s 2 plus 2?” or speak a coherent sentence without pulling out, one by one, each hair in his nostril.

The Parietal Lobe: regulates movement, orientation, recognition, perception of stimuli; notice the miniscule, translucent insects crawling all through this lobe. They’re bed bugs! And that’s all Bookfraud can see these days -- bed bugs in his bed, in his coffee, on his Speed Stick by Mennen! They’re everywhere!

It's a metaphor

The Occipital Lobe: while this part of the cerebrum handles visual processing, watch what happens in Bookfraud’s occipital lobe when a naked woman starts firing a machine gun while taking a dump. Nothing! It’s a dead zone in here!

The Temporal Lobe: Now we’re talkin’! This area helps regulate speech and memory, which are kinda essential tools for a writer -- but look at Bookfraud’s. It’s less appealing than three-day-old eggs at Shoney’s breakfast buffet! It’s going to replace the South Bronx as a symbol of urban decay -- someone should spray paint “Bookfraud Thinks Nada” on it!

Look at all the abandoned neurons, the destroyed receptors. Just pitiful. Let’s get out of here before Bookfraud tries to write something again, or we could get run over by a neurological equivalent of a drunken driver!

Well, that’s it. We hope you’ve enjoyed the tour! If you want to see his brain completely meltdown like a bolt of steel thrown to the sun, come back next week -- by then, he’ll have completely lost it!

However, I've just received some bad news. You'll have to make new plans for this time slot next week: the scheduled tour of Bookfraud’s penis has been canceled for lack of interest.

I'm Wicked and I'm Lazy

2008-01-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

Before I decided not to publish it, I had written a blog entry indicative of a man bereft of ideas: The Year in Review. Granted, it reviewed subject matter such as Chris “Leave Britney Alone!” Crocker (see below) and Dog Poop Girl (see above), which not only are stupid pop culture footnotes to the real business of 2007 like greed, death and destruction, but have no bearing on the world of writing fiction, which, in a galaxy far, far away, this blog was once dedicated to addressing.

I’ve written about four blog entries over the past four months (do the math), ostensibly because of the ongoing bed bug woes in my household. This ignores several inconvenient truths: one, I don’t fight bed bugs 24/7 (or 12/4, for that matter); and two, despite our bugs and Baby and stress and fights with Wife and lots of anguish, I still have time to play computer games or screw around online for trivial pursuits like Sudoku or important ones like porn.

Whether this poor production stems from fear or laziness, I will not speculate, but I will admit something to which I am loath to disclose: at times, I can be terribly, terrifyingly lazy. (Which makes good fodder for a blog entry in January, 2008: I resolve this year not to be a fat, stupid slug).

This is a deep-seated issue stemming from an abusive childhood. I probably read more than the average child, and was often stymied by certain verbiage in my books. When I would ask my father what a word meant -- alight, cogitate, affectation -- he always had the same damn answer: “Well, son, let’s ask a friend of mine -- Mr. Webster. He has this book called ‘the dictionary.’” My father, thus being doubly didactic, would force me to actually look up the word in the dictionary. If that wasn’t abuse, I don’t know what was.

There were a couple of lessons to be learned here. My father not only wanted me to learn how to use the dictionary and expand my mind, but to learn to stop bugging the crap out of him to get definitions of stupid words. I got the latter but not the former, and it wasn’t until college that I could cogitate upon alighting an intellectual journey filled with affectation and pretension.

But I left Britney alone

Now, of those who know me well, you’re probably a bit surprised. You’re saying, “Why, all these years, I thought Bookfraud was the hardest working man alive! He just put me to shame. And it turns out he goofs off more than George Bush!”

Fear not, familiar fans and foes, fear not. There once was a time that I was the hardest workin’ man in no business. I had two jobs in college, and two jobs after college. When I got it down to one job, I came home every evening to write. I didn't have a car, television or other distraction. If I were 15 years younger, I'd probably be more known in this space for my logorreah than my paucity of output.

But I’m 43, unpublished and unknown, and there are stretches in my life that I seriously contemplate not writing anything creative at all: no novel, no short stories, no blog, nada. For me to have considered this 15 years ago was unthinkable, like giving up breathing or sex.

There are many, many writers who manage prodigious output, and it is during times such as now that I turn to them for inspiration. George Sand wrote dozens of plays, novels, articles and other assorted works. Issac Asimov wrote, like, 500 books. Current belle du jour Steve Almond seems to appear on every shelf and Web site. And then there’s Joyce.

Sloth comes in many forms

Not James Joyce, but Ms. Joyce Carol Oates, who has written and published more in one month than most scribes could hope for in a lifetime. To say she is a graphomaniac is like saying that Proust was a hypochondriac (or Britney is a bad mother) -- deny if you must, but the evidence is overwhelming.

So, to review – I’m not writing much, my default position is sloth derived from a false belief all of my time is spent eradicating bed bugs or fighting with Wife about them, and these very words that you are reading now represent the new Bookfraud, the line of demarcation, the declaration that yes! I will not watch TV or play computer games or spend my idle hours trolling the Internet for Cubs news or searching my scalp for invisible lice but perched before the keyboard, typing until the hour the crow flies and dies and my fingers bleed and my head rolls off my hunched shoulders, until my toes shrivel and hair turns the gray of a February afternoon in Chicago, until I decide I must stop, that the effort is futile, that my life cannot go on until I stop, these words that will be blazingly original and new and never done before, because writers condemned to 43 years of solitude do not have a second opportunity on earth.

Annus Horribilis, Annus Mirabilis, Annus Shamus

2007-12-11T21:28:00.000-05:00

For all our viewers at home, I have an announcement. We have word from the pressbox -- it's official. Things have gotten ugly around here.
--Imagined witticism by Bookfraud while announcing a Cubs game

Thought you'd gotten rid of me, didn't you? Thought you'd seen the last of Bookfraud, that snarky, cynical, sarcastic, nasty bit of unpleasantness delivered to your computer screen once or twice a week? You didn't think I was going to post again, and you celebrated by pulling down my statue in the square of your hometown, didn't you?

Sorry to disappoint.

I thought it might come to pass, as well. If I can't make it more plain, my life just sucks right now. Majorly, bitterly, totally sucks. The last thing I've been desirous of doing is sharing the suckiness with others, "others" being you unfortunates who have wandered here after Googling "Joshua Bell gy."

If you have not suffered the plague of bedbugs, it is hard to convey just what kind of hell this has made my life -- Wife's especially. All of our possessions, clothing included, are in storage or packed in Hefty garbage bags. We have had to leave the apartment overnight six times for spraying. Our free time is taken up with cleaning, washing, and fighting.

We can't have visitors, nor can we visit others' homes. Wife is at home with Baby every weekday, and is stuck there. Taking him outside entails an elaborate procedure with bags and clothes and coverings that resembles brain transplant surgery.

You know things are bad when you watch someone on television lose their home and possessions in a act of Mother Nature, and say, "I guess things could be worse."

Wife and I have not weathered this particularly well. Our tempers are short, our fights close to the surface. We disagree about how to handle the problem, which leads to low-grade arguments (can't upset Baby) that resolve nothing. This is all compounded by the fact Wife is getting bitten but not me, creating a he said-she said tension about the prevalence of the problem.

I suffer from periodic bouts of depression, of which this condition of insects has just exacerbated to the knife-point of suicide. I find comfort in things predictable, reliable: music, sex, Jackie Chan movies, fried food, carbohydrates. But this feeling of dread (of which Wife suffers exponentially) won't fade no matter how many bacon-double cheezeburgers I eat while watching "Drunken Master II" and enjoying the company of a comely, naked co-ed. (None of which is happening -- cholesterol too high for a burger, all my tapes and DVDs are in storage, and...and...).

I loathe talking to friends, because I know bedbugs were all I'm going to talk about. And I've loathed the idea of blogging, because I knew bedbugs were all I was going to talk about.

If I were to summarize 2007, it veered from annus horribilis (surgery) to annus mirabilis (baby) back to annus horribilis (bedbugs). All in all, a pain in the annus.

Wow. I feel better already.

Pre- This

2007-11-02T20:11:00.000-04:00

Long before the insects swarmed upon my life, tearing it apart, threatening my marriage, and temporarily removing my son from my life -- that is, in the days before I didn’t think about throwing myself in front of a bus -- a friend of Wife’s came out with a work of non-fiction that garnered some decent publicity.

This was the friend’s fourth book: he’s had two short-story collections and another work of non-fiction published to date, and has been pretty durn successful, by my estimation. He’s sold a good number of volumes, and, unlike most of us, makes a living through writing.

But not all is well in the land of Successful Writer: this writer’s latest book, according to his publisher, hasn’t moved enough copies before it was published. The publisher was worried before the book went on sale, or “pre-sales,” as she put it.

One can ascribe this sorry state of events to the Internet, in which “pre-sales” are logged and displayed on Amazon.com. Perhaps it’s simply a reflection of the desperate straits in which publishers find themselves. Or one can say that Wife’s friend is simply the victim of a short-sighted, unimaginative sluggo marketer whose whole modus operandi is sales, sales, sales (or, her whole m.o. is simply holding on to her job).

While I am tempted to launch venom at the sorry state of the publishing business, I will turn this entry into a rant about “pre-” and its growing use in the vernacular. (Because I feel like it.)

Prevent pre-boarding

“Pre-sales” sounds like something a business consultant devised after an afternoon of heavy drinking. Like that nefarious “pre-boarding” that you will hear at an airport gate, it incorrectly refers to the interregnum between an event “unofficially” happening and it actually happening. But you can’t sell something before you sell it, just as you can’t board a plane before you board it. It is all Zen, my child.

There are legitimate uses for this overused, abused prefix "pre-". You can be a pre-law or pre-med major, since it's a time when you're not actually in law or medical school. You can make pre-game plans, do pre-interview preparation, or listen to the works of the late, great Jacqueline Du Pre.

But perhaps those geniuses of "pre-" are on to something. We should extend “pre-sales” to other areas of life besides books. It could open up a whole new realm of stupid, idiotic business-like words.

To wit:

Pre-driven cars: No, not a “pre-owned” car, or, in the old fashioned, quaint way of putting it, a “used car.” Pre-driven cars have new car smell, fresh tires, and an engine block as clean as a hospital floor. That’s because nobody’s driven it yet! Get it?

Pre-pre-owned clothes/furniture/CDs, etc.: “Pre-pre-owned” is the new “new.” “I want a new Armani suit, not some used suit I could find at the consignment store.” No, it’s “I want a pre-pre-owned Armani suit, not some pre-owned suit at the consignment store.” Get it? (The brilliance of this should be obvious by now).

Pre-eaten Hot, Hot, HOT Apple Pies at McDonalds’: You get to eat your lip melting, tongue scalding, mouth burning hot apple pies, not only before anyone else, but before anyone has actually tried eating one, ruined his or her vocal chords, thrown the pie to the floor, and you’ve picked it up and feel your hand turn to mush from the 8,000 degrees radiating from the radioactive liquid magma filling.

(This is what happens when you’re eight years old and bite into a Mickey D’s hot apple pie for the first time. You’re scarred for life.)

Not buying it

Pre-Fucked Pornstars™: This sounded funny when I first thought of it. But I don’t know if I mean “virgins” or somebody who has already done the dirty deed that day.

Offensive? Yeah. Will I trademark it? Yeah.

Pre-seating: Like it’s cousin “pre-boarding,” one pre-seats a movie, play, baseball game, or rock concert. However, I believe we should extend this idea to all aspects of life, including seating at the dinner table, sofa, office chair, seat on the bus, and toilet. Especially the toilet. Speaking of which…

Pre-crapping: Those special folks get to toss a loaf before you do. Are you prairie-doggin’ yet?

Pre-insane Bookfraud: Sorry, sir, but I hate to tell you “pre-insane Bookfraud” is out of stock.

Son of Lolita

2007-10-19T11:34:00.000-04:00

Editor's Note: this blog entry was written, like, a month ago. It might still be relevant to about six people in this world. If I were current, I would be writing about Raymond Carver, not writing about someone who wrote about Raymond Carver (see below).

But then the bedbugs revolted against the exterminator's poison, I fell into a state approaching depression, and hid in a cave. The bedbugs are still in my home, but I've left the cave. Or at least have stuck my toe out.

One of my all-time favorite literary takedowns was a full-bore, take-no-prisoners evisceration of Raymond Carver, once the resident patron saint of creative writing programs. The essay's point -- that Carver, through his unadorned and non-descriptive prose had ruined many an MFA student -- was crouched in harsh but convincing language.

The writer of that essay was a fellow by the name of Melvin Jules Bukiet, and if the name isn't familiar, the reason is that Bukiet hasn't sold many books. He teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence, and, if my intelligence serves me correctly, he was correct in ascertaining that Mr. Carver's banal language had produced a mini-generation of writers whose ambition was as flat as the "Carveresque" prose they proffered for workshop.

The reason I loved Bukiet's essay was that he was goring a sacred cow, and his venom had the ring of authenticity to it. I never understood why other writers loved Raymond Carver; reportedly, they saw in the late man the genius of hidden truth. What's not said, described, or done is more important than what is, according to his acolytes. His characters have a great secret to hide, or they have messed up relationships destroyed by booze and drugs. Or whatever.

That essay was in the Village Voice literary supplement, and clocked in at about 750 words. Now, Bukiet has penned an essay of greater length, though his prey is bigger: Brooklyn (N.Y.) writers.

Wonder this

He didn't mean writers who live exclusively in the Borough of Kings (though most of them do), but the type of fiction being produced by Brooklyn's leading literary lights, such as Paul Auster, Johnathan Safron Foer, and Myla Goldberg. The gist of the essay was "Brooklyn Books of Wonder" had become a species onto itself: cute, wondrous novels that divine suffering as a learning experience, when in fact, suffering just results in…suffering.

They often have juvenile protagonists and explicitly see the world through a child's eyes (Thus, the wonder, power, & glory).

Bukiet makes it sound like a world of solipsistic, self-satisfied Brooklynites who are one part Derrida, one part Leo Buscaglia, and one part Wally Lamb. One would think that by just crossing the Brooklyn Bridge you'd wandered into Literary Wonder Oblivion.

Knowing several of the species of Brooklyn Writer myself -- in geography if not temperament -- the essay was indeed provocative and had many salient points, but wasn't entirely convincing: a patina of personal disdain coats Bukiet's words of wisdom, as if Dave Eggers had committed the literary equivalent of diddling Bukiet's wife and was mocking the cuckold to boot.

Bukiet sets himself up way too easily for charges of professional jealousy, as it seems Foer sells more books in three hours than Bukiet has in his lifetime (not to mention money, or Foer's $5 million Brooklyn brownstone, or his movie advances, or…never mind).

I haven't read Bukiet's fiction, but though he sells few books, he is well-regarded. I did hear him read one of his stories, however, which involved a hotel, green shoes and a narrator obsessed with meeting perhaps the greatest of the great writers of English prose: Vladimir Nabokov.

Nabokov was many things, but Mr. Happy Ending was not one of them, and his stories could be as depressing as his prose was brilliant. And thus the answer to the problem.

Bukiet readily admits that these Brooklyn types are gifted writers, as far as putting beautiful sentences to paper. But they're wasting their estimable gifts.

The essay reads like Burgess Meredith yelling at Rocky. Bukiet doesn't want "The Lovely Bones." He doesn't want "Everything Is Illuminated." He wants "Crime and Punishments." He wants "Son of Lolita." But that ain't gonna happen: it's more likely that Nabokov himself will rise from the grave. And if it did -- and if there are books such as Buikiet wants -- they're selling fewer copies than "How to Blow Up Your Flight" at LAX.

But Bukiet even admits the greater point. Schlock sells, baby. The key sentence in the essay is All of these books instantly trigger the “Awww” reflex of narcissistic empathy that makes readers, adoring the proximate cause of their own sensitivity, buy them by the truckload. Narcissistic empathy or not, the greatest books often sell the fewest copies.

Foer: Straight outta Bed-Sty

Love or hate A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, it sold a ton of books despite its intellectual pretensions, not because of them. (Ditto "Everything Is Illuminated," "The History of Love," etc.).

And in an era in which almost nobody is awaiting a new novel by fill-in-the-blank writer as they did once with Bellow and Roth, at least these Oprah-fied fill-ins did something that most fiction with highbrow pretensions almost never does anymore: people read 'em, critics take them seriously, and they strike a cord with a mass audience. Which is more than can be said for...oh, never mind.

Ode to a Dying Blog

2007-09-24T18:50:00.000-04:00

A writer named Bookfraud lived a literary life
Nothing remotely maudlin or sappy
He had a beautiful boy and doting wife
But he didn't know he was so happy

They took a trip in July to a place with trees
Without knowing the danger of pests
It seemed as if their biggest nuisance was fleas
But they took home some uninvited guests

Soon they were bitten on legs, arms and back
It left everyone in a foul mood
Bedbugs had started their evil attack
And were sucking their blood for food

At first they worked hard, vowing to win
Bookfraud cleaned up every day
They packed up their belongings in airtight bins
Thinking the bugs would soon be on their way

Oh, Bookfraud bagged his mattress and stored his books
Everything was covered with tags
He'd become so obsessed he hadn't noticed to look
That his clothes and his life were in bags

But when the bites kept pinching their flesh
Bookfraud's family was quickly distraught
Every day the bedbugs would breed and refresh
Bookfraud could only exclaim, 'My God, what has He wrought?'

'I'm not writing, I'm not sleeping, my skin is a mess
It's as if I'm made of plaster
There is no solution to this mighty distress
My life has devolved into disaster.'

The road to insanity starts here

Bookfraud vacuumed and cleaned two hours a night
But didn't make any gains
He had insomnia, aches, and migraines too boot
He was slowly going insane

Pest control came and sprayed with a stick
Then Bookfraud was suddenly illin'
The poison had made Bookfraud so sick
He had to take Amoxicillin

The exterminators came once, no twice, no thrice
As muscular as Barry Bonds a-juicin'
But bedbugs are hardier and meaner than lice
And just kept on reproducing

(Every treatment, Bookfraud had to sleep alone
Wife and Baby lodged at an inn
The man of the house was stuck by the phone
Drinking Coke-Cola, Orangina and gin)

In distress, Bookfraud tried to mend
But his efforts never left the station
He tried writing, his 'best friend'
(And no, his 'best friend' wasn't masturbation)

He attempted to blog but nothing came out
His brain and body were spent
Too angry to weep, too tired to shout
His literary ambitions were bent

He stopped looking at blogs and commenting too
Every moment was dread and remorse
On the Day of Atonement he was a bad Jew
Bookfraud ate and drank like a horse

His novel lies fallow, his agent is gone
Worse than any literary critic or thug
Bookfraud's too tired to consider if he's been wronged
His life ruined by a bug

Traitor to the cause

He doesn't read books
The shelves have been stripped clean
He's paranoid about funny looks
That brand him as stupid or obscene

Television and fried food became his siren call
It was all he felt like doing
Now he's climbing the walls
Feeling sorry for himself and stewing

So he awaits the end of the ordeal
His lesson as loud as the din:
Though still a bedbug Happy Meal
He realizes how happy he'd been.

D-U-M-B, Everyone's Accusing Me

2007-09-12T19:38:00.000-04:00

In the underappreciated (and under-watched) movie “Idiocracy,” set 500 years in the future, corporations rule the planet, overlording a feeble-minded populace that believes the corporate pabulum served on their TV screens, letter for letter.

They suffer from garbage avalanches, watch the Masturbation Network (“Helping America with ‘baitin’ for 300 years!”) and a show called “Ow, My Balls!” Their crops do not grow because, instead of water, they are given Brawndo (“The Thirst Mutilator!”), a Gatorade-esque drink that has supplanted H2O. When the hero, who had been frozen since the 21st century, points out that crops need water to grow, the brainwashed populace says, repeating an ad slogan, “But Brawndo’s got what plants crave.”

The future in “Idiocracy” does not, conspicuously, have books. People are too stupid to read.

The Bookfraud household does not, conspicuously, have any books. We are smart enough to read, but am losing that ability in short order.

Our books -- several hundred, if not more, I believe -- are sitting in climate controlled bliss, in a storage unit, where they will reside for the next 16 months while we await any and all life forms residing inside of them to die. In other words, goddamn bedbugs can get inside books, and the only way to make sure they are dead is to pack away one’s volumes for a year and change.

This forced displacement has lowered my I.Q. a good 50 points. All the things that usually make me smarter -- such as wearing my spectacles, which makes me look like a college professor -- have done no good.

In place of the written word, I have been filling my few free hours with the spoken word and the moving image. Unfortunately, this does not mean I have been watching the work of Fellini or Godard, but sophisticated television fare like “Friday Night Smackdown!”

I’ve been reading newspapers and magazines, sure, and the occasional online essay. But nothing that resembles a narrative that lasts more than 10 pages, involves more than 10 characters, and has been published over 10 days ago.

The intellectual and moral complexity of fiction makes you smarter, if you think about it. I mean, think about the intellectual and moral complexity of the novel you’re reading.

Or, a brain without cells

It’s not just the braininess I miss. I miss picking up a volume by Nabokov and randomly picking a page, only to land on a passage of exquisite, lyrical genius. I miss hunkering down on the couch with a heavy book and getting lost. I miss thumbing my way through “Absalom, Absalom!” and trying to figure out what just the hell happened to Thomas Sutpen.

It’s not as if Wife and I hold a literary salon in the living room, or our lives are centered around the written word (though it’s close). But a life without books is incomplete. Like many writers, I was not the most popular fellow among my peers growing up, and I drew solace from books -- science fiction in particular, as the genre traffics in fantastical, engaging universes far removed that the miserable one I inhabited.

Sad to admit, television and sports were the two other passions of my childhood, and if it is not a source of shame that I indulged what many young boys had as hobbies, it’s embarrassing that I couldn’t also say “violin,” “French,” or “something remotely creative.” While television and sports still compete for real estate in the land grab of my brain, it’s books that have sustained me. They help me to engage the world or retreat from it, whichever is necessary.

I don’t want to point a moral compass here -- there’s nothing inherently good about books, just like there’s nothing inherently good about a thing being “natural.”

I am reminded of an anecdote that an English teacher told us when I was a senior in high school. Imagine a room that has a well-stocked library with the greatest literature and philosophy humanity has ever had to offer. There are prints on the walls of great art. The people in the room have access to music from the finest Western composers who ever lived: Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and many others.

The visitors to the room read the books, study the paintings, listen closely to the music. They debate the merits of the literature and music, confer on aesthetics. They debate what is beautiful and what is art.

The question, my teacher asked, does this necessarily make these people better human beings?

At least the Ramones were pretending to be stupid

Stupid as we were 17, most of us nodded, shrugged our shoulders, said “yes” faintly. Why wouldn't this place make its occupants better, when they can think and talk and read and contemplate the meaning of the world?

Well, the teacher said, the place I'm describing actually existed. It was the officer's lounge at Auschwitz.

Oh.

I have to go. “Ow, My Balls!” is on.

Monthus Horribilis

2007-09-04T15:56:00.000-04:00

By any objective measure, I have been having what specialists like to call "an extremely crappy month."

It is centered on the bedbug problem, which stubbornly continues despite several gallons of poison sprayed about our home. We're being bitten nightly, and Wife and I are slowly but surely becoming sleep-deprived, insane, blood-sucked zombies.

The amount of pesticides at home means we cannot put Baby on the floor -- our carpets have been taken for cleaning and storage, and there's really nowhere else to put him. Naturally, Wife and I fear that leaving him in the crib and swing for long stretches will retard Baby's development, turning us into worried, sleep-deprived, insane, blood-sucked zombies.

We are without books, our clothes are packed in Hefty garbage bags, and I (still) spend 90 minutes each night vacuuming the place. My exhaustion is so heavy that Uma Thurman could walk in wearing nothing but the book review and I wouldn't notice. Last night, we woke up at 3 a.m. -- not prompted by Baby -- and jointly obsessed about bugs (that's love!) until we fell asleep again at 5, whereupon Baby did wake us.

And now, this.

I can't say I'm embarrassed to be a Michigan alum, just that I even give a damn about a fucking football game.

The only good that could come out of this is that Lloyd Carr's tenure as Michigan coach will come to an end. That, and I have suddenly become a source of mirth to just about anyone who knows that I went to UofM.

Bastards.

Vick's Fucked Up Moral Universe — Rehabilitated by a Writer!

2007-08-27T20:58:00.000-04:00

Dear Mike:

Can I call you "Mike"? I've really never written a star athlete before, and I would hate to alienate you with forced familiarity. But "Michael" doesn't seem to fit, either, so let's just call you what you should be called, "Sick Fuck," as in "Sick Fuck Vick."

Oh, today you apologized and asked for forgiveness for your "mistake," though I don't think your dog-fighting enterprise, "Bad Newz Kennels," was truly a mistake. The only mistakes you made were choosing the wrong accomplices, who gladly rolled on you when the going got tough, and that you weren't more discreet in setting up your matches. Those are mistakes. But what you did was a way of life (you ran the dogfighting ring for six years), and if you hadn't been caught, you'd still be torturing and executing animals for fun.

This really is piling on after the whistle, I realize. You've been castigated and humiliated plenty of other places in the media and on the Internet, and you are looking at a year in the Big House — and I don't mean Michigan Stadium. Your career is in tatters and people are sending your jersey to the Atlanta Humane Society to line kennels and mop up after accidents.

Sure, you have your defenders, many of whom you did not have to pay to do so. Those who say that at least you didn't kill somebody. Those who say that you're being persecuted because you're black. And those who say that you can do what you want with your dogs, as long as it doesn't hurt somebody.

Of course, these defenses entail a moral universe far removed from anything mere mortals like myself inhabit. The implication is that just about anything short of physically hurting a human being shouldn't be criminal, which would be a great relief to our overtaxed criminal justice system, since they could then ignore about 90 percent of the things now illegal.

I gotta hand it to, Mr. Sick Fuck. You've given the phrase "dog days of summer" new meaning — I mean, all I could come up with was some pathetic paragraphs on bedbugs for the past few weeks. But when I heard about your press conference earlier today, in which you asked for forgiveness and invoked Jesus, I knew what I had to do.

Offer my services as a writer, of course.

Though I am not a Christian, I do believe in some of Jesus Christ's teachings, such as "He who has not sinned, let him cast the first stone," embracing and helping society's outcasts, and giving a Swanson's Turkey TV dinner for the downtrodden on his birthday. Like Jesus offered forgiveness, you'd like some forgiveness from the public and (most importantly) the NFL, so you can go back to doing what you do best: being an exciting but mediocre football player. This is where Bookfraud can help.

It's a simple matter of you being able to tell "your side of the story," and do it in a way that evokes sympathy rather than condescension. We can pen your autobiography, or write a screenplay of your ordeal. There are so many ways in which to do this.

To wit:

That Son of Sam thing happened to me. Instead of dogs telling me to kill people, other people told me to kill dogs.

Or

Those dogs were the same ones used in Abu Ghraib. They knew things that other dogs did not, and our national security depended on their betraying their secrets.

Woof

Or

It's been alleged that I electrocuted dogs. This is a flat out, mendacious lie. I just flipped a switch.

Or

What's the big deal? I simply provided the financing, the facilities, the opportunity, and the motives to commit a crime, but that doesn't mean I actually did it. Kind of like Halliburton and the war.

Or

Hell, it's not like I killed someone.

Several months ago, I made a similar plea to Brittney Spears when her career started hitting the skids. She ignored me, however, and look what happened: back to drug rehab, erratic behavior, and she may lose custody of her children. It hasn't been pretty, and I can draw a direct line between her rejection of my writing prowess and her downfall.

With you, I see a much grimmer fate. Accept my offer and feel the warm public glow of redemption or turn me down, and end up bending over for that bar of soap in the prison shower. Hey, it's a lot easier deal to accept than your plea bargain.

This Is Not My Beautiful House, This Is Not My Beautiful Wife

2007-08-16T19:00:00.000-04:00

I'm about to have a nervous breakdown, my head really hurts.
--Black Flag, "Nervous Breakdown"

I lost my mind...I lost my mind...I lost my mind...gimme some skin. Gimmie some gin. I want some wine....I lost my mind.
--The Ramones, "I Lost My Mind"

If your life has ever been circumscribed by an insect, please let me know. I need some empathy. I need some inspiration. I need help.

Over the past three weeks, bedbugs have defined my existence. I've had to leave my home overnight because of them, and Wife and Baby have had to leave for two weeks because of them. Every day is the same: return from work, vacuum two hours, bag my clothes and wash them, order takeout, eat, collapse.

I don't read, I don't write, I barely have energy to watch television. The solitary existence is not a bachelor's paradise. Forget blogging, or blog lurking, or making comments to others' blogs. People have probably given birth, died, or attended a Lindsey Lohan concert, if there is such a thing.

I've wanted to post something, but haven't had the time, energy, or desire; perhaps this is a cop-out, but copping out is something I'm expert at doing. Tonight is a special night -- after I've vacuumed and done laundry, I get to put on gloves and a mask and spray my apartment with chemicals skimmed off of a Superfund toxic waste dump. Then, I get to leave my place for an hour, wander the streets, return, and collapse.

Wife and Baby return tomorrow, so I hopefully gain some equilibrium. Otherwise, I'm durn close to throwing myself in front of a bus. Metaphorically speaking.

Buggin' Out, or Perspective

2007-08-06T19:47:00.000-04:00

Perhaps I am paying for slamming "Harry Potter;" perhaps the Gods are punishing me for a more pedestrian infraction of the Writer's Rules. I don't know for sure, but it is certain that my home has bedbugs and if my life isn't a living hell, I can feel Hades' flames licking at my backside.

In terms of annoyance, bedbugs are in a whole different league than roaches, ants, termites, fleas or even mosquitoes. They bite, drink your blood, and reproduce like otters. Once they get into your home, it requires drastic measures to rid them.

Like, for instance, the following regimen, which Wife, Baby, and myself must follow for the next month:

1. All clothing cleaned and put in plastic bags. Do not put back in drawers, or risk having a bug lodge in your underwear and then lodge somewhere much more unfortunate.
2. Vacuum every square inch of apartment, including baseboards, floor cracks, ass cracks (see above), shoes, books. Yes, books are a great hiding place for these bugs. Pack your books, put them in storage, and say goodbye to them for 18 months.
3. Treat all luggage and furniture with a chemical solution of 60 rubbing alcohol and 40 percent flesh-eating acid. Bag everything. I mean, everything.
4. Move all furniture at least 12 inches from wall, and wait for exterminators to bomb the place.
5. Once bombed, stay out of apartment for 48 hours. I intend to spend those 48 hours at a brothel.
6. Once you return, vacuum every square inch of apartment, including baseboards, floor cracks, and shoes, every single day for a month.
7. Spray chemical solution in baseboards every four days and pray that none of it makes contact with skin.
8. Repeat exterminator treatment. Pray that all the bedbugs are dead. Pray, pray, pray.

Wife and Baby are moving out of the apartment entirely for three weeks while yours truly serves as human bait — the exterminator wants me living in the apartment to draw out the bedbugs so they'll get to the poison.

Meanwhile, every day is the same: come home from work, eat dinner, then vacuum, spray, and bag until bedtime. Vacuum, spray, bag. We've moved all our books out of our place (sob!) and are cleaning like mad.

See the movie, live the life

The most surefire way to rid yourself of these pests is to throw away all your clothes and bedding (in plastic bags), buy new clothes, and move out for 18 months. You see, bedbugs can live over a year without food.

In short, I am quickly losing my mind, and things are likely to worsen until mid-2015.

And yet, against my nature, I'm trying to be positive. When I start to feel sorry for myself (about every five minutes), I try to count my blessings. I'm not a refugee, I'm not homeless, and I am in good health with a wife and son who I adore. My woes are about bugs and my lack of publishing credits.

And I didn't suffer the same fate as Dan.

Dan and I were co-workers back in the late 1980s. We weren't close friends but were on good terms, and I admired him quite a bit: Dan was extremely talented, outgoing, smart, funny, and a good guy overall. Someone that makes you feel at ease and goes out of his way to talk to you. It was my first job out of college, and Dan made me feel welcome. He was a real mench.

Befitting his talent, two years after I started work Dan got a major promotion with out-of-town company, and moved to the East Coast with his fiancée, a research doctor who was gorgeous and sweet to boot.

Soon, they were married, and a year or so later, Dan's wife was pregnant. In short, Dan had everything I wanted: a beautiful wife, a job I coveted, financial security, and a family on the way. He even had moved out of my cowpoke town, where I felt stuck, to a big city.

You probably have a rough idea of what happened next. A few months after his wife became pregnant, Dan started getting mysterious headaches — it turned out to be brain cancer. While his prognosis appeared good at first following surgery, the cancer spread, and he died a few years later, leaving his wife and child. He fought it to the end.

Dan was 33 years old.

On the other hand, I have to deal with bedbugs, which, the last time I checked, are annoying but not life-threatening.

I'll stop here.

The Coolest Guy Show in the World, or Why Adults Shouldn't Read “Harry Potter”

2007-07-28T11:43:00.000-04:00

I had written 800 brilliant, scabrous words on the rise of Harry Potter — and how adults have co-opted the franchise — but I inadvertently erased them for reasons not worth elaborating upon. Such absentminded mistakes on my part are common these days, but that’s another story.

In lieu of my Harry Hate, here’s a sampling of the chronic data stream uploading in my head, which I know readers are just dying to hear about.

•In the “How the Fuck Haven’t I Read Everything This Person Has Written Yet?” Department, I’m reading Orhan Pamuk’s “My Name Is Red.” While the novel can be slow going, it is also absolutely brilliant. I don’t know how I’ve managed to avoid Mr. Pamuk until now (though I’m not exactly well-schooled in modern Turkish writers. Mediaeval ones, either). Pamuk is a genius, a word I don’t throw around lightly with writers, and even in translation, it’s obvious why this dude won the Nobel Prize. Read this, not “Harry Potter and the Sphincter of Fire.” (More on Harry later.)

•The Chicago Cubs have decided that playing baseball was more fun than beating the snot out of each other, and have the best record in the majors since manager Lou Pinella’s head exploded in June. This is a bad thing. The Cubs are three games out of first place, and as a result, I am a stupid, love-struck teenager once more, following their every pitch and swing of the bat. They will ultimately break my heart, and yet I still watch them with blind affection. Call me stupid; call me a sports fan.

•Media Mania Over Drug Addled, DUI Hollywood Hos! I just wanted to say that.

•I am coming down with yet another cold. My throat feels like a morbidly obese union carpenter is using a power sander where my tonsils used to reside.

•Baby won’t abide his crib, despite his parents’ unstilted efforts to get him to do otherwise. We’ll put him down, asleep, and in the time it takes the pee to hit the urinal (as I have been holding it in for about 73 minutes as I hold the little bugger), his cries echo through our home; first, flaccid and weak, then increasing in volume until The End of the World is nigh. My solution for this is just let Baby cry until he loses his voice, permanently. He’ll eventually fall asleep and we won’t ever have to hear his rotten screaming ever again.

Wrigley: scene of the crime

•The number of comments on my blog as ground into a number smaller than functioning brain cells in Dick Cheney’s diseased mind. There is a fair amount of blogrolling (you comment on my blog, I’ll comment on yours) in cyberspace, and as I struggle to keep up with others’ blogs, nobody visits here, unless you count the turds who want to know if a certain violinist is gay and you know who you are and if this is how you spend your time, asking if this man is gay, then you live an impoverished intellectual and spiritual life indeed. Learn how to drink or something.

•I changed the layout, added polls, and some bizzare rating systemf at the bottom of each post, and one can see the overwhelming response. It would probably do me more good if, like, I actually wrote something more than once a fortnight.

•Speaking of viewership, I have a friend who runs a terriffic baseball blog that gets several thousand page views a day. Yes, his blog gets more page views in a month than Bookfraud has in its two-plus-years of existence. He was kind enough to have linked my rant on the Cubs’ impending sale, and, viola! there were suddenly hundreds of hits to Bookfraud. Just about nobody commented, unfortunately, and few visitors have returned, but since they were largely St. Louis Cardinals fans, it makes sense, since Cardinals fans are largely illiterate.

•Don’t send hate mail, Cardinals fans. Just a silly joke there from a pitiful Cubs follower. You suck, that’s all.

• Media Mania Over Drug Addled, DUI Hollywood Hos! Man, I love saying that.

Kids fare; for adults, fair

•“Dogfights” is the coolest guy show in the world. The show recreates classic air battles using computer animation, interviews some of the pilots involved, and analyzes tactics and strategy. Incredibly cool. If it only didn’t deal with extreme violence, and if it didn’t (essentially) celebrate young men’s deaths, it would be perfect.

•My Take on Harry: Of the 8.3 million copies of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” that flew off the shelves last weekend, my empirical observation posits that 4.15 million are being read by adults. I see people over the age of 18 reading it on buses, in parks. I see patients reading it while awaiting surgery and hookers standing around trying to pick up johns. Please, adults, read something else, too. Like Orhan Pamuk, or anything but “Harry Potter and the Boner Factory” or whatever it. It’s a book for children.

•Now let the hate mail flow.

Organization Man

2007-07-18T19:15:00.000-04:00

Yes, observant reader, I’ve changed the header and layout, and if I can decipher the HTML code for my template, I might actually make the page look half decent, in about six years.

But enjoy the all-new photo of myself at rest, and take the poll!

In the era before the Internet, PDAs, cell phones, and iPods, I bought a Filofax in one of my many futile attempts to “get organized.” The chunk of plastic and paper collected dust following my few attempts to actually use it.

It was then that I’ve had my life’s major epiphany: in order to be organized, you have to be organized.

I had hoped that the Filofax would magically transform the mess then known as my life. The Filofax would help me with appointments, phone numbers, birthdays, and the other assorted minutiae that make up the grist of living.

It did not do much good, since I never entered my appointments and friends’ birthdays, while I barely consulted it for telephone numbers and addresses. In order for the Filofax to transform my life into a streamlined, efficient machine, I would have to do the things that would make my life into a streamlined, efficient machine – whether I owned a stupid $30 phonebook-calendar or not.

Party time

Several electronic devices and computer calendars later, I still struggle to keep appointments, remember birthdays, and generally keep organized. My desk is a testament to mounds of paper needing to be filed. Unfinished and un-started projects litter the roadway of my literary endeavors. Things are so bad that when everything is “organized,” I grow suspicious, for it means that I have spent my time in cleaning up rather than actually doing the tasks for which being organized would make such a snap.

Now, comes my worst nightmare.

I have about eight writing projects somewhere between larval and butterfly. They range from the “novel” to short stories to a non-fiction book to a magazine piece on outsourcing. Some of these projects are smashingly good ideas, if I say so myself, while others are limper than month-old lettuce. But deciding which ones I should pursue has proven more difficult than a chick-lit heroine deciding between a pair of Jimmy Choos and Malono Blahniks (or the uber-dick-lit hero choosing between Honey Ryder and Pussy Galore).

In the past, this would not have been an issue — I would have simply done all of them with various degrees of enthusiasm (and success). Things would have panned themselves out: I would drop one or two things completely, aggressively pursue one or two others, and hold the rest in limbo. Then, once I finished a story, I would try to get it published, contemplate suicide as the rejection notes piled up, then brush the dirt off my jacket and start anew.

You know what I’m going to say next: since Baby arrived, I have no time to engage in such narcissistic dallying, though dally I do. This is an organizational crisis for me, as I can’t decide what I should pursue in the limited minutes allotted to me when I’m not changing Baby, burping Baby, bathing Baby, taking Baby off Wife’s hands, wiping Baby’s spit off my face, etc.

Now, I know of Super Moms and Dads who manage to take care of their children’s (plural) basic needs, plus teach them Mandarin, cook vegan coc au vin, spend all their free time enriching their children’s lives, and then turn around and write 1,000 perfectly formed words a day. That is not going to be me. I am basically a zombie with about enough motivation to turn on the computer, and that’s it.

Unaware of his surroundings, he was then hit by a bus

I take it that success in this arena is a matter of prioritization. Define one’s goals. Create a plan. Conceptualize action steps. Move forward.

Or, to put it another way, stop wasting my time on stupid shit. Such as writing circular, self-pitying blog entries like the one you’ve just read, or changing the layout of a blog, such as the one you’re currently not enjoying. To thine own self be true.

Gay + Limbs + Ass + Steal + Dead = Adults Only

2007-07-10T17:42:00.000-04:00

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:
• gay (17x)
• hell (9x)
• ass (8x)
• crap (7x)
• pain (6x)
• steal (5x)
• dead (3x)
• hurt (2x)
• limbs (1x)

I don't know why "gay" constitutes an adult rating for my blog -- after all, "gay" means "having or showing a merry, lively mood."

"Hell" is mentioned in great literature. So is "ass," "pain," "steal," "dead," "hurt," and "limbs." ("Limbs" is a dirty word?) "Crap" I have no excuse for.

Perhaps it was when I called Thomas the Tank Engine a "fuck ass, suck ass piece of shit."

Review of a Review of a Review

2007-07-09T13:53:00.000-04:00

I've just heard back from the editor of a literary journal, and she actually liked the book review I wrote for them. Unless the editor has been inhaling at a Phish concert or is less honest than the Bush Administration, this is all very good. It also is a great burden off my chest, more symbolic than physical.

Because while I was flattered to be asked to write a book review, I was also terrified -- terrified that I wouldn't have anything to say, or what I turned in was about as profound as a Coors Light commercial.

(It was also fortunate that the editor, after giving me the assignment, didn't wake up the next morning and say, "You know, I really want to read that Bookfraud to see what kind of writer he really is.")

It's not that I lacked the discipline, talent, or intellectual bones to complete the assignment. It's not that I couldn't be bothered while Baby's diapers were soiled. Nor is it that I was scared I'd make a fool out of myself -- I've done that plenty of times already, and will have ample opportunity to humiliate my son by the mere fact of being myself.

It's that I dreaded I won't have anything original to say.

Kentucky Fried Critic

I didn't have much trouble coming up with an angle for my review, but I feared it would come across as lightweight, or, much worse, banal. The book in question has gotten tons of publicity already, and I figured my thoughts would be as interesting as what adventures awaited me at my local KFC.

I was asked in part because of my background, and the nature of the book I'm reviewing falls squarely into the territory (figuratively and literally) that I've written about in my fiction. And in working on the review, I noticed how much I actually drew upon my experience as a "novelist" to inform what I wrote.

So, unlike real life, things actually went to plan. I have to credit the journal's editors, who only made two demands of my work: 1)keep it under 1,500 words; and 2) no plot summary. The former removed my wont for verbal logorrhea, while the latter removed my wont to be lazy.

Not to imply that most book reviewers are lazy, but plot summary makes up about 87 percent of all the verbiage in The New York Times Book Review, for example. I used to think that TNYTBR (as us aficionados call it) was the pinnacle of American literary criticism -- the weekly magazine representing the most prominent voices in literature -- but now I know better.

In TNYTBR, friends review friends' books, while enemies settle scores. People are incendiary to establish a reputation; others kiss ass to make contacts. It's not that there isn't objective and perceptive criticism in the Times, but you gotta take much of what's written there with a grain of salt (which is why, despite her many shortcomings, Michiko Kakutani sets such a high standard -- she doesn't do the literary crowd thing and doesn't befriend writers. Smart woman that way.)

Living the (wet) dream

There was no danger of a conflict of interest in the review I wrote, which was of a novel by a writer living high in the fiction stratosphere. No, yours truly has not crossed paths with this person, and, given my low status in the literary caste, it's more likely that I will become bosom buddies with your local Klan Grand Wizard than with this person.

I guess this means that in some ways, being a loser is excellent. I've tried mightily to cultivate my loser-dom, so it's good to see my hard work pay off. Only in America, my son, only in America.

Inspired

2007-06-27T19:10:00.000-04:00

Lo, for he shall not prove productive at the keyboard, so sayeth the Lord, for Bookfraud hath turned his back on his embrace of the Lord (of Writing) by incessant worship of the false gods of television and Sudoku, and it will be with a mighty hand that I shall deliver literary plagues upon his house. Bookfraud shall never publish, lo, for he hath been lazy under the guise of Baby taking up all his time.

Go forth, ye Bookfraud, and face the woe that has befallen your wicked house. For thou shall reap what thou has sowed, and yea, let word of your sloth spread forth throughout the world, and you shall be marked with “666,” the Number of the Beast, which also happens to be the total number of words you have written in the past year.

No, my Lord, forgive me, for I have seen the light. I have been saved. All because of Tina Brown.

Brown is no savior, but she is an inspiration. For I have been despairing that I would never be productive again -- not that I would never write, but what emerged from my word processor would be unintelligible, unreadable slop. (Even worse than what I normally write.)

It’s been a rough couple of months. I can blame Baby and the intermittent sleep he bestows upon me. I can blame diaper duty, burping duty, clean up the spit duty. I can blame my job and the commute. There’s a lot of stuff I can blame.

There are some who might argue this would be no change, but having read reviews of Brown’s new “book,” I feel better. If Tina Brown can get her whaleturd of a book published, I have hope.

Not that I’ve actually read Brown’s account of Princess Diana and her days in (and out of) Buckingham Palace. Not that I actually intend to buy it. Not that I intend to even pick it up at Borders and run to the bathroom to wash my hands.

Tina Brown: Literary necrophiliac

It’s that I canceled The New Yorker and because of Diana — or, rather, Tina Brown and Diana.

When the Princess of Wales was killed in a car accident, the last place I had expected her to appear was in The New Yorker, that bastion of sophistication, wit, and great writers and reporters. But there she was, a drawing of the unfortunate un-Royal on the cover.

Inside, the accompanying story started (to the effect) “The last time I saw Diana, she was wearing a lime-green outfit with chiffon stuff...”

Of course, the author was New Yorker editor and all-around starfucker Tina Brown.

The same day I received that issue, I canceled my subscription.

Brown had taken the helm of the creaky old magazine a few years earlier, and injected some life into it with celebrity reportage and other types of features that really had no business being in The New Yorker. She did some good things, no doubt, notably getting rid of the deadwood in the place who hadn’t written for (sometimes) decades, and no longer paying for pieces by the word, which would result in 30,000-word stories about pothole repair or canned tuna.

But Brown generally ruined the magazine for me, and the Diana cover was the last straw. It wasn’t until David Remnick (he of the amazing access and pen) that I started reading it again.

Now, a decade later, Brown has a book on Diana that has definite “buzz” but is about as appealing to me as eating ketchup-drenched olives.

Angry (self-appointed) God

But she has inspired me, lo, for I hath written my first blog entry in a fortnight, and it was good.

It is quite stunning what will get a writer going. Anger and jealously are often near the top of the list -- such fetid emotions have actually produced great works of art.

I can’t say that I’m angry at Tina Brown, or even jealous of her publishing a book of
dubious achievement and subject matter. (Honestly, given her connections, she could have crapped on some typing paper and found someone to publish it).

Whatever motivates me to write, I will take it, so long as it doesn’t involve Madonna or Dick Cheney.

And the Lord said, “Yea, Bookfraud, for now you are of the righteous. You have obeyed me and have been washed of your sins. Be fruitful and multiply your blog entries.”

And the Lord also said, “I read your last piece on your inability to write. I command thee: for God’s sakes, stop writing about yourself.”

Lost in Diaperland

2007-06-15T21:09:00.000-04:00

Little One is about to turn eight weeks old, and I'm still waiting for things to get easier.

I'm awaiting the time when I can leave him unattended in his crib for more than five minutes; I await the time when his shrill cries last less than 30 minutes at a time. I await the time when I have enough energy to actually write.

I knew that having a baby would entail vast amounts of time. What I wasn't counting on was how much of that time would be spent simply holding the bugger.

Wait. I can't remember what I'm going to say next. Baby is gassy. Needs to be burped. Needs to throw up dinner on my new dress shirt.

Oh, yes, now I remember.

A baby is a helpless, insecure little person with a neediness that has no bottom (which sounds perilously close to the description of a writer). They need to be changed, fed, put to sleep, and held (if necessary) for hours on end, until that slight numbness grows into a pain that resembles a heated iron ingot implanted into the shoulder.

Now it's time to write

This is nothing new to any one of you who is a parent, and is probably creating some well-deserved laughter amongst you. "Bookfraud, you fool. Did you really think you would be able to be a parent, hold down a job, and write, blog, or otherwise express yourself save for the quiet sobbing (that you hide from Baby) at 2:26 a.m. when he wakes up yet again for reasons unbeknownst to anyone save for a God that may or may not exist?"

Yes, dear reader, I did believe I could have it all: Baby, sleep, writing, a life. O fatal blow! O fatal ambition!

My son is not yet two months old, and it feels as if I have spent more time cleaning up baby faeces than writing. (Guess what? I felt correctly!) I knew that Baby would wreck my sleep and suck up free hours. What I wasn't counting on was that it would suck up all of my free hours.

Now, all this bitching and moaning has a point, though I'm having trouble with what it might be. Baby just woke up from his nap. He's crying louder than I did when the Cubs blew the 2003 playoffs.

Yes, the blog. I was asked to write a book review, and while I accepted (it's always good to get your name in print, even if you don't know what you're talking about), it sucked away any and all time to write for blog or my own fiction, for that matter. I haven't read nor commented on just about any other blog, for that matter.

Must be a pediatrician

(In fact, I just learned that the most excellent blog of Miss Snark, she of the wicked pen and opinion, went dark. Like, a month ago.)

OK. What was I saying. Baby was projectile crapping. Watch out, Wife, you'll step in Lake Shit, where previously resided a bedroom floor. Oh, what. Yes. Blog.

Is it a blog if you only write twice a month, only to complain, and nobody sees it?

Just asking.

Class Obsessions

2007-06-03T13:28:00.000-04:00

The television was blaring a program of no great import, and I had Baby slung across one shoulder, trying desperately to ameliorate his gaseous tears — rocking him, bouncing him, singing to him, promising him a Camaro.

With my free hand, I changed the channel. A golf tournament appeared. And this made me think of Cho Seung-Hui.

Remember him?

I bet it took a second. He’s the nutjob who shot and killed 32 innocents at Virginia Tech, less than two months ago. But you won’t find much new stuff about him. Nor will you see anything about calls for gun control, a debate that lasted about 8 seconds after Cho’s last bullet was fired.

But this is not a call for reflection or remembrance, as our cumulative memories have been wiped clean by Lindsay Lohan’s latest stint in rehab or A-Rod’s latest stint with his P-Rod.

To be honest, I had forgotten about Cho, until I saw some boring white guy (except for Tiger Woods, golfers all look the same) hit a 7-iron from about 150 yards, the ball landing five feet from the cup. Naturally, this made me think of a horrific mass killing.

You see, when I was in college, I wrote a poem in which the narrator kills someone with a golf ball.

Workshop: obsessions on parade

The poem’s narrator describes a a well-struck shot, done intentionally, as well as anonymous White Guy I had seen on television. In this poem, however, it was 5-iron, and instead of setting up a birdie putt, the ball lodged into the back of the victim’s skull. The narrator, you see, had gotten tired of all the anti-Semitic ranting the other fellow had been doing on the links.

You might say it was a revenge fantasy, laid bare for the inspection of the first creative writing class I had ever taken. Revenge for all the slights I had ever received for being Jewish, slights real or imagined, verbal or physical. But the class was not horrified — most were amused, and the teacher thought it a clever poem, if not fully formed.

Nobody thought I was going to stalk around campus with a golf club and Titleists, wreaking havoc.

You probably remember Cho was an English major, and that some of his anger was manifest in two short plays he wrote for a creative writing class. If you haven’t read them, it’s pretty disturbing stuff.

Cho’s teachers and fellow students were not blind to his demons, and in one class, the poet Nikki Giovanni had him removed from the class entirely. His writing pointed to a twisted mind, and he was referred to counseling, which obviously didn’t take.

Now, of all the creative writing classes I have taken, from my undergraduate days through the splendid waste known as an M.F.A. program, I’ve met some strange fellows, male and female.

Some were obsessed with sex (mostly men). Some were obsessed with unfaithful boyfriends (mostly women). Yet others wrote incessantly about angry protagonists in which violence often boiled under the surface (both men and women). Yet others were obsessed with sex, unfaithful boyfriends, and violence. If you are honest, one’s obsessions will be on parade.

None of this particularly bothered me, but only if it wasn't repeated. My rule of thumb was if someone wrote a story about a disturbing subject and shared it with the class, the person was not disturbed unless a) the story sucked and b) he handed in another badly written story encompassing the same themes. Write a story about killing your parents, fine, but do it twice, and you’ve got larger issues.

Which is what Cho did. Not only did he pen “Richard McBeef,” a whacked-out revenge fantasy about an abusive stepfather, but the equally insane “Mr. Brownstone,” which is not something I expect to be performed on Broadway.

Murder weapon?

I guess my point is this — it’s a fine line between stupid and clever, and a finer line between insane and normal, and I imagine that at least one person, for one second, thought I was, at the least “weird” for writing a poem about killing someone with a golf ball.

I wonder if students in creative writing classes are afraid to write about violence, or feel it is indicative of a warped mind.

That golf-ball poem was half my life ago. I wonder if, in this day and age, I would have been referred to counseling. Perhaps. And I don’t think I would have been offended.

Critics Vs. Bloggers Vs. Bookfraud Vs. Godzilla

2007-05-27T11:45:00.000-04:00

Now that Baby is over one month old and the initial round of family visits is over, I can devote myself to more important matters at hand: finding new ways to procrastinate.

Really, my brain has been the consistency of banana pudding and my energy level is two steps above entropy. Not that I want to make excuses, for I might have been able to crank out a few desultory paragraphs over the past few weeks. They would have read as if written by an infant, completely apropos of my situation.

Oh, yeah, what was I thinking? Damn. Oh, yes. Literary criticism.

Literary criticism has never been my strong suit, and although I've been asked to pen a review of a certain book, I look at the practice with trepidation. I don’t really know what I can add to the world's bucket of words regarding a piece of literature, other to say that I liked it, I hated it, I thought it blew more ass than a enema machine (see what I mean about not anything to the conversation?).

Now comes along this great controversy about newspapers dropping book reviewers, signaled when the Atlanta Journal-Constitution decided to ditch its book editor in a cost-cutting move. This created a predictable amount of hand wringing among critics, and backlash among bloggers, whose book reviewing efforts are about as welcomed by critics as canned soup in a three-star restaurant.

Proof positive of the Apocalypse

The pro-blogger school of thought is that a blog-borne world of literary criticism will bring a more democratic environment to book reviews. Feh, say the professional critics. Blogging is no more criticism than the lunatic on the soapbox screaming that the end of the world is nigh because Ethan Hawke has published two novels and Bookfraud none.

But this is easy to diagnose. Critics are scared because newspapers dropping book editors means less work for them. Bloggers are the literary equivalent of outsourcing to Bangalore. Bloggers are the critics' worst nightmare. Not because critics are fungible, but because bloggers are essentially reviewing books for their own edification. In other words, we have an opinion of our own we think is worth sharing, if only to 15 others.

Granted, the level of erudition may be low and the insights crude; the binary "thumbs up-thumbs down" generally rules in cyberspace. You gotta wonder why some people even bother.

Still, it misses the point entirely. Some critics must have pretty inflated opinions of themselves, or at least at the size of their readership: outside from Michiko Kakutani, James Wood, and a few others, there aren't many literary critics or book reviewers that carry weight with the public.

What’s more telling is that the shrinking of the critical class indicates the sad fact fewer people are interested in books than just a few years ago.

There wouldn’t be this discussion if the public gave a flying fuck about fiction (and non-fiction. There are far more people analyzing “Americal Idol” and Paris Hilton’s jail time than, say, the latest Michael Chabon novel.

If the United States was a nation of dedicated readers, each newspaper would review books each day. Someone might even give me a job reviewing books. But the number of readers is shrinking like my laundry misappropriated to the wrong drying cycle, and the literary review is getting marginalized to blogs, Web sites, and other lower-traffic media. Bloggers aren’t replacing critics, they’re filling a non-existent demand.

Critics to bloggers: Sit down, sit down, sit down, sit down

The book review is an essential part of the literary landscape – without it, fiction in our society would be reduced to irrelevance as an art form. And no writer in his or her right mind would advocate for fewer book reviews in daily newspapers. I know, it's a circular thing: more book reviews, more interest in books, more readers, more book reviews, etc.

But bloggers haven’t made things worse — if they have incrementally increased readership in the general public, it can’t be a bad thing.

(I understand that the entry above has no relevance on anything, but I haven’t posted in nearly two weeks, and I were to dally further, I might as well put a bullet in the entire endeavor. Blogging for its own sake. Forgive me.)

I Love My Baby, But I Love Sleep, Too

2007-05-12T17:50:00.000-04:00

I was tempted to ply upon dear reader(s) some sanctimonious rot about the joys of parenthood and how it has brought me to a new level of humanity, and has made me a better person, but that would be less honest than Alberto Gonzalez under oath.

The fact of the matter is that being a parent of a freshly minted baby is no party. So far, it hasn’t made me a better person or suddenly elevated me in some metaphysical way; it has made me more responsible by fiat.

“When are you going to be fun?” Wife asked Baby in the midst of an endless crying jag.

Now, I know there is at least one person saying, “That Bookfraud is a hypocrite, a fraud, and a rotten dad. He doesn’t love his son because he has suddenly developed an appreciation of nannies, especially those who look like Tiger Woods’ wife.”

It has always confounded me when new parents babble on about how great being a parent is -- their only regret is they wish they’d done it earlier. For me, that would be confusing love with happiness, and while I love Baby with a furor approaching insanity (an insanity not just from sleep deprivation), I can’t say that it makes me happy to wake up at 4 in the morning to care for one of Baby’s three needs (food, diaper, human contact). It fills me with joy I can help my son in any way possible, and I am glad I can care for the little bugger, but I miss my sleep, greedy bastard that I am.

Becoming a parent is far more rewarding than anything I’ve done, but the giddy happiness I felt the first time I held Baby in my arms has melted into the banal reality of newborn care. If wishing that Baby would do something besides cry, sleep, and soiling himself makes me a bad father, so be it.

Another sad fact of parenthood is that your brain is in no shape to write. The fact is that I’ve had time to blog, to write fiction, and work on that non-fiction mystery book I’ve alluded to before. It hasn’t been much time -- like when Baby sleeps -- but it has been something.

Like confusing love with happiness at the arrival of a child, I can confuse time with desire. I have precious little of the former and about none of the latter. And one can’t exploit one’s time without the desire to do so.

It’s not just the fact I’ve turned into a zombie action figure. It’s the priorities, and if ever there was a cliché that rings true, it’s that having a newborn changes your perspective.

Writing suddenly doesn’t matter. Little else matters than the child. Everything seems to filter through the prism of what’s best for Baby.

Your desire to complete other projects evaporates with your energy. In fact, I can’t even seem to finish this damn entry. I'm just going to post it now, complete with typos and poor word choices and all the flotsam and jetsam I pride myself in avoiding.

Feh.

sleep deprivation

2007-05-09T19:25:00.000-04:00

living rooms bedrooms dinettes oh yeah

you can find 'em at the market -- we're talking flea market

montgomery

it's just like just like a mini-mall

blech

i need sleep

i need help

Mama, Don’t Let Your Boy Grow Up to Write Fiction

2007-05-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

(Before I begin the usual cynical, curmudgeonly, angry dispensations known as “Bookfraud,” I want to thank everybody for their extremely thoughtful wishes regarding Baby. I’m touched by your kindness, and if you sent a check along with your wishes made out to “Cash,” it would be perfect.

Really, much thanks. Wife is touched as well.)

No man is a hero to his valet, and no father is a hero to his week-old son. At least when it comes to changing diapers.

I’ve learned this and quite a bit more in the seven days that have marked my fatherhood. For instance, feces can come in a delivery method known as “projectile.” Also, I’ve been taught the valuable lesson of what breasts are really made for; I liked my prior ignorance, however.

During one's initial days of parenthood, everything besides Baby disappears besides the side of the road — news, blogging, writing, eating, showering, etc. The weird thing is that one doesn’t notice, much less mind.

Baby, if astronomy is destiny, has a good literary pedigree, being that he shares his birthday with Vladimir Nabokov. It’s also one day prior to Shakespeare’s birthday, and even though Nabokov hated Shakespeare, being 1/100th as talented as either of these giants would make Baby very talented indeed. (Not that I’m going to push him to be a fiction writer or engage in any other type of parental abuse).

There are other literary parallels with being a parent. For instance, a week after Baby is born, Wife and I are still excited, yet everybody else remains exponentially more excited. This has been much like my experience writing and trying to publish a novel. Once the reality of writing the damn thing hits you, you’re not psyched as you once were, but everybody else around you is thrilled, because they don’t have to work on it.

Nabokov: every writer's daddy

So I present to you a list, the cheapest, most down-and-dirty means of producing a blog, which, if you are a close observer, I have not done in the past week. I have good excuses, which are that I’m still upset about what K-Fed is going to do after the divorce, that Sanjaya got the boot, and yadda yadda yadda let me sleep i just want a few good minutes of rest god kill me now if this gets worse

Top 10 Reasons Having a Baby Is Like My Experience in the Fiction-Writing Business

1. The baby cannot communicate what he wants, except in the crudest, most elemental ways, much like an editor.

2. When he does not receive what he wants, be it nourishment, sleep, human contact, attention, or warmth, Baby gets agitated and becomes inconsolable, much like a writer.

3. Baby gets constant attention from all sorts of strangers who make unreasonable demands on his time, much like a literary agent.

4. When Baby Bookfraud is upset — when Wife and I take off his shirt, or he’s demanding to be fed, or he smells my breath — his face scrunches up into a lobster-red ball of agony, his mouth open to full width, chin quavering. He screams at about 120 decibels, demanding that his incomprehensible yells be taken into account by the world at large, giving him the perfect temperament to be a literary critic.

5. Everybody wants to see and hold Baby, but nobody wants to take care of him in the middle of the night. Everybody wants to read and hold my novel, but nobody wants to say how much it sucks.

5(a). Codicil to number 5: Every day after the baby is born, you love him more. Every day after you finish a novel, you hate it more.

6. Trying to console Baby is rather like trying to explain a story in workshop. One might as well be negotiating with the sidewalk; no matter what I say, he simply cannot understand, and neither will those chunkheads who simply didn’t get my fiction in grad school, not that I’m bitter, for that would be a terrible example for my newly minted son.

7. The baby’s whimpers, groans, and grunts are largely indicative of nothing more than gibberish. My novel’s similes, metaphors, and allegories are largely indicative of nothing more than gibberish.

Role model

8. In his estimable opinion, there is nothing worse I can do to my son than change the diaper, despite the fact he was wailing because he needed someone to change the diaper. This circular logic is quite similar to the publishing business.

9. I seem to be constantly checking on my sleeping newborn, as his stillness sometimes scares the bejesus out of me. I am constantly fiddling with my novel, as it’s crappiness scares the bejesus out of me.

10. I’m doing the best I could.

Baby Bookfraud

2007-04-24T18:52:00.000-04:00

It finally happened.

Baby Bookfraud was born over the weekend, a healthy, happy baby boy weighing 8 1/2 pounds and posessing some extremely strong lungs. Wife and I are overjoyed.

If he has made me a better person, appreciate the world in ways I thought not possible, or take note of shortcomings, I can't say for sure, because I've slept about 6 hours in the past four days. That bugger sure can cry.

He also has this weird, magical talent of being able to go sleep, and, just as Mom and Dad are in bed, starting once again to wail at about 129 decibels. It's never a second before I conk out, not a second after, but always just at that precise moment when I retreat to the land of nod. Baby is so talented. I'm so proud.

He also has some other amazing talents, including the ability to poop in amounts so voluminous that it could be used to paint a fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Just thinking about it gets me choked up.

Because of the overwhemling emotional nature of the event, I feel that I am going to do a Bookfraud first: I am going to post a picture of myself, Wife, and Baby, because I want to share with the world, with strangers even, the amazing joy that I feel beating in my heart.

Here we are:

Please, don't ask for pictures unless you're willing to pay. Don't worry, it all goes to charity.

The Cheapest Trick in the Book, or How to Be a Ho

2007-04-13T19:45:00.000-04:00

As the world hyperventilates over the firing of Don Imus for his disgusting characterization of women basketball players as “nappy-headed hos,” I am losing my breath over something else: cheap tricks.

Not the band nor the services provided by the type of “hos” Mr. Imus so lovingly described on the air. I speak of lazy writers and artists who tack on a surprise ending or bogus conclusion to their work.

This is something that gets me really, really, really, really, really, really pissed off, much more than any “ho” talk ever would.

Wife claims that this is what ultimately marred “Special Topics in Calamity Physics.” Bad, stupid twists at the end can ruin what might have been an excellent book. Such endings are about as believable as Richard Gere going for Julia Roberts, the ho-with-a-heart-of-old, in “Pretty Woman.”

In beginning writing workshop classes, the ho running it often will begin with the edict, “You can never begin or end a story with a dream.” In other words, “It was all a dream!” is verboten.

I would add to that no surprises that add nothing or do not rise organically from the plot, that are done for shock value, and that involve hos. There are three instances that have gotten me so mad that you’d think someone had taken away my beer-making kit.

1. The ending of “Magnolia.” Frogs from the sky? This is how everything is tied together, as promised from the film’s prologue? Tom Cruise stars as a ho.

2. The first season of “24.” Wife and I rented this acclaimed series, and despite the ludicrousness of it all, enjoyed it until near the end, when an agent is suddenly — and I mean suddenly — unmasked as a double-crossing ho. (Other hos abound in “24,” mostly men). It gave new meaning to “came out of nowhere” and “it totally sucked ass. I mean totally.”

Imus: just say ho

3. A movie called “Swimming Pool.” There are two reasons to see this movie. First is Charlotte Rampling’s terrific performance. Second is that Ludivine Sagnier, under the pretense of being a free-spirited French ho, is topless for about half the movie (looked great on screen!).

But the ending — which I without any hesitation I reveal here in the hope it will persuade someone not to rent it — is that the action of the movie didn’t “exist!” It was the plot of a book — called “Swimming Pool”! — that Rampling is delivering to her publisher! It was all a dream, you stupid hos in the audience!

What ties these together is that all of them throw in bogus, ho-like surprises at the end that were dreamed up for an Encyclopedia Jones or Nancy Drew mystery. Also, at the end of all of these entertainments, I had the urge to attack the television with a blunt object.

As for fiction, there are as many craptastic surprises in novels as there are corporate and right-wing hos in the White House.

You might blame it on O. Henry (or “Ho. Henry,” as he was affectionately known), who was renown for his surprise endings to stories. His most famous story, “The Gift of the Magi,” concerns a couple, neither of whom are hos, but whose love for each other leads them to sacrifice their most precious possession.

This kind of surprise ending turns “The Gift of the Magi” into an anecdote, and it can have the same effect on any book, film or television show. Fiction becomes a punch line, worse than any stand-up ho desperate for laughs.

For instance, a one-page science fiction story whose provenance and title escapes me. In it, all the computers in the universe are networked together. At the triumphal press conference, attended by media-hos from around the galaxy, the lead scientist solicits questions from the crowd to ask the computer. “Is there a God?” someone queries, and the computer instantly replies, “There is now.” Horrified, the scientist leaps for the off switch, only to be struck down by lightening.

I admit there were two things I liked about "Swimming Pool"

You don’t have to rush to the library to find it. It’s an anecdote, not a story. (And it feels like I just ho-ed myself out to tell it to you.)

Why does this get me so angry? I don’t know why. Perhaps because I can probably conjure about 20 better endings to any one of these books or movies than are presented. I didn’t get the opportunity to publish a novel with a implausible, flashy ending designed to impress the reader.

But I wouldn’t do such a thing. No, the math is simple. You won’t find such attention-grabbing, sleazy writing from this here ho.

Joshua Bell Gay. Or Married. Or Straight

2007-04-09T19:58:00.000-04:00

Joshua Bell Gay. Why are so many of you obsessed with this, this Joshua Bell Gay? I write a blog entry over a year ago about this talented fiddler with the phrase, “tell Wife you’re gay, even though you’re not” and a year later, this entry still gets plenty hits from people Googling “Joshua bell gay.”

From the U.S., Europe, Asia, the Middle East, South America. Why? Are you gay and want to know if he’s available? Are you a woman who wants to marry Joshua Bell? Are you a jealous husband who wants to crush your spouse’s hopes forever of divorcing you and running off with Mr. Bell and his “Strad”?

I don't know if Joshua Bell is gay, and I don't care. You won’t find the answer to your query here. Despite all the many new “viewers” Bookfraud has gotten from people doing a search with the phrase “joshua bell gay,” there is no information here on this. Or “Joshua bell straight,” either.

The most frequent search term that lands people here is not “bookfraud brilliant or “great writer" or “why hasn't bookfraud been published and gotten millions of dollars?" It's you-know-what. It's not “Tchaikovsky gay” or “Horowitz gay,” even though I've written about these two musical geniuses, and who were certainly homosexual.

In fact, nobody Googles “Itzhak Perlman gay” or “Sarah Chang gay” or “Jascha Heifetz gay” or “Paganini gay.” What gives?

Also, there seems to be a lot of people who are looking for Padma Lakshmi's picture. There must be a lack of photographs for Ms. Lakshmi, whose tenuous connection to this space is that she is bethrothed to Salman Rushdie, perhaps the greatest writer in English these days. OK, here she is, with Salman, again proving that despite all the death threats, he's the luckiest man in the world:

A lot of people visited this space after my entry on the Cubs was posted on a few baseball blogs (though, given the number of comments, you wouldn’t have known it). Long after the interest over the Cubs fades, though, you’ll get people who will come via searching the Internet for “Joshua Bell Gay.”

Please let me know why you're doing this. You know who you are. Not that there's anything wrong.

Mr. Irrelevant

2007-04-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

Phone rings, at about 7 p.m. It’s one of Wife’s friends.

“Hey Bookfraud, just checking in to see how Wife is doing,” the friend says. “See how she’s feeling.”

I say that Wife is feeling as well as can be expected, given she’s going to give birth in a week or two. She’s in the bathroom, can’t talk.

“Great! Just have her give me a call.”

Phone rings again, at about 7:30. We’re eating dinner and let the voicemail pick up. “Hi! It’s Wife’s Friend Number 2! How are you guys? You must be so excited now! I just wanted to check in and see how Wife is doing? Is there anything I can do to help? Anyway, give me a call! Bye!”

Phone rings again, at about 7:45. Fully knowing what is coming, I hand the receiver to Wife. “Oh, hi!” she says to Friend Number 3. “Things are fine! We’re getting pretty excited. Me? I’m feeling fine.”

And so it goes as we hurdle towards our final day as a married, childless couple. The phone rings (and rings and rings), and it inevitably will be someone asking about Wife. Her friends, her family; my friends, my family. They don’t ask, “Hey, Bookfraud, how are you doing?” They don’t ask, “Hey Bookfraud, are you feeling OK?” And they don’t say, “Bookfraud, are you sick of everybody ignoring you? Just wait. It’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.”

I know what they are saying. For though I am capable of great acts of self-delusion — it’s what keeps me writing — I am not blind to the fact that from now until the baby is born and several weeks afterwards, I am just an appendage, a barrier to be overcome. Everyone cares about the woman carrying the baby, for it is she who ultimately holds the hopes and desires of everyone around her; i.e. grandparents to be.

Lewis: doesn't look like a carrot

Nobody really cares about the baby seeder. My job is essentially done and the worthiness for the rest of my life depends upon my performance as a provider, father, and fellow who just doesn’t get in the way.

My cousin, who has two children of his own, put it well when he said that my mother and my in-laws will suddenly have a Whole Lotta Love for this infant, who, as he put it, is substitute for the infant stolen from them when I grew up.

Michael Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and several other amazing tomes of non-fiction, wrote how once his wife (Tabitha Soren, the former MTV talking head) entered the hospital in labor, his job was, essentially, to get the hell out of the way. No matter how many times he told dear Tabs that she could do this, the pain was going away, or that she could make it through this, the world of nurses and doctors and relatives treated him like an elevator operator.

He was there, helping people get on their way, but he really wasn’t necessary:

[U]p until the moment the child is born, the husband in the delivery room is in an odd predicament. He's been admitted to the scene of the crisis but given no serious purpose. He's the Frenchman after the war resolution has passed.

Or, as he also put it, the father in the delivery room is an actor searching for a role — the “carrot in the school play.”

I would extend this metaphor to the weeks leading up to the “glorious event” (as one of my co-workers put it). I might as well be in Sierra Leone or Indonesia. It’s not that people don’t care about my perilous mental or physical health, but really, they don’t care. It’s all about Mama.

My own family is of the same mindset. My mother: “How’s Wife feeling?” My brother, “How’s Wife feeling?” My sister, “How’s Wife feeling?”

Endgame

If you are a parent or perceptive in the least, the joke is on me — and Wife. For, although Wife will still get plenty of sympathy I the coming months over her recovery, breast feeding duties, and days when she is alone in charge of Baby’s care, soon, that sympathy will fade. People’s concern will center on the child. Forever. This is not going to change unless I get sick and die. From now on, every friend and family member’s concern will be on Baby, Infant, Toddler, Child, Adolescent, Teenager, College Student, Adult Son of Bookfraud.

The only thing that’s going to matter is if we have the wherewithal to support Child. The only thing that’s going to matter is if we have the wisdom to choose the right schools for Child, if we get him to take piano lessons early enough, and if I can teach him to hit a curveball. Tell me when it gets better.

$1 Billion for Each World Series Win

2007-04-05T20:28:00.000-04:00

“It’ll go north of $800 million, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went for more than $1 billion,” says Marc Ganis, a Chicago-based sports industry consultant.

“It” is the Chicago Cubs. “It” is up for sale. And “it” is less a baseball team than marketing juggernaut, and has been for some time.

The Tribune Co., erstwhile owners of the Cubs, are selling their media empire to a Chicago real estate magnate while jettisoning the team at season’s end. Given their roster and wise moves to boost the payroll, it appears the 2007 Cubs are on track to win 36 games, and the smart money says that volatile manager Lou Pinella will register more burst aneurysms than destroyed water coolers this season.

It’s not that my beloved Cubbies aren’t worth a lot of money, in a business sense: Tribune owns the stadium, part of a cable network, and the team generates over 3 million loyal sheep-fans every year. Perhaps shelling out $1 billion for the team will be a good return on capital. (It certainly will be for Tribune, which bought the Cubs for $20 million in 1983.)

But no amount of fiscal reasoning can hide the fact that the idea itself is galling. Paying $1 billion for the Cubs? This is like paying $1 billion for a company that recycles used toilet paper. This is like paying $1 billion to masturbate before a live television audience. This is like paying $1 billion for the Bad News Bears.

Curse my ass

For someone like myself, it is a double insult. Not only have the Cubs constantly ripped out my heart and treated it like a clay pigeon, but think of what good the money could have done in the world of fiction.

$1 billion will get you 10,000 book advances of $100,000 each, or 20,000 advances of $50,000. Now let’s do some analysis here.

Out of 20,000 novels, about 80 percent will sell for shit, 15 percent will do a fair business, and perhaps five percent will be hits, with 0.5 percent being blockbusters. That means 100 books will be major sellers, and if one does not recoup the $1 billion investment, at least there is the satisfaction of launching a young or (middle-aged) writer (like me) on his road to retirement.

Now, let’s look at the Cubs. While you’d get 100 blockbuster novels from $1 billion, that same amount is buying a team that hasn't won the World Series in 100 years. It hasn’t even won a pennant in 62. You can get 20,000 books or a single, sorry franchise that proudly markets the Curse of the Billy Goat.

This penchant to wildly overpay for an asset is what is formally known in the business world as “fucking insane.”

If it seems that I am passionate and angry about this topic, you would be right. And it doesn’t even have to do with the fact the Cubs have disappointed me more than a stereotypical Jewish son disappoints his mother.

A columnist recently noted that back in the early 1980s — when I was a high-schooler living in the Chicago suburbs and frequent attendee of Cubs games — Wrigley Field and its surrounding environs were considered eyesores at best, slum-like at worst. There was nothing hip or cool about going to a game, and the working-class neighborhood the ballpark sat in was as grey and uninviting as standing on the Addison Street “L” stop in January.

By the time I had moved to Chicago as an adult in the early 1990s (and living only blocks from Wrigley Field), everything had changed. Going to games became less about the game than “hanging out at Wrigley” or visiting a baseball “shrine.” Attendance exploded, largely due to a mass infiltration of fools.

Two things had happened: the Cubs won the division title in 1984, and the Cubs went national, through the cable superstation WGN, which broadcast most of the Cubs’ games. Suddenly, yuppies were moving into the newly christened “Wrigleyville” neighborhood (the fuddy-duddy “Lakeview” no more) and baseball-ignorant tourists were flocking to visit.

Then, Harry Caray, a once-brilliant, Hall-of-Fame announcer with the Cardinals who had gone to pot with the Cubs, became a legend, singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” each seventh-inning stretch, spreading the gospel of Wrigley Field to a national audience, and ending one season with the unheard of average of 2.29 BPI (Beers Per Inning), a record that stands beside Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak as one of the “unbreakable” records in baseball.

Caray: roll out the barrels

The transformative nature of what happened — the asinine “loveable loser” tag became a marketing ploy rather than a state of affairs — is really one of the great American business stories of the past 25 years. Going to the ballgame became a trip to an amusement park. The Cubs, though coming close a couple of times, never made it to the World Series, lost far more games than they won, let their ballpark crumble, and yet became one of the most “successful” franchises in all of sports. It’s marketing brilliance like none other. They succeeded by sucking.

It’s almost enough to make you watch cricket.

I Promised Myself

2007-04-04T21:52:00.000-04:00

I promised that I would post something every day until Baby Raoul is born. This could be any day now, but it could be two or three weeks.

The post below got sidelined for reasons as picayune as they are dull.

What to say? I'm reading banal baby books, and my brain has turned to mush.

My eyes waver when open up something substantial.

Wife is reading "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," which makes me want to throw up. (The author's success, that is).

I still despise George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Republicans in general.

Some things never change.

Globalization Out of Control

2007-04-03T19:38:00.000-04:00

There is another type of outsourcing that the United States is suffering, one that nobody talks about but is costing us lots of high-profile, high-paying jobs.

This rant all started when I was flipping around last evening during commercial breaks of WWE RAW (a boy’s gotta have his entertainments, right?) when I encountered another disturbing manifestation of a trend threatening our great creative nation.

A television show called “The Riches.” The program is not evil in and of itself, but consider what I witnessed last night. Minnie Driver, an English actress, and Eddie Izzard, an English comedian, are the stars of this show.

“The Riches,” as far as I can tell, is set in the American South. And in the brief scenes that I witnessed, the characters of Ms. Driver and Mr. Izzard, who are con artists, were Southerners pretending to be English to an unsuspecting sucker.

In other words, you had two actors from England pretending to be people from the South pretending to be people from England. There is something inherently wrong about this. It is like Robert DeNiro playing King Lear in Italian.

It is globalization — out of control. I’m amazed Lou Dobbs hasn’t done a special on it.

In essence, there are an alarming number of Englishmen, Aussies, and Kiwis playing Americans on stage and screen. The list is shockingly long.

Beckinsdale: Ava she’s not

Just in the past few years, you had Jude Law and Kate Winslet as old school bayou families (!) in “All the King’s Men.” Gary Oldman as a tough cop in “Batman Begins.” Daniel-Day Lewis as a gang tough (with the bizarre-est accent ever) in “The Gangs of New York.”

Kate Beckinsdale as Ava Gartner in “The Aviator.” Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fienes, and Bob Hoskins. Even Elizabeth Taylor is English (officially, at least).

When will this madness stop?

But this is nothing compared to the jobs we have outsourced to Down Under.

From Australia — a nation of 20 million, less than in Texas — there are the following actors whose job is to play Americans in movies: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Nicole Kidman, Naomi Watts, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pierce, Hugo Weaving, Eric Bana, Toni Colette, Judy Davis, Rachel Griffiths, Isla Fisher, Hugh Jackman, and Anthony LaPaglia. Hell, you even had Heath Ledger playing a vocabulary-challenged gay cowboy from Montana.

There’s even Rick Springfield, taking valuable soap opera time from deserving Americans.

There must be something about the desert heat that turns Australians into fame-seeking whores who take American jobs that American actors could play as American characters. There ought to be a law.

I liked Australia better when their biggest entertainment exports were AC/DC, Paul “Crocodile Dundee” Hogan, Yahoo Serious, and Jacko. (Yes, Jacko, the former Australian rules football star and battery commercial guy above). They didn’t try to be Yanks: they were as Aussie as a pint of Foster’s and didn’t try to be anything else.

There are some noble actors who hew to a minimal code of conduct. Judi Dench sounds like a limey, and doesn’t have pretensions of being, say, a farm girl from Mississippi. Could you ever picture Alec Guiness, Richard Burton, or Richard Harris even trying to be an American? I know Lawrence Olivier played a sadistic Nazi dentist who decamped to the United States, but that was a Eurotrash part that we wouldn’t want a German playing, anyway.

The most American role Alec Guiness had was Obi-Wan Kenobi, which I must admit has always sounded like the name of an Indian restaurant.

I believe we must stop this scourge by striking back, hard. Being that our military is stretched the breaking point by this wonderful war in Iraq, an invasion is out. So is boycotts, assassinations, or physical violence, as much as most Americans would like to insert a fist down Russell Crowe’s gullet.

How the English should act

There is a very simple solution to this. As a condition of their employment in the United States, all British, Australian, New Zealand, and other actors from the Commonwealth are required to become Scientologists, live in Jackson, Mississippi, or swear off doing American accents forever.

I mean, we’ve got to keep Tara Reid employed, after all.

Interactive Fiction

2007-04-02T20:13:00.000-04:00

You can choose your friends, but you’re stuck with your family. I’d like to add a codicil to this rule: you can choose where you work, but not the person who sits next to you at work.

I am sure that certain aspects of my personality grate on my co-workers: the incessant swearing at my computer, the frowning, pissy face I make when things don’t go my way, and bringing an semi-automatic weapon to the workplace.

Two things I am not known for are a harsh, grating voice that could split an airborne 747 into several pieces, and a cellphone ring with the volume turned up to 11 and that goes off most frequently when its owner is not at her desk. The cellphone plays “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

Also, when I am making a noise that puts the whoop in whooping cough while blowing out an average of 3 liters of phlegm each day, I stay at home.

Sadly, this person I describe is real.

Normally, talk of my job is verboten in this space. My employers would be none-too-happy given the content here, and there are about 14 million other bloggers relating their day-to-day hell known as their job, in any case. It’s like Jennifer Anniston in “Office Space”: I don’t want to talk about my pieces of flair.

But since this person who is lodged near me (and fortunately, does not work with me) threatens to steal the last remaining threads of my sanity, today I will make an exception.

Of all the cube farms in all the towns in all the world, she walks into in mine

In short, I find this woman revolting. I hate her.

I hate her voice, I hate her endless, stupid conversations on the phone, I hate her germ warfare that she seems intent on waging on the rest of us. I hate her frequent laugh that could shatter glass; I hate hearing all about her personal problems. She is a life-support system for pointlessness.

There, I said it. Now, what to do about it?

That’s where you come in.

If living well is the best revenge, then writing about one’s tormentors is even better.

I may just write a story about this officemate, but I can’t really decide what will happen. I’ve come up with five possible scenarios, or at least five fantasy scenarios that I’ve rolled over in my mind with the frequency of an obsessive washing his hands:

1) An enormous asteroid emerges from the heavens and stomps on her.

2) An enormous foot emerges from the heavens and stomps on her.

3) She is fired from her job and arrested for embezzlement, sentenced to 25 to life in the Sing Sing.

4) She begs to make mad, passionate love to me, but I reject her in disgust, and she jumps out the window.

5) Nothing changes except that the volume of her voice increases, she changes her cellphone ring to “My Humps,” and I end up working for her, then, for reasons unknown, I divorce Wife and marry this other woman. I jump out the window.

I’m going to allow you to determine which one of these storylines to follow.

I would prefer not to

But if you come up with something better — which shouldn’t be hard — I’ll go with instead.

I will take the winning entry, write a short short (under 1,000 words), and publish it here!

America, you decide.

Non-Americans can vote too.

No Blogging, or More Than I Ever Wanted to Know About Vaginas

2007-04-01T13:09:00.000-04:00

It’s been over a fortnight since this space was last graced with the wit, wisdom and brilliance known as Bookfraud, and a lot longer since it has been graced with actual wit, wisdom or brilliance.

If anyone actually bothers to read this, bully for you. I’ll send you a check, as you deserve it.

The actual time without blogging does not mirror the perception; i.e., it feels like I haven’t written anything since 1968, when I was four and wrote a story called “Making Poopie on the Toilet.” Actually, it was a finger painting, but it had a narrative.

I have a lot of fine excuses for this pause, and they don’t even include Wife giving birth, as she remains tumescent and waiting, as the due date is precisely two weeks away. But excuses do include a 12-hour, two-day class on labor & childbirth, an experience that included footage of several births, shot from the point of view of the person delivering the baby. After watching these, I felt fully confident that I could pass the medical boards in gynocology.

More importantly, these instructional programs convinced me I will hover near the top of the bed when Wife delivers Baby and ensured my fidelity to Wife, or at least ensured that I will never have sex with the women featured in the videos.

This educational summit also gave me new insights into meconium, cervix effacement, vernix, the episiotomy, birthing positions, and, last but not least, the epidural. The epidural sounds about the only nice thing of pregnancy — you get opiates — yet a stupefyingly high number of women reject this miracle of modern medicine for a “natural” experience. (Women, please hold the angry letters, I know it’s your choice, it's the right thing for you, etc. Also, the anti-circumcision “activists” please don’t tell me that Baby shouldn’t get the Big Snip. I got one, I don't remember the pain, and it fucked up my head for only six years.)

Time to write

I’ve also taken classes in baby CPR, newborn care, and breast feeding, the last of which convinced me that I will definitely have Baby sucking down formula before he nestles at my teat. In this vein, Wife and I have been shopping for things like bottles, nipples, and pumps. Who knew that milk was so fraught with financial and psychological turmoil?

Add to all of this has been a terrifyingly difficult stretch at the office, during which I have been working extremely hard, playing computer solitaire for hours a stretch while my superiors believe I am working my ASS OFF. HA! (Just kidding, for anybody from my office reading this. Although if you are reading this, it means my cover is blown, and it’s time for the cyanide).

This silly lament goes beyond mere bitching, of which I am eminently qualified at doing. I realize that for the first few months of Baby’s life, very little of my time will be spent at the keyboard. But I know of writers with small children who find time to work, and even some who find the time to write fiction and blog, and while it is tempting to assign such characters to the realm of rich people who don’t slave away at an office, it does make me wonder just how I’m going to write when I don’t seem to have time for it now.

Grace Paley started writing when her kids were ill, or when she was ill, or her husband’s Aunt Ida was ill, or something or another, but she managed a collections of short stories write while raising children, as did Alice Munro, or maybe Grace Paley started writing when Alice Munro’s children were ill, but you get the idea.

Grace Paley: more kids than books

Now, I know what some of you kind souls will write in the comment section, if I get more than two. “You’ll find time to write, Bookfraud, you’ll just find the time,” which is a nice sentiment, but if I can’t find to time to scribble before the little rug rat joins Wife and I, just when will I be able to write when he subjects us to a 24/7 existence of All Baby, All the Time?

I would like to commit to writing something new in this space every day until Wife begins labor, but I'm just too damn scared.

Uh, anyone want to talk about Opening Day?

Bookfraud Goes Fringes

2007-03-15T10:37:00.000-04:00

The super-cool Sarcastic Fringe blog asked readers to contribute posts while she's away,and has graciously agreed to post two short entries from yours truly.

Read 'em, love 'em, hate 'em. Just comment on them. Does everybody hate the entry on diarists, below? Or only me?

Diary Straits

2007-03-13T21:56:00.000-04:00

“They” say that you shouldn’t immerse yourself too deeply in fiction while writing the same, lest you end up mimicking too closely the author you're reading, which might be a good thing if it's reading Muriel Spark but not so great if it’s Nicholas Sparks.

I can’t say if there is a corollary in non-fiction. When I read David Sedaris, my blog doesn’t suddenly morph into wacky but acutely observed tales of wacky but interesting people. Or when I’ve read Adam Gopnik, I my blog doesn’t devolve into, uh, tales of Paris and Manhattan and whatever Adam Gopnik is known for.

This is not necessarily a good thing, and as I find myself in funk, I am wondering if I should be reading fiction at this stressful and unproductive point in my writing life, in which I seem to know more about meconium and colostrum than what’s happening in the literary “scene.”

To wit, here’s the most-read books currently on my nightstand:

1. The Happiest Baby on the Block
2. Healthy Sleep Habits, Healthy Child
3. Waiting for Birdy: a Year of Frantic Tedium, Neurotic Angst, and the Wild Magic of Growing a Family
4. What to Expect When You Are Expecting and Insane
4a. Some Other Title Involving Pre-Natal Care, Early Childhood Care, or Interpreting the Color of Your Child’s Feces

You may imagine I don’t find this stuff particularly inspiring. If my blog began to resemble what I read, it would be a dull, little-read, school-marmish collections of cliché and banalities, which, I suspect, it might be already.

Another type of self-absorption

I’ve been kicking around the idea of writing a non-fiction book involving personal experiences, none of which involve losing weight, recovering from abuse, or making my first billion on Wall Street. But I can’t really seem to find a corollary tome as a model, or, truth be known, to rip off.

“You should write the book like your blog,” Wife is fond of saying, and while this is a flattering thing indeed, I doubt a reader could stand this semi-snarky, fully gloomy pose for more than 50 pages. Or five.

The only thing I will reveal about the topic of this book is that it concerns a waste of time, and my attempts to give it up (not Sudoku. Or WWE. Or blogging.) This appears as if it's a natural parallel with a diary, but I have never been a fan of diarists, either my own or others. A good diary is the ultimate solipsism, existing nowhere but within its own universe.

I mean, a blog is good for self-absorption, but I’m not writing down the day’s events here:

I woke up, and took a piss. Showered, shaved, dressed, went to work. Got to work, had coffee, crapped out a lung. We’re talking nuclear warheads here. Grown men ran in horror. Went back to desk, and worked five minutes. Co-worker comes to bother me to talk about NASCAR. Doesn’t seem to realize my eyes are glazing over. Shooed him away and surfed the 'Net three hours, until it was time for lunch.

Had a bacon double cheeseburger and snuck under a desk for a nap. Was busted because I hadn’t taken my Beano. Damn busybodies. Went outside and wasted a couple of hours with Samuel Adams before going back to desk and pretending to work until it was 5.

Only interrupted by a call from Wife asking me about the $300 credit card charge from LiveHotAsianTeen.com. Said I didn’t know what she was talking about, but I said I had to go.

One hundred years of solitude

So I am not reading Anais Nin, Samuel Pepys, Edmund Wilson, and Anne Frank, not because they are inferior but because, in their ideal state, diaries are written for oneself. While such inspection of the self may make for great literature, for me they are as inspirational as a barrel of sour, flat beer.

They inspire me not to be a great writer, but to be like Anais Nin.

I am thus confronted with a rare dilemma: I want to write but my inspiration has run dry. When I was working on my novel and needed such succor, I would slake my thirst with Salman Rushdie, Charlotte Bronte, or Garcia Marquez.

Now what? Tom Wolfe? Joan Didion? Ron Jeremy? Hey, he just put out an autobiography. Which makes for a great excuse to run his picture:

I’ll try slogging along. Perhaps I will start a diary for myself and draw upon it later. Perhaps this will be my inspiration.

After I get over the horror of meconium.

Eddie Van Illin'

2007-03-11T13:30:00.000-04:00

If I’m not fantasizing about riches from my writing, or what local football fame would have would have been mine had I not messed up my knee before high school, my mind will turn to what every nerd teenager has dreamed about being: a rock star.

Keeping with tradition, I would have to play the guitar, of course, though now, I would rather be a violin or piano virtuoso, a change in vision brought on by due to my advancing age.

Yes, I am decrepit. But I am not as decrepit, as it turns out, as Eddie Van Halen, probably the foremost rock guitar god of the last 30 years.

Mr. Van Halen looked like this 14 years ago, a man of 38:

And today:

No public service announcement could say it better: This is Eddie Van Halen; This is Eddie Van Halen on drugs.

Mr. Van Halen checked into rehab last week, after denying for years that he didn’t have a problem.

I’ve always looked a bit older than my years; when I was 38, I probably looked 40 to 45. But Eddie Van Halen always possessed the facade of eternal youth. Now, thanks to the miracle of methamphetamines, our appearances have undergone a stunning inversion: I, a man of 42, look my age, while Eddie VanHalen, a man of 52, looks about 80.

Sadly, his face does not look like someone long for this earth. He is missing teeth — a result, he claims, from mouth cancer — and no amount of airbrushing can conceal the fact that something has gone wildly wrong in this man’s life. Mr. Van Halen bears a striking resemblance to Jack Palance, and it makes me say something I thought not possible: there is a person in the world of rock and roll who looks worse than Keith Richards. At least we expect Keith to look like death on a stick.

I’m not a huge VH fan, though I like some of their early songs, and find them mildly amusing, especially because David Lee Roth is Jewish, proving beyond all doubt that us Jews are not inherently smarter than the rest of the world.

What is interesting is that although Van Halen was rich and famous at an early age, and, while a close observer may conclude the band’s downfall was when Sammy Hagar joined, it is odd that, unlike most rock and roll substance abuse disasters, Eddie Van Halen's apparently happened in middle age.

Why the case of Eddie Van Halen interests me is as revealing about what it says. I certainly would not have done well coping with fame and riches in my 20s, and if this is a fantasy, it is one that was best unfulfilled.

But to think someone would be immune — writers, in particular — from the lures of money as they pass 40 is the height of folly. Any 65-year-old rich dolt ditching his wife for a 25-year-old bimbo is illustration enough. They have often scrimped and struggled through their careers, and once they hit the big time, start thinking they should have their fun. That they deserve to have fun.

There are plenty of writers who, despite their august pedigrees, turn to various forms of bad behavior as they enter the autumn of their lives. It may not involve crystal meth, coke, or smack, but it may involve long stretches at the bottle and mistresses. Just because you fancy yourself a genius or philosopher does not make you any less immune to human foible.

David Lee Roth: not related to Philip

I do wonder, however, how many of these (male) writers become louts or addicts only when they get older. Fame and money supposedly amplify the bad traits that already exist in one’s soul, and sometimes it just takes a while for it to catch up to you.

Which is why I’ve chosen not to be a rich and famous novelist, you see. It’s all for my own good.

Bugablew

2007-03-08T11:04:00.000-05:00

Ahab had the whale. Javert had Valjean. I have the Bugaboo.

Let me explain. I have not really blogged much about the upcoming arrival in our house, for the mere reason I want to keep my family out of this, kind of like Dick Cheney keeps his lesbian daughter out of the news unless it suits him politically.

But the welling up of frustration and mounting bills has forced me to expound angrily on what I suspected but did not fully admit to myself: even before my child breathes his first gulps of air, I have spent tons of money, energy, and emotional capital on him.

I am fully convinced that weddings and babies are the biggest corporate rip off ever foisted upon the middle class. A wedding preys upon ones fears that a one-day event will not be perfect in the eyes of the guests; an impending birth preys upon the fears that a rest-of-your-life event cannot be considered successful unless you have the Biggest, Most Expensive Crap for Your Child. Otherwise, one will be the worst of all possible things, worst than being a serial philanderer or heroin addict or someone who hates Uma Thurman: you will be a BAD PARENT.

If you have ever endured this nesting-buying marathon before, you will know that most of the baby crap is, well, overpriced, low-quality crap. And when you want to spend some money to really get something nice for your kid, it turns out to be a joke.

To wit, Wife and I spent a humiliating afternoon trying to find PC, environmentally OK diapers that cost less than first quarter revenues at Google. Fuggetaboutit. You can get Huggies and save some dough, or get bleach-free, gel-free, biodegradable diapers that will seriously impede your ability to pay for food and shelter.

We’ve chosen a crib, bassinet, rug, diaper changing station, bottles, and car seat with the utmost care. The kid has a billion hand-me-downs, enough to clothe him for his first year. Most of the stuff we’ve bought, we’ve done the research and gotten off (relatively) cheap.

Then comes the matter of strollers.

I have warned our great nation about the plague known as Thomas the Tank Engine, and have watched my spleen explode as I rail against adults appropriating children’s holidays. Now, I come to something just as nefarious. Something called The Bugaboo. And if you bought one, I don’t despise you, but I wonder just what the hell were you thinking.

A Bugaboo is a nifty, lightweight stroller that is truly an impressive feat of engineering. It has a nice, smooth ride, and adjust to many different stroller positions. It looks swell and was featured on “Sex and the City.” It's the stroller pictured above, courtesy of a company out of Amsterdam.

And it only costs $800.

Conspicuous consumption is bad enough, but when you use a baby for it, I start to question your fitness as a parent. I’m sure that someone reading this has a Bugaboo, I’m sure a friend of family member has a Bugaboo, and I’m sure you're thinking, don’t be a pompous ass.

(But being a pompous ass is one of the benefits of blogging).

In that spirit, I am trying to figure out a way to halt sales of the Bugaboo. I will claim it’s a safety hazard (not true), that it retards childhood development (not true), that Bugaboo owners are more likely to forget their children’s birthdays, vaccinations, and deadlines for getting their brat into their first-grade SAT cramming class (perhaps true).

If you want to spend some bux on a nice stroller, fine. Make it a $350 stroller, put the rest in your child’s college fund (and believe me, every Bugaboo owner has a college fund) or give it to charity. Stop making your child a fashion accessory. Set a good example. Be a good parent.

Whew. Glad that’s out of my system. Next time: Bookfraud rails against someone at work.

Render Onto Movie Producers What Is Movie Producers’

2007-03-04T14:32:00.000-05:00

One of benefits of writing is that I don't have to share credit with anybody for the massive brilliance that is known as my work. It is also unknown brilliance, so it’s not as if people are beating down the door to share credit, but still — all the crap I’ve written is exclusively my crap, exclusively.

I have been thinking a lot about this these days, following a lawsuit involving the 2005 epic “Dodgeball.” It turns out that stealing is the least of Hollywood’s credit-hogging woes.

It seems like movie producers are in a constant scrap over who gets producing “credit” on their work, thus giving eligibility to Academy Awards, payment for royalties, and access to hot babes who would look at these lumps of men and say, “If you didn’t have money and power, I would find you as sexually appealing as Harvey Weinstein in a Speedo.”

Of late, there are incidences of this taking place, but probably the most well-known is a credits fight over the movie “Crash,” which won last year's Academy Award for Best Picture, a fact that makes one ponder the definition of the word “best.” A seriously pissed-off gentleman named Bob Yari has filed suit against the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences and Producers Guild of America, which again makes a guy wonder what “Sciences” they’re talking about, and why someone like Bob Evans needs a union.

The idea that I would want to share credit for my work is about as alien to me as buying the “Weekend at Bernie’s” DVD box set. This is not about, say, stealing ideas or plagiarizing, two loathsome activities that I would probably indulge in if 1) it would make me rich, famous, or unfathomably sexy to women; and 2) I could get away with it.

Protecting credit

Certainly it is not my place to impugn screenwriters, directors and movie producers. Mr. Yari may very well be in the right. However, upon close, careful inspection, and objective, nuanced analysis, I think it is a fair assessment to say that that a certain portion of those involved in the film-making business are amoral, venal whores. So to speak.

Now, I am hardly one to accuse my creative brethren of being amoral, venal whores, because I would love to be an amoral, venal whore, as long as I got all the benefits of such, which would mean money, power, and tons of hot, brainless babes who want to have sex with married, middle-age expectant fathers whose chests have sprouted more than a little hair.

(I realize I am not supposed to admit such longings mere weeks before Wife gives birth to Baby. Set a good example and all that. Let’s just say I’m being honest, and you want your child to learn honesty, right?)

This gets down to my definition of an artist: the public still gives a damn about an artist’s work long after he or she is six feet under. You can be famous during your lifetime, like Dickens, or not-so-famous, like Kafka, but people are still reading their scribbles.

I imagine Mr. Yari wants an Oscar for his work on “Crash,” and I can’t say I blame him. It also reinforces why many fiction writers aren’t filmmakers, screenwriters, playwrights, or other collaborative artists: we don’t play well with others.

Take, for instance, the case of The Ruined Sketch. When I was in grad school, I took a theater class. One assignment called for us to write a five-minute comedic skit, and other students would act it out. I thought I had a sure-fire winner, a Saturday Night Live-SCTV-esque piece of brilliance: Dr. Cindy Hoover, Lesbian Urologist.

Don't mess with Chuckie

This was a perfectly executed piece of comedic genius. Think about it: why do women even bother going to a male gynecologist? Why would a man go to a female urologist, supposing there are any? I mean, what man would want a woman handling his balls?

Ostensibly, my classmates were aspiring actors. But the woman who played Dr. Cindy Hoover, Lesbian Urologist had the charisma of a laundry pile and the acting chops of burnt toast. She read everything in the same monotone, sentences running together, jokes buried under her infintile reading. It took every fiber in my being not to scream, “You talentless bungler! You’ve ruined my skit! You’ve ruined my life!”

As a result, one of the first lessons I’m going to teach my son will involve sharing and giving others’ credit. The lesson will be: once you are older and in the working world, if things go great, it’s because of your hard work, but if things go bad, blame the annoying person in the cubicle next to you.

Oscars Madness Special! Not Really, But There’s a Lot of References to Movies and Three Photographs

2007-02-25T20:27:00.000-05:00

I remember seeing the movie “Dodgeball” on a cross-country flight, the destination and time of which escapes me, as does the plot of the movie. But I remember that it was a mildly amusing flick, typical of its genre: has the usual quota of fratboy humor, toilet jokes, and slapstick, plus a few hot babes and really bad hair.

Such movies will have a cast including some if not all of the following: Vince Vaughn-Will Farrell-Owen Wilson-Ben Stiller, or VWOB, for short.

Now, of all things that might be plagiarized, one may not imagine “Dodgeball” being at the top of the list. Term papers, novels, histories, and even other movies of a serious bent, yes. But not a VWOB flick.

But apparently, that’s just what happened, or at least according to two aspiring screenwriters who submitted a script about a dodgeball tournament to their agent, only to find out that a movie was being made that had almost identical character names, scenes, and other similarities, such as a dodgeballer who bore a striking resemblance to Frieda Khalo after years of abuse from her dentist.

These screenwriters are suing the studio, of course, and their case will actually be tried, which is rare for these kind of suits, which are disposable as the latest Ben Stiller movie, which seem to be released at the rate of two a week.

It appalls me that someone would need to steal from someone else’s script to write “Dodgeball.” I mean, the dialog isn’t exactly “Sweet Smell of Success.” (“I’d hate to take a bite outta you. You’re a cookie full of arsenic.”)

Sensitive artist

Even more troubling is that someone even bothered. For most writers, dodgeball -- the game, not the movie -- is the stuff of playground nightmares. A gym class staple when I was in fifth grade, it’s not a game that sensitive types look back upon with fondness.

Those who excel at dodgeball are emotionally stunted boys who are large, strong, and stupid. Their game is designed to destroy you, physically and otherwise. They aim for your head. They will throw a ball at top speed as they stand over your prostrate, injured body. They will steal your lunch money to buy drugs, force you to smoke it, and testify in the trial that sends you to Sing Sing for 25 to life.

At the school I attended, the preferred mutation of the game was called “killball,” which is exactly like dodgeball, except there was always the distinct possibility of being dismembered. Killball is best described as a forum in which the special ed students, a couple of years older than the rest of us, could make an artistic statement in a non-traditional media. The artistry being someone’s blood splattered on a wall, of course.

In short, this is not a game for which a great movie can be made, and if you need to plagiarize another’s script in order to make it, your lack of imagination beggars the imagination.

As I’ve rhapsodized before, a writer’s ideas are a commodity too precious to be shared with others. (Unless they’re shitty ideas, which I’ve been happy to share with anybody who will listen.) A friend of Wife’s had this happen in grad school: the friend shared her idea for a novel with a colleague, only to see it in print a few years later.

I’ve gotten so paranoid that I won’t share my idea for the non-fiction book that I’m not writing. Because it’s such a cool idea, I believe, I’ll see another writer get to it first, if he or she gets wind of it (they’ll get to it first, because I’ve been either cleaning apartment in anticipation of Raoul, or sitting on my ass watching television. Good stuff, that TV).

But that’s the thing: it’s one thing to steal a great idea, or even plagiarize a great novel, but “Dodgeball”? I’d hope that somebody would ripped off the galleys of “Zuckerman Unbound” or the script for “Touch of Evil.” Maybe stolen T.S. Eliot’s notebooks and presented “Prufrock” as his own; perhaps they could have pilfered Kurosawa’s screenplay for “The Seven Samurai.”

Your future's all used up

That stuff is worth stealing. As the estimable Mr. Eliot said, “Hacks plagiarize; geniuses steal.” (Or said something like it. I’ve only used the line more times than “Wanna see my stamp collection?”, but to much greater effect). The big example of this is Shakespeare, who took his plots part-and-parcel from elsewhere.

So that’s what I’m going to do. As we speak, I am hacking into Salman Rushdie’s iMac and stealing his next novel, which I will pass off as my own. And if you want to know what it’s about, too bad — it’s a secret.

Writer, Air Guitarist, Father, Fraud

2007-02-21T18:22:00.001-05:00

I was driving when I noticed a teenage boy standing on the corner of a busy intersection. He held a bright red sign advertising pizza. Headphones were attached to his head, leading to an iPod in his pocket, and the tunes were probably of a variety favored with bands like Black Sabbath or Metallica, as he was playing air guitar. With the sign.

He thrashed his hair in time with the music playing in his ears, his right hand strumming over bottom of the sign while his left did fretwork on the top. Ostensibly, he was advertising Little Caesar's. I gave him an Ozzie Osbourne "devil's salute" and he nodded upon seeing me, then went back to wailing on the sign.

This kid was getting paid to do this. I decided then and there I wanted that job.

Being that this was out of town and probably paid minimum wage, I don't think Wife will let me do this job. But short of being a field tester for "Guitar Hero," I can not think of any profession that would give me such satisfaction. You don't have to play guitar particularly well -- hell, you don't have to play guitar, period -- and the place of work ensures an audience of thousands a day. You can be a star without really working, kinda like putting up incontinence videos on YouTube.

The truth of my employment is far more prosaic. I am a writer by trade, but what I produce in the office is not something I would feel comfortable sharing with, say, anyone outside the office. I make my living through writing, even if it's not the type of writing I envisioned I would be earning money doing. Can I really call myself a fiction writer? An amateur ballroom dancer doesn't call herself a dancer; a recreational pianist doesn't call himself a musician. So what right do I have to call myself a novelist?

If a novel falls in the forest...

But really, the question is, one that I will have to answer one day to Baby (he will then be "Child"), can I truly call myself a fiction writer, fiction, if I do not earn any money doing it?

I can see the conversations Child will have with his compatriots:

"You think your Dad is so great? My father is a doctor and saves peoples lives!"

"Oh, yeah, my dad is an airplane pilot and won the Daytona 500 last year!"

"That's nothing!" Child says. "My father pretends that he is a novelist, and he pretends that he makes money doing it, and he plays air guitar with a pizza sign every night."

I hope we have Child enrolled in martial arts by then to avoid the inevitable beating he might receive after such a conversation.

But this goes beyond the mere satisfaction of bragging about your job to you son. Does it "count" if you're just flailing away at the typewriter?

White man's overbite

I was in a writing group in which one of the members was a nice young woman who seemed innocuous enough. One day, she gets a story published in a literary magazine, then e-mails everyone in the group the news. "Now I can tell people I'm a real writer!" she crowed.

Since my publishing credits were shorter than the number of men claiming to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's baby, I wanted to print out the note, grasp it with both hands, and tear it asunder. She might have felt like a real writer, and I felt like a real fraud.

I go through this "writer/not a writer" bifurcation from time to time, and although it has not been a point of dispute of late, it is always petitioning the docket of my psyche. Too often, I'll give it a hearing, and the jury returns a few minutes later.

The verdict?

What Kind of Dad Will You Be?

2007-02-17T10:22:00.000-05:00

Pain is a great equalizer, some wise person said, as it makes children of us all. I don’t know who this wise person is, but I believe he was a sales rep for a drug company.

Returning from surgery, as all of the athletes among you will testify, is a slow, agonizing process that requires patience, hard work, and the persevernce of a salmon jumping the rapids. Recouperation from my particular procedure has given me plenty of time to think and little ability to articulate those thoughts except to complain loudly and frequently, which I understand is great preparation for becoming a parent.

As my physical therapist stretches my aching arm in a manner that makes one think of what a wall must feel like when drilled, I thought, “What would I tell my son to do, when he’s in such a spot?” The answer came back like a voice from below: “Do as your father does, and cry like a baby.”

This does not forfend a happy childhood in the Bookfraud household. Still, it makes one wonder just what kind of father one will be. Neal Pollack’s Alternadad chronicles a McSweeney’s hipster’s descent into madness following the birth of his child. That is, he is not exempt what natural selection confers upon new fathers — the need to provide material comfort and physical safety to one’s newborn that, I understand, does not include doing housework. Though if you resist, your balls get chopped off.

Haggis: it's what's for dinner

So what kind of father will one be? Though I cannot confirm any of the following sketches with the veracity of personal experience, I imagine that in the next few years I will turn into one or more of the following:

CoolDad: You look like Marilyn Manson. You act like Ozzie Nelson. You play Nine Inch Nails to put your daughter to sleep, dress her in Ramones onesies, and tint her hair the color of the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day. But then you realize that a barrista is not a career choice and if she's going to start an all-girl punk band, you'll have to shell out some bucks on guitar lessons.

Your wife just wants a good night’s sleep and not to have to worry about school districts. Before waking up in horror, you dream of the suburbs.

Over the protests of your families, you do not name your daughter “Irrisimus.” Your parents just want a bris. Your in-laws just want a christening. You just want to kill yourself.

GolfDad: After your child is born, you’ve gained about 50 pounds in two weeks, and the world of golf becomes a great substitute for the sex you’re not getting and will not get for the next 20 years. It’s a stupid, silly waste of money, but the money is better spent on links fees than something worthless, like dance lessons or diapers. The fairways are verdant, the sky is blue, and the putter is the only stiff thing you've held for months. It’s as good as it gets.

Onetwothreefour!

BadDad: Self-centered and blissfully ignorant of the changes that have overtaken the house. He goes about his daily routine without interruption, allowing his wife to take care of all the child-raising. He commands that his personal time is involate, and once he descends into his private lair, nothing can disturb him, even if his child has a temperature of 103 or is crying for attention.

BadDad is baaaad. He is also known as a “dedicated writer.”

InsaneDad: Honey, listen. I’ve been thinking. In the Kalahari, !Kung women carry their children with them 24/7, you should too. Those children don’t get colic. Now, I already told you about diet: a 1992 study of rural Scottish mothers who ate nothing but haggis and Guiness found that their breast milk contained antibodies twice has high as West London mothers who subsided on Shepherd’s pie and Bass ale!

Also, studies show that it's best to hang the baby upside down three hours a day. Researchers looked at families along the Mongolian steppe, and say that each yurt had straps to hang their children by the feet. It works!

And never, never forget what I read online: unless you play the Brahms Violin Concerto, we'll never get the kid into Julliard. When you play the BeethovenViolin Concerto, it won't work! It says online — the Beethoven cadenzas are just too simple! You want this brat to be the next Joshua Bell, then listen to me, damnit! So what if I haven't slept for 72 hours!

Eeeeeragggeeggggggggereeeeeeeeeeeahggggg

Yurt welcome

PerfectDad: What every man aspires to but few attain. You cook. You clean. You help feed. You gladly change diapers at 3 a.m. and swear off the daily six-pack. You read to your baby, and teach him French and Mandarin. Forsaking sports on television and other activities that give you great pleasure, such as sleeping, eating, and defecating, as your little one spends all her time sleeping, eating, and defecating. Everything decision you make over the next two decades will be colored by the question, "It is good for my child?"

Since I'm already cool, like golf, and insane, that leaves BadDad and PerfectDad as my options. I'll try to be PerfectDad, as long as I get my beer. It will be the only thing to get me through the next few years.

What I Learned Following My Shoulder Surgery

2007-02-12T20:53:00.000-05:00

Doctors lie.

They are not uniform in their chicanery, but when it comes to a medical procedure, those at the top of the medical food chain will inevitably tell you, "You'll be on your feet in no time!"

I have undergone four surgeries in my adult life; on only one occasion did the surgeon give me the honest, unvarnished truth. "We can fix it, but you're going to be miserable."

Though I will spare the details of the sensation of having plastic splints rammed up one's nose for a fortnight, suffice it to say I indeed was miserable for two weeks. The doctor was a small, genial man with spectacles and a yarmulke pinned to his thinning hair, and all I remember from the procedure, which took place on a Friday morning, was being wheeled into the operating room, high on Demerol, and trying to say, "Shabbat Shalom!"

(That, and being awoken in the recovery room by two twin five-year-old boys who had undergone a circumcision and were running around screaming as their unsheaved weiners dangled between their legs.)

Preceding this latest round of going under the knife — the arthroscope, to be precise — the orthopedic surgeon assured me that after he had repaired the crunchy bits inside my shoulder, I could go back to work nearly immediately. He was a strapping lad with shoulder-length hair and a bedside manner so devoid of irony you might say he really believed what he said. He was handsome in a rugged, jock sort of way, as if he were the ideal Nice Jewish Boy from a Philip Roth novel.

However, this was the first doctor of any type younger than me, so I should have figured something was amiss.

Sure, I can work, as long as I don't move my shoulder. I can type, as long as I don't move my shoulder. I can surf the Internet, as long as I don't move my shoulder.

In fact, I can drink beer, ski, make love, or play racketball, as long as I don't move my shoulder. I can even play quarterback for the Bears, who, given what happened in the Super Bowl, might have been better served with a quarterback who didn't move his shoulder.

This is the first that I have sat down and wrote anything over one paragraph, save for what I have managed to do at the office. For all the blogs unvisited, you are not unloved, as I know you were wondering about that.

Besides learning that physicians will minimize the pain ahead, I also learned some other valuable lessons over the past three weeks:

•I found out that no matter how hard you try, it is impossible to apply deoderant using one hand.

•Tangential to that, when you can't lift one arm for an extended peroid, stuff grows in the armpit.

Don't know what I want, but I know how to get it

•Tylenol is good; Darvocet is better; TV is qucker.

•Typing when one's shoulder has swollen to the size of a small circus animal is really, really painful.

•Rex Grossman is a good a quarterback as I am a male model. But you already knew that.

•Someone sent me the greatest piece of footage on Youtube. It combines two of my favorite things on the planet — Judge Judy and the Sex Pistols. John Lydon — that's Johnny Rotten to those of you not in the know — is the defendant on Judge Judy. I am not making this up. Check it out here. It nurtured me through the pain.

•Wearing a sling is a foolproof way to strike up conversations with strangers. I just wish I had known this before I had gotten married.

•I am the most impatient person on the planet, which probably set my recovery back, oh, two years.

•I shouldn't have tried cutting my chicken.

•I shouldn't have tried mixing painkillers with bourbon, scotch, or vodka. Especially vodka.

•I shouldn't have tried hands-free peeing.

•I shouldn't have tried blogging today.

•I'm going to ice my shoulder.

Shouldering a Burden

2007-01-24T19:23:00.000-05:00

If you have noticed a lack of posts here, I will say that it was not for lack of effort. I must have started a blog 93 times before erasing it.

Also, I have this little matter of surgery tomorrow, and all of my time has been spent getting my affairs in order in case the very real possibility that I do not wake up.

Ha! I really had you going there. It's an outpatient procedure, and while I will be doped up, I'll be out of there in a few hours. Unfortnately, this procedure on my arm will seriously inhibit my ability to write — physicially, it's going to be impossible for several days.

If I'm lucky, I won't be able to write ever again.

There you have it. My first legitimate excuse for taking off the blog for a week.

I'll think of you in my morphine dreams.

Yay Bears.

Experience Vs. Research Vs. My Sitting on My Ass and Doing Nothing

2007-01-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

It is certainly a measure of the writer’s mentality when he or she starts to wish that they’d had a childhood trauma, simply so they could write about it.

I don’t mean that literally, of course. The case of the boy who was kidnapped and disappeared for four years in St. Louis isn’t something I would want to have endured, for instance. But the wack part of my brain keeps thinking this: it would make awesome material for a book.

In the otherwise loathsome movie “Happiness,” there is a funny scene in which a poet, who has gained notoriety through her series of poems about being raped (“Rape at 11,” “Rape at 12,” “Rape at 13…”) admits that she is really a fraud.

“Who am I kidding?” she thinks, paging through her book. “I’ve never been raped.” This leads to her trying to arrange being raped, for material, as it were.

I’m not envious of writers like Augusten Burroughs, who made literary (and financial) hay out of a twisted childhood. Nor is it a wise thing to even suggest that writers need to have such experiences to write about them — fiction or otherwise — for I imagine that you would have a bevy of them read this and say, “I have to become a heroin junkie for research, damnit!”

Research, as opposed to experience, is a different matter. Of not what we have lived, I’ve always found that “doing research” for a novel has always been one of the odder facets of writing. You’re learning about somebody else’s life so you can write about them as a fictional character. Or put another way: why the hell do I need to learn about something I’m going to make up, anyway?

The master

Wife is a fiend when it comes to research; I am Mr. TK. I’ll write something and to hell if it’s accurate or not. I’ll write that the Czar of Pittsburgh freed the Serfs of Finland in 1478, because I can always change it later. If it’s wrong, who cares, because I made up the whole damn thing anyway.

The Internet has made a joke out of research, to some degree. We can type in “mass murderer” and “early bird special” and learn about all the serial killers over the age of 75. But that doesn’t really get us in the mind of the codger per se, and I imagine that one would have to interview such a person, read psychology text, or hang out in nursing homes or Shoneys. If you were writing a book about such a person, that is.

Perhaps because I am lazy except in matters of rationalization, I’ve always felt that the mania for research can go too far. The man who is often credited with being the über-reporter in these matters is Emile Zola, who hung out with striking coal miners and wrote “Germinal,” and while he is acknowledged to bringing a new level of realism to fiction, I don’t envision many people rushing out to their favorite Left Bank bookstore and asking for "Germinal" these days except when there's a strike in France, which actually means Zola's heirs are doing quite nicely.

On the other hand, “Madame Bovary” seems to have flowered directly from Flaubert’s brain, and we know that The Story of Emma B. gets just a tad more attention than Zola’s tale of the grimy, unfortunate dudes in the coal shafts.

Or take “Lolita.” Despite the pedophilia, despite the lushness of his prose, despite the Europe-Meets-America tension in Humbert Humbert’s life in the U.S.A., “Lolita” is essentially a road trip novel, a travelogue of which Nabokov drew from his own experience.

“Wow! Looks swank,” Lolita says upon laying eyes upon The Enchanted Hunters, his “vulgar darling” all naïve to Humbert’s faux suavity (methinks Humbert Humbert is the original Eurotrash). Nabokov makes several references to Flaubert in “Lolita” (so says "The Annotated 'Lolita,'" because really, folks, do you think I'm smart enough to make the connection on my own?), and if the circumstances of Emma Bovary and Delores Haze are wildly divergent, they both end in tragedy, a sense of which no amount of research can prepare one to express with words.

Back to the drawing board

I guess I am writing all this for the mere reason that I am coming face-to-face with the reality that if I am to continue trying to write fiction, I will need to get rid of this nasty habit of making stuff up and hoping that it’s right. (And I thought about writing a book about that kid who was kidnapped for four years, despite his opportunities to split, which makes me wonder just what happened…)

And if I want to write non-fiction — even first-person essays about Wife and Son and such — I’ll need to do some research, even interviews.

Uh, any volunteers? Feel free to e-mail me.

Whence Thou Art a Snob

2007-01-16T21:55:00.000-05:00

Anybody who knows me will say, “That Bookfraud despises pretentious people, writing, and art. That’s probably why he can’t sit through a ballet, video installations, and ‘Jackass 2.’”

Those people would be right. I hate pretense, for the simple reason that most of the time, I don’t get what the bugger is trying to say, making me look stupid. I’d rather be hit with a sharply hit line drive in the face than look stupid. So I’ll just ignore the whole thing altogether.

Hand-in-hand with pretense goes snobbery. If you don’t understand a work of art, thinks the snob, you must be uncivilized or just plain dumb.

I’ve been cogitating on this ever since I started seeing raves for Joanna Newsom’s “Ys,” a 2006 CD full of long, digressive tracks filled with heavy orchestration, harps and oblique but poetic verse.

Wondering what the fuss was about — “Ys” seemed to be on every “Best of 2006” list out there — I downloaded a couple of tracks.

To say this was difficult to listen to is like saying it’s hard to listen to the screams in a psych ward. Newsom is undeniably talented with the harp, but her compositions head towards atonal, her lyrics are digressive, and she has a voice that sounds as if it was born from the unholy union of Kate Bush and a hillbilly. It’s like listening to Schoenberg while a train screeches to a stop.

It’s pretense personified. Only snobs (i.e. critics) could get into this crap.

Ah, but you've probably spotted my hypocrisy. Only someone who is a snob would even mention Schoenberg (see extremely constipated-looking man, below), and only a person with amazing pretense would even compare Newsom to a classically trained composer. That’s my weakness. When it comes to music, I’m a snob. And I hate myself for it.

Twelve tones and 1,000 broken eardrums

I was one of those insufferable teenage boys who defined his friends by what graced their turntables. If you hated The Beatles, the Stones, Dylan, or the Clash, I probably would not have been your friend. You just didn’t have taste.

This snobbery got worse through college, as I learned more about music, proving that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I went so far as to write embarrassing letters to friends why they had to listen to the DKs and surrounding oneself with bad music was a living death.

As I expanded my horizons, my sense of superiority grew with it. You don’t like Coltrane? You don’t even own any Coltrane? Or even any Charlie Parker, Lionel Hampton, or Dizzy Gillespie? You troglodyte!

But it wasn’t until started going to the symphony in my mid-20s that my snootiness grew completely out of control. I signed up for a concert subscription, bought CD after CD, and really listened to them.

Today, classical music is the only kind I ever attend in concert — about five to ten times a year, on average. I’ve probably been to the symphony or recitals about 50 or 60 times.

Of course, I would never mention such a number gratuitously in order to show how cultured and intellectually superior I am over knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who wouldn’t know a concerto from a symphony from a Paris Hilton album.

This is pretty strong stuff from a fellow who can't play an instrument or read music.

I’ve talked about my hatred of pretentious or humorless fiction. And I know I’ve blogged about music ad nauseum, to the point that if you read between the lines, you can clearly see a nose pointed skyward. But the more I consider my youth — an exercise that I do frequently as the brat approaches birth — I realize that much of my worldview is shaped, for better or worse, by music.

Rock concerts and LPs sustained me through my sexless teenage years; a piano concerto played a role in my courting of Wife.

But what really strikes me is how much music plays a huge role in my writing. My novel is, essentially, about music and youth. The protagonist plays in a rock band, hangs out at blues clubs, and finds that is life is defined by a certain swivel-hipped fellow from Tupelo, Miss.

There’s more and more of this crap. Several short stories feature song lyrics (invented or existing) or entire scenes are set up with notes in the background. One story was predicated on the protagonist hearing “Also Sprach Zarathrusta” while he’s on hold. Another was titled “Sinatra Saves Stephen.”

So I come full circle here. Perhaps I judge Ms. Newsom too harshly; after all, many of her fans admit that her singing takes a bit of getting used to. It can’t be that all those critics who put “Ys” on their “Top 10 of 2006” are all wrong.

What the hell

I’ll probably give it another chance, otherwise, I risk being a reverse snob, fearing that what I cannot understand is inferior.

Or I can just blast “It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Want to Rock and Roll)” at 11, and to say, to hell with Joanna Newsom.

Excellent choice, Bookfraud.

Canada's Leading Export

2007-01-12T08:03:00.000-05:00

Wife is Canadian, which I do not hold against her, although isn't something I like known in public.

Canucks can be an odd bunch. Canadians hate Americans. They really do talk funny, and they are obsessed with hockey, much worse than any Yank (as they are wont to call us) is besotted with baseball or football. And they hate Americans.

On the plus side, Canada has given us excellent advances in cuisine, particularly in doughnuts and beer. Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Robertson Davies are Canucks. They have spectacular scenery and they have Montreal. Best of all, they can be hilarious.

Second City's Toronto outpost and its extension, SCTV, gave the world Dan Akroyd, Gilda Radner, Catherine O'Hara, Andrea Martin, Eugene Levy, Dave Thomas, Joe Flaherty, Rick Moranis, Martin Short, and, lest we never forget, the late, great John Candy. That's not to mention "The Kids in the Hall," "Trailer Park Boys," and Jim Carrey, who, I understand, has fans who actually think he's a laff riot.

Now, I point you to another great comedic innovation from the Great White North: the Canadian Public Service Announcement.

Before you read further, watch the video below. You will find it disturbing or you will die laughing.

This is undoubtedly one of the funniest things I have ever seen.

The television show mentioned above is an appropriate reference: the guy goes flying through the air like an SCTV dummy. I didn't think, "Wow! Drinking and driving is awful!" but rather "That's what you get when you're a pompous ass talking into a camera and not paying attention to what's going on around you. I also thought, "That's awesome."

I literally laughed until it hurt. Wife came over to look at me, and must of thought me a sicko. But as Mel Brooks said, "I stub my toe, it's a tragedy. You fall into a hole and die, that's comedy." (Similar spots put out by the same outfit show people hurt in car crashes, and are definitely not humorous.)

There are also two other Canadian PSAs worth viewing, though I am reticent to post them. They show violence against women, which is not humorous in the least. However, these PSAs are so far over the top that they left me with my mouth hanging open, in the "I can't believe they actually did this" sense of things. (See them here and here. Warning: at least one of you will find these offensive, or offensive that I found any type of humor in them.)

What will strike anyone about all of these PSAs is the violence, the idea being that showing a car crash or woman being soaked in hot coffee will horrify the viewer to think, "Hey, maybe drinking and driving or this domestic violence thing isn't so great after all!"

I came across these nuggets as I was trying to recall yet another PSA from our friends north of the border, in one of my all-time pieces of lost television. In the spot, a man throwing down a Molson's and his daughter are seen leaving a cookout.

We then see the father and daughter driving away. Dad runs through a stop sign, the daughter screams "Daaaaaaad!", and a semi tractor-trailer slams into the side of the car. (As my brother-in-law aptly put it, "The T-bone!")

Cut to the man who hosted the cookout. He's on the telephone. The look on his face indicates that he's just learned that the Maple Leafs have moved to Memphis, Tennessee, but it is something less serious.

"What do you mean?" he says. "They were just here." I don't know how the police would know that the victims were just at the cookout, especially the implication that they're dead.

(If anyone out there knows where to find this clip, please alert me now. I will name our first born after you, especially if your name is Raoul.)

Now you know where Volkswagen got the idea for its own car crash commercials, the ones in which two people are riding along in their VWs, enjoying an afternoon of farfegnugen, when they get slammed.

There are others I've seen from Canada: a gambling addict screaming at his computer ("It's not fair!") and a psychotically cheery Home Ec teacher telling us to eat different colored vegetables at every meal. All these pieces have one thing in common: they end up parodying themselves.

Now there's a role model

I have my theories why Canada puts out such sincere yet ludicrous stuff.

1. They are sincere yet ludicrous.
2. They need to get laid.
3. They hate Americans.

My best theory is that there is a dichotomy between the serious Canadians, those with utmost rectitude, and the ludicrous Canadians who make funny television and movies, and never the twain shall meet. Like I said, I SCTV might have made the video posted above, except it would be Johnny LaRue, Count Floyd, or Edith Prickley flying through the air.

And so you ask: Bookfraud, are you going to stop drinking and blogging?

The Bums of Navarone

2007-01-09T20:48:00.000-05:00

If you can’t go home again, you can watch it on cable.

I had such an experience recently when I saw “The Guns of Navarone” over the weekend. For those unfamiliar, “Guns” is a 1961 movie about an Allied mission to knock out two massive cannons that are blasting the British fleet out of the Aegean. It has an all-star cast: Gregory Peck, David Niven, and Anthony “I Was Zorba the Greek” Quinn.

I remember viewing it several times on the ABC Movie of the Week and the CBS Movie! and such, between the ages of 8 and 12. But I hadn’t seen it for about 30 years.

The verdict on watching “Guns”? It’s bad. Reaaaaaaaaaly bad. It’s not just the cheap-looking special effects, which might have represented the apotheosis of cinematic achievement 46 years ago, replete with bathtub renditions of sinking ships and model-ready fake artillery falling down a Styrofoam mountain into a fake sea. It’s not just the performances, straight outta the 19th Century School of Crappy Stage Acting. It’s not just the stupid love scenes (yes) or the dialog, which features gems like, “If we don’t get the explosives, then the Germans will find them first. That will mean that the mission has failed.”

No, these things I could abide. What put me over the edge was the blood.

As a bullet pierced flesh, it looked like someone had dropped a pot of red ink on the victim's wound. Splotch, splotch.

Of course, the blood is indicative of something larger. When one of the heroes throws a grenade, every German soldier within a five-mile radius collapses. When somebody is shot — even with a single bullet — they fall to the floor dead, silent. No groaning, moaning, no screaming in agony, much less severed limbs and heads being blown apart. You know, the things that happen in combat.

Give this man a cuppa joe

“The Guns of Navarone” also reminded me of “Sands of Iwo Jima,” staring John Wayne. When one man is blodlessly shot in combat, he has the presence of mind to say a shema before dying. (Glad to know that someone in Hollywood thought of the Jews.)

Forrest Tucker, the dude from “F-Troop,” also starred in “Sands,” accounting for the most risible scene ever in the history of war movies. He leaves his foxhole to get ammo for two other soldiers, who are pinned by Japanese snipers. But instead of running back with ammunition, Tucker stops and gets coffee. Yes, he drops by the Iwo Jima Starbucks and gets a grande skim latte while his fellow G.I.s are getting their asses shot off.

“Man, that’s great coffee!” he says, getting a refill (he gets a seconds!). “Here, put some joe in the canteen so I can bring ‘em back to my buddies!” The buddies are dead, of course, because Forrest didn’t get the ammo back to them in time, because he was drinking coffee.

Dereliction of duty never tasted so good.

This is not to dismiss childhood pleasures, or that I should have expected “Guns” to be as gripping as I had envisioned. Things are never as good or bad as one remembers, of course, and I imagine reviewing all of my childhood television and movie consumption would be to simply open a treasure trove of embarrassment.

No, what ate at me the most is that nothing about the movie rang true. Nothing. The Germans are so incompetent, you wonder how they overran Greece in the first place. The blood is so fake that you thought you were watching a commercial for Ragu. The dialog, acting, plot, effects — not a single thing was honest. One can’t expect “Saving Private Ryan” in 1961, much less “Platoon” or “Bride of Chucky,” but I would hope that there’d been something mildly accurate in any movie of any generation.

Mr. Cooler King

Writers must hew to the truth to be worth a damn. I can’t really say that anything in “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” is true, but at least George Bush’s favorite book has some truth in it: the transformation of caterpillar to butterfly. In fact, there’s more truth in “Caterpillar” than George Bush has ever spoken.

If someone turned “The Guns of Navarone” into a novel, it would be…well, “The Guns of Navarone,” a 1957 novel by Alistair MacLean. Fiction writers don’t want to write what happened, but they want the truth. That’s the only thing that matters, be it a truth about human character, the narrator’s pet Shar-pei, or the price of gasoline.

I had something profound to say to end this, but I forgot what it was. Oh, yeah. If you really want to see a great war movie, try "The Great Escape." Charles Bronson. James Gartner. James Coburn. Dudes digging tunnels. Evil Nazis. Best off all, Steve McQueen, the Cooler King, trying to jump a barbed-wire fence on a motorcyle. What more could you want? And here's the kicker: "The Great Escape" actually happened.

It Makes Me Sick

2007-01-07T15:29:00.000-05:00

I thought about calling this post “Illness as Metaphor.” However, that would represent a kind of intellectual plagiarism, as well as skirting the matter, and I have read about as much Susan Sontag as I have Vladimir Polensk Isneninov (out of print).

There’s no gentle or cerebral way to put it: I suffer from frequent illnesses of the bacterial variety, and I will probably not be relieved of this condition for the rest of my years.

These colds— attacks of sinusitis, to be precise — have plagued me for most of my adulthood. Though one can take preventive steps to avoid contracting them, once I get sick, it’s Mucous City, Exhaustionville, City of Slug.

When I get sick, it’s also a great excuse not to write, not to blog, not to visit other’s blogs. And I they can help me ignore world poverty, the war in Iraq, global warming or any other inconvenient truths that my mess up my fragile psyche.

As Wife heads down the road to delivery and I down the road to impending happiness and responsibility, I realize how much this tendency to become ill makes me rather melancholy. I’ve been able to attend work, and been managing to post to the blog, but the rest of blogworld has been a void — no visits, no comments, nothing.

I catch sinus infections at predictable times: changes in the weather, lack of sleep, time spent in arid places (after four days in Las Vegas without a humidifier, I came back ill. So much for what happens there staying there. Does that slogan also mean VD?).

Sinusitis will turn you into this man

The latest such incident comes after a trip to visit my wife’s family over the holidays. I awaited at a gate full of screaming children and rode in an airplane with recirculated air. I slept in dry apartment and would wake up feeling as if someone had an extremely large finger up my nose. I ate a lot of food saturated in fat and drank at least one too many beers each night.

By the time we returned, I couldn’t breathe out of my nose. Each night I slept with open mouth, and I often I awoke with the sensation that somebody had been dumping sand down my throat.

For those uninitiated with sinus infections, they are a beast of a particular nature. Not really a “cold,” but not the flu, either, they are marked by heavy congestion, exhaustion, and massive amounts of mucous (of such a particular green-brown-yellow tint that trying to describe it would do it no justice).

The thing that sucks about getting a sinus infection is that it lays you low for a couple of weeks, but not badly enough to miss work. It makes you unproductive, listless, and stupid, which makes for a great imitation of the incompetent managerial class. One is essentially transformed into a life-support system for a snot factory.

About a dozen years ago, things had gotten so bad that I was getting sick every month. I had been to doctors – many doctors, each who had his own, incorrect theory about the source of my misery. I had allergies. Asthma. Chronic fatigue syndrome. I probably would have been diagnosed with mad cow had it been in vogue.

Finally, it occurred to me that perhaps an otolaryngologist (you know, an ear, nose, throat dude) just might be the right person to see. It was found that I had polyps blocking my nasal passages that would require surgery. The surgery was a success, and the frequency and severity of my colds decreased. But the sinus infections never went away completely.

The problem with sinusitis is that it lays both your body and mind inoperable. You can spend hours staring at a computer screen, having forgotten why you even turned on the computer in the first place.

Germ warfare

I imagine that these bouts of infections will become more frequent after our son is born, being that parental sleep becomes as precious as that stupid ring Gollem kept wheezing over. I’m already worried that I will never have time to write once the child has taken over our lives, and that I am likely to be ill much of the time makes me more neurotic still.

Then again, they say early parenthood is like feeling you’re sick all the time. Perhaps this has been this cosmic training, my body’s way of preparing me for fatherhood, all the suffering for all those years having a real purpose in life.

OK, now that has been settled, I have to blow my nose for two minutes straight.

Resolute

2007-01-03T20:14:00.000-05:00

I am loathe to make New Year’s resolutions, as I see no reason for waiting until January 1 before changing bad behavior.

In addition, I am more likely to attend a Star Trek convention dressed as a Klingon chick than to keep any resolutions I make.

Still, exhausted from my holiday sojourn to places far from home, I am unlikely to write an entry actually worth reading for several days, not that anything published here is worth reading, anyway.

But enough of the spirited self-depreciation. Bookfraud Mark II. Or, 2007.

•I will endeavor to give up smoking, drinking, whoring, and shooting up, and will not write “objective correlative” ever again.

•Every day, I will write something about my addiction to _________ as I hope to write a non-fiction masterpiece.

•Every day, I will write something about how I don’t want to write a non-fiction masterpiece.

•I will continue to try and get my novel published, with the hope that my son can hold his head high and say, “My dad isn’t a total failure!”

•In the spirit of impending fatherhood, so that my son will grow up in a kind, non-threatening, loving environment, I hereby promise to strike the following words and phrases from my vocabulary: Fuck. Goddamn. Damn. Shit. Motherfucker. Asshole. Dickhead. This should leave me with about eight words.

My main man Marcel

•Also, I will not pound my fist on my desk and scream “Goddamn motherfucking piece of shit!” every time my computer crashes. Every second time should be sufficient to teach the computer a lesson.

•Instead of spending hours in front of the television, my brain eaten away as surely as an eagle feasted on Prometheus’ booze filter, I will read, think, and drop allusions to Greek mythology in my prose.

•If, years from now, my son says, “I like musicals,” I will not freak out nor will I fall into a bigoted depression. Instead, I will tell him, “Did you know ‘Full Metal Jacket’ has some great music in it?”

•I may also tell my Broadway-addled son, “Play baseball or else.”

•I will empty the hateful caldron of my brain of bad thoughts towards other people, strangers in particular, who have the innate, magical ability to ruin my commute every morning through their fine language of body and mouth. For those of you who push and scream and make 90 minutes of my work day a living hell, I won’t belittle your intelligence, mock your appearance, or fantasize that when you are walking up your driveway, a B-52 will drop six tons of excrement on you.

•I resolve to faithfully visit other blogs, comment regularly, and provide the support that bloggers deserve in the icy catacombs of cyberspace.

•I also resolve to quit my job so that I can have time to visit other blogs, not to mention write about my addiction to _________, visit museums, go to plays, travel, build my own villa on Lake Como, and learn how to play the violin better than that damn Joshua Bell.

•Instead of bitching about global warming and how our President and his cronies are trying to deny it, I will do something, starting with buying pollution credits — the more you credits buy, the less carbon dioxide a utility will dump into the air.

Killer lit!

•I will read the 20th Century Classics “The Man Without Qualities,” “Ulysses,” and “A la recherche du temps perdu.”

•I will then read the 20th Century Classics “All-Girl Office,” “Killer Dyke,” and “Orgy of the Dolls.” Several times.

•And to ensure that 2007 will be a happy year for Wife as she approaches motherhood, I will take it upon myself to voluntarily cook, clean, and keep house.

•Stop laughing.

Best American Whatever

2007-01-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

I am sitting in an airport terminal, stoked on Diet Coke With Lime, feverishly trying to get my thoughts online before the stroke of midnight.

Because if this is dated Dec. 31, I figure that I will qualify for the “Best American Essays 2006,” forcing a massive recall of the already-published volume; the publishers will then reissue the collection to include the very essay that now sits before your hung over, bloodshot eyes.

It’s not that this “essay” is better than everything in “Best American Essays,” but I know that it’s better than something in the book, certainly better than a few I’ve already read. It’s not that the writing is pedestrian or bad, as everything in this collection is competent and sensible.

But that’s just it. Many of what’s in there is merely competent: either the ideas or writing is interesting, but never both. It only gets halfway there. It’s like a doctor who makes a proper diagnosis and then prescribes “Doc Bonar’s Miracle Elixir” as the cure.

I don’t want competent. I don’t want merely engaging. I want transporting. I want power. I want Charlize Theron, Angelina Jolie, or Uma Thurman. (Any one will do! Though Uma would be tops.)

I’ve always found that these books are more of a point of comparison rather than inspiration, as in, “I can’t believe that this whale turd of a story even got published in the first place.” This sentiment always followed completion of a particularly lame entry in “Best American Short Stories of 20__” (Or of “19__”).

The reason I’m even reading “BAE 2006” is that I’m trying to work on another “project” as I watch my most recent book sink like Captain Ahab attached to the Great White Whale (Turd), that Whale (Turd) being my unpublished novel. This yet-as-fleshed-out work of non-fiction is about my addiction to ________, and figured “Best American Essays” would help kick start the project.

It hasn’t worked. I’ve read barely half of this collection, but it feels like I’m reading the same old shit again and again. Some of the pieces follow a well-worn template, the Voyage of Discovery under the guise of a Larger Issue: Racism, Human Sexuality, Addiction & Recovery, The Length of My Armpit Hair. Those types of essays are the Doc Bonars of the group, the ones I’ve read so far and prompted me to put pen to paper as I await Accidentally On-Time Airlines to get a damn plane to the damn gate.

Didion: the real deal

The fully accredited surgeons in this group are the usual suspects: Adam Gopnik, Susan Orlean, Oliver Sacks, otherwise known as 2006’s Traveling All-Stars of The New Yorker. I haven’t read the latter three’s entries as of yet, but I know that they will be interesting and well-written, and have nothing to do with Armpit Hair. (Even before I peruse them I know Gopnik’s will be a first-person account of a personal matter like fatherhood or life in Paris; Orlean’s will be about a person far more unusual than we meet in daily life; and Dr. Sacks will regale us with a medical condition dealing with the brain, like the Dude who Mistook His Weiner for a Cadillac Escalade SUV).

This is all good but hardly a inspiration to write about my addiction to _________. Perhaps I was expecting something along the lines of Mark Twain, Joan Didion, H.L. Mencken. I pulled out an old volume of essays and read a couple by Didion — short, brilliant, and packing more power in a single paragraph that some essayists can generate in a lifetime.

It makes me wonder about the “Best American” series. To say that it has spawned a life of its own would be a folly of understatement. There’s a “B.A.” collection for everything: short stories, essays, travel writing, science writing, music writing, erotica, sports writing, and several more; I suspect that soon we will be subjected to “Best American Letters to the Editor, ” “Best American Classified Ads, ” and “Best American Footnotes. ” The “Best” has become a publishing genre into itself. They'll have the “Best of the Best American Writing Series” within a few years.

That’s what I should be aiming for. Not to write a piece that will provoke and promote debate, as an essay, or writing that entertains and challenges and gives insight into the human condition, as a short story. Or something simply to inform, such as a book review or a travel piece. I should be writing a Best American Crap of Some Sort That Involves Words.

Completely gratuitous photo of yet another woman I will never meet

Well, I didn’t quite finish this before 2006 ended, as I actually got on a flight, landed, took a cab home, spent New Year’s Eve with a cold that staged its own Phlegmapalooza, annoyed Wife with my incessant whining, went to sleep at 10 p.m., and awoke to a new, damp year. Maybe this will make it into “Best American Essays” of 2007. All I need is a magazine to pick up this essay.

You know you want to. It will make 2007 the Best year ever.

Vacation Notice

2006-12-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

Bookfraud is out on vacation until sometime in 2007. He has no access to e-mail, the Internet, computers, cell phones, telephones, cable TV, radio, newspapers, postcards, letters, pen, paper, or language. He will be unable to answer your inquiries until he returns, though he probably won't.

If your request is in the matter of "writing" or "publishing," please contact his "agent," whose name is not "Murray," "Ira," or "Morty." Do not contact said agent unless you are prepared to hand over a six-figure check or a Porsche.

If your request has to do with his job, just go to hell.

If your request has to do with this blog, feel free to make comments, but don't expect a reply. If you are one of those jerkoffs who has been periodically spamming the comments section with gibberish in Italian, scopata voi stessi. (I think.)

If your matter is urgent, you have come to the wrong place.

Happy Holidays.

BF

Altered States

2006-12-17T22:34:00.001-05:00

I was fully prepared to devote an entry to a topic utterly revolting, infantile, and repulsive, but I thought, ah, what the hell, let's try something different.

It has been a well-repeated (if not proven) factoid that the longer a couple is together, the more they look alike. This is probably why Pamela Anderson and Kid Rock are now Splitsville, though I not know if Pam dumped him because she worried about morphing into her husband one day, or if Kid Rock had nightmares that enormous mountains of silicone would one day form on his chest.

Also, if one does tend to look like their partner over time, I imagine that all the 22-yearold Russian supermodels with 80-year-old millionaire boyfriends are headed for a bad ending, though Viagra has already made their pretty lives pretty miserable.

If Wife started looking like me, but I would not leave her, although our sex life would be kaput, for I might start thinking I was making love to myself, and you shouldn’t make love to someone you hate.

Although our physical appearances are in no threat of converging, of late our creative states are similar, and sadly for the worst. I’m uninspired, she’s uninspired, and this makes for a lot of bad writing. Wife is in the desperate race to finish her novel before she gives birth in a few months, and I am in the desperate race to figure out what to do with my novel before I die, which may happen any day between now and 2060.

It’s not just that we’re unhappy with our respective output; it’s that we’re just not feeling the urge to create. Nothing I read is inspiring me, ditto for Wife, and about the only thing that moves either of us is music. Which we don’t compose.

Required reading

(Wife can write circles around yours truly. For her, a slump means her writing is merely excellent; for me, merely excrement.)

This lack of creativity can come across in other unpleasant manifestations. Wife is angry at me for some supposed household infractions, including (but not limited to) lack of initiative in cleaning, cooking, conducting “research” for forthcoming baby, and other imagined and real offenses that all have to do with domesticity.

I can get rather pissy at Wife for her getting pissy at me, and the cycle of love-anger-love begins anew. Much of this anguish concerns the onset of Wife’s pregnancy, and the natural fears that motherhood will extinguish her career — if I don’t help out, she’ll be swamped and depressed, unable to ever write again.*

By all accounts of friends who have experienced the miracle of birth, writing fiction does not exactly take precedence when Junior is projectile vomiting while soiling through several thousand diapers a day. A parent’s free time is when baby is napping, and if you are lucky, you’ll be napping as well. When it comes to writing, the first six months — well, fuggitaboutit.

It is this certainty that should make both Wife and I writing fiends instead of neurotic masses of indecisive chum. Of course, we’ll get back into the swing of things, perhaps before retirement age.

Already, well before my child is born, I am envisioning a fatherly talk I’ll have with my son (ultrasound confirmed it’s a wiener). Such a talk often entails bromides on telling the truth, never getting into cars with strangers, or the unfathomable mysteries of sex, which, to be honest, I probably should not talk about, lest I ruin the kid’s sex life forever.

In any case, I will be direct, and loving, and fair: “Son, the world is full of great possibility. There is so much to learn, to see, to do. Don’t let anyone say you can’t do something, and always believe in yourself. Always follow your heart — you can be a doctor, a musician, an artist, a scientist. Whatever you want, you can achieve, just as you put your mind to it.

But for God’s sakes, don’t become a fucking narcissistic neurotic writer like your old man. Please? I don’t want to kick your ass over this. Thank you. You’re a good son.”

*(This is where the disgusting part was supposed to be. I was going to write about my newfound spirit of assistance in the household arts to help Wife through this difficult stretch. Borrowing from an infamous Saturday Night Live skit from the 1970s that never made it to air, I was going to write about a great new dish that I could cook following the birth of our child. Of course, I speak of placenta. Placenta burgers, placenta stroganoff, placenta Wellington.

It’s what's for dinner

And if you just can’t make it with placenta, you have to use what that SNL parody was selling: Placenta Helper! (“Wow, Mom, that’s great placenta!” “Oh, son, it’s not just placenta – it’s Placenta Helper!” “Can we have it again tomorrow?” “No, silly – you’ll have to wait for another brother or sister first!”)

What’s more disturbing is that there are people who actually keep and cook their placenta. Let’s eat!)

Quiz Show

2006-12-13T21:38:00.000-05:00

I present to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury yet more evidence that our nation is in decline simply because it does not read. This evidence, ironically enough, has been gathered from watching TV.

It story goes like this. Occasionally, I drag my sorry self to the health club, climb on a stationary bike, and begin a long trip to nowhere that will hopefully stave off until at least 2008 my inevitable knee implant. Since I sweat like a Boss Hogg in a steam room, it’s impossible for me to read as I spin the pedals. Small televisions are attached to the stationary bikes, and I’ll watch tube instead.

As perspiration drips off by the gallon, I often watch “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Not only does this show go far in confirming my smug sense of superiority over the American body politic, but it provides ample distraction from the pain I am enduring at the time, as well as the fact if a paramedic saw me, he’d drag me off and slap on the paddles and scream “Clear!”

Now, for anyone who has watched “Millionaire,” you will know that contestants answer multiple-choice questions that get harder as you progress. Not that I am saying I would win a million bucks, but I did observe the other day that contestants could not answer the following questions without help:

--Which of the following sections in a book is presented alphabetically? An appendix, index, table of contents, or footnotes?

--Where off Australia’s coast is the Great Barrier Reef? The NE, NW, SE, SW?

--Is Osama bin-Laudin not left-handed, 5-8, brown-eyed, or in need of a cane to walk?

(Now, I don’t know if you could answer all of these, but I’m guessing that you could answer at least one. If not, then I have seriously misjudged the readership here. Please, tell me you know the answer to the first question. Otherwise, I quit.)

It’s sexy time to read!

If you don’t know that an index appears at the back of a book, you may or not be stupid, but it definitely means you don’t read many books. Even if you’re not an insular, Ugly American, if you don’t know that the GBR is on Australia’s northeast coast, you haven’t cracked open an atlas awhile or don’t read accounts chronicling the reef’s decline.

And if one read newspapers, magazines surfed CNN.com or hell, even watched the television news once in a while, one would know 6-6 Osama is tall enough to be a power forward for the Al-Queda Buttholes.

What I found a bit sad was after not knowing what an index is, the contestant knew that the TV show “Full House” was set in San Francisco, for which I conjure images of a bathhouse in the Castro. (Which probably says something about myself that I shouldn’t have said. I mean, I’ve never been to a bathhouse. Not alone, I mean.)

Perhaps I am being a Pollyanna to believe The World Would Be a Better Place If People Read Books, but I’m thinking, these people are supposed to represent our great nation, they vote, they represent the brainpower that is supposed keep our nation an economic superpower. Let’s just quit now and succumb to the inevitable Asian takeover.

Oh, sure, I’m smug. In one edition of the greatest cartoon of all time, “Life in Hell,” tells us how to be an Unrecognized Genius. I can’t fully describe Matt Groening’s brilliance here; the cartoon has one of Groenig’s iconic man-rabbits sullenly watching a game show in which the contestant can’t figure out that Fred Flinstone says “Yabba dabba do!” The artist mumbles, “Idiot. Those prizes are rightfully mine.”

Like I say, I simply don’t want to ridicule people with low IQs. But as anybody who watched five minutes of Borat will know, many of my fellow Americans are, say, somewhat ignorant. Perhaps not all or even most of us, but enough to humiliate the nation as a whole.

Such people can’t find Canada on a map, don’t know the three branches of the federal government, and have more interest in baseball than the tragedies surrounding us, at home and abroad.

Says it all

It’s too bad we elected such a person twice to the Presidency. But making fun of such people, to paraphrase what a friend once, is like making fun of retarded people (which is what Borat does).

Like our attention-deficit plagued, probably dyslexic president, Americans don’t read much. And if they did, perhaps our great nation will not have to suffer through an inevitable economic collapse, or at least not humiliate ourselves on television. After all, most of the people who don’t know the answer to “Millionaire” questions are simply ignorant of the world. If they read, they wouldn’t come off as stupid.

Well, maybe not all of them. Like the woman who thought that the giant screens at rock concerts and sports stadiums was called a “SuperTron.”

We all know it’s “ToejamTron.”

Size Matters

2006-12-10T20:42:00.000-05:00

I have just completed something that, for most people, would be a cause for celebration, or at least relief: I finished rewriting my novel, making it certifiable for resubmission.

But I’m not like most people, and in this case, the difference is not for the better. For while I restructured and rewrote and re-everything, I came away cutting 30 pages. Only 30 pages. For a 380-page book, that’s less than 8 percent. That works out to about 1 percent a month.

Wife, far wiser and pregnant than I shall ever be, noted quite correctly that size doesn’t always matter—even when less is more—and that 30 pages consigned to the dumpster, of itself, is not bad.

But if the dumpster is not full, the author is then sure constipated still. My expectations were cut about 50 or more pages: a lean mean fiction machine. In rejecting the novel, almost all the editors said what held them back was that they’d lost interest by the end—the plot was too confusing, and while they dug the characterizations and writing, it wasn’t enough to ultimately win them over.

(It is creepy to read letters that are about you but are addressed to someone else, in this case, my agent. You’re referred to in the third person — “Bookfraud left me a little cold”—as if you were a corpse being examined by medical examiners. )

I am missing the point, of course, which is if was the right 30 pages, I done well. Streamling is not my natural course of action: when in doubt, I’ll lard on characters, description, action, and exposition.

A lean mean writing machine

What is ironic about this was when I first sat down to write the novel, I feared that the premise was too vaporous upon which to build a book. Unconsciously, I went over the top in some places, as if filler would somehow confer “weightiness” to my labors. It’s always better to overwrite than underwrite, and if this was not a rationalization, it certainly gave me the thinnest of reasons to stack word upon word, building a tower that would surely fall if I were to remove a single sentence.

So I came away with an unwieldy door-stopper, some 450 pages of this novel, of which, I’d gather, at least 200 pages were crap. I rewrote and rewrote, until I got it down to the 330-page, sorta-kinda-perhaps streamlined machine of fiction that resides on my hard drive.

Mind you, I’m not expecting miracles. The book has been turned down about 20 times, and even though many of the rejection letters said the same thing, my agent was steadfast in insisting that I shouldn’t rewrite it. “It’s like giving Christmas gifts,” he said. “You have to find the right present for the right person.”

Sears probably had fewer returns on Dec. 26. To make matters worse, I’ve been given advice from another agent, who told me, in so many words, that I’m fucked. He told me that agents hate taking previously rejected work, don’t want to look like they’re “stealing” clients, and don’t resend work to editors who have rejected books in the first place.

Fair enough. But he told me directly that I should probably stick with my current agent, because nobody else is going to want to take me.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m at wit’s end. It makes me feel like the past eight months rewriting the damn thing is a waste, no matter how different it is. Add the fact I only pared 30 pages, and you get one seriously neurotic fellow whose idea of fun is curling into a fetal position more tightly than his yet-to-be born child is in right now.

And then I woke up

Rarely have I felt more at a loss about what to do. I’ve even written Miss Snark in the desperate hope she’ll answer my letter (sadly, she did. Advice: you’re fucked. Though said in a nice way.). I’m thinking about having a Bookfraud Burns the Novel Party, one last shot at merriment before the baby comes.

I realize that I have ventured far from the original thread of this post, but certain topics simply drive me nuts, and it is extremely hard to keep focused, and hell, let’s face it, I just wanted to get all this stuff off my chest.

Once you think you have this writing thing licked, it licks you right back. After eating at Taco Bell.

The Secret Santa

2006-12-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

The scene: a snowy Christmas Eve. An exhausted writer has fallen asleep in the living room, head tucked in, a book on his chest. Suddenly, the writer hears a thundering noise, and wakes up to see a man in a red suit coming out of the chimney!

Damn! What the fuck?

Heh, heh, heh! Marry Christmas!

What? Who are you?

I’m Santa Claus!

Funny, you don't look like him. I mean, you aren't a fat white dude.

Oh, yes, heh, heh, heh! Marry Christmas!

Excuse me, I hate to interrupt, but Santa says, “Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

Oh, yes. You have to understand, I'm still learning the job. Christmas is not a big holiday in Mumbai.

Uh, where the fuck is Santa Claus?

I am Santa. Actually, sir, his job was downsized in a business process outsourcing move. Isn't my English good?

Santa got outsourced? Get the fuck out of here.

I am not to leave just yet.

No, I meant, what happened to Santa?

Oh, yes. He had his priorities realigned with the good of stockholders. The elves, too. They were costing too much, threatening to strike and such. So they decided to outsource — they get twice the elf quality at half the cost!

And then Santa himself got outsourced?

Management saw what a great job we were doing, so Santa was replaced, too. We are Virtual Ex-Mas in Bangalore. We are the world's leading business process outsourcing company for the holiday season.

No offense, but Santa is a jolly white dude. You know, Kris Kringle, St. Nicholas.

Do not let your inherent racism and cultural bias sway you. There are black Santas, white Santas, Latino Santas. And there are even Indian Santas

True, but I didn't think Christianity had many adherents in India.

Where to look for work

It doesn't. However, Christmas is celebrated in my native land by Christians and non-Christians alike. Plus, I deliver all the toys to the world's homes at a fraction of the cost of your white Santa. Marry Christmas! Heh, heh, heh!

What happened to the elves? What happened to Santa?

Oh, I understand the elves found fulfilling positions at Wal-Mart Stores. Santa, sadly, was fired from his job of pretending to be himself at Macy's Department Store.

I can't believe they outsourced Santa.

Well, it first started when they started buying Santa's red suit from Bangladesh. That meant Mrs. Claus had to find a new job, and I understand now that she's an extremely well-paid adult entertainer living in Los Angeles.

I'm going to vomit.

Her videos are top sellers—there are a lot of people who find Mrs Claus very enjoyable. I do understand she is tested twice a month for disease.

Santa outsourced — how could it happen?

It was a matter of time, Mr. Bookfraud. The sleigh was made in China, the reindeer are from Vietnam, and the candy canes are made in the Philippines.

So what the hell are you doing here?

Let me check my list here…it says, “Bookfraud: naughty, and angry to boot. Plus, he’s a writer. Not even a lump of coal.” Sorry.

Well, I never get anything for Christmas. But can you finish my novel for me?

Actually—

That was a joke, Santa.

I also have a message for you.

A message?

It reads, "Dear Dr. Bookfraud: given the state of the world economy, and given trends in publishing and literature, you should forsake your quixotic quest of publishing your novel and perhaps focus your energies on more prosaic things, such as watching the Cubs and masturbating."

What the hell does that mean?

It means that all creative pursuits like people trying to write novels in their spare time would be better served by having someone else do it for them.

I don't understand.

Let me put it this way (Isn’t that how you say it?). You Americans are already are losing the literature battle, Mr. Bookfraud. We've got more English-speaking people in India than you have in the United States. And look at how many great novels in English that have come out of India in the past 20, 25 years. It's nothing to snooze at!

Americans want too much money for writing -- why pay an unproven writer a $500,000 advance for a novel when you could outsource it for one-tenth that amount? You should outsource your novel overseas.

But there's a difference between being American or English and writing in English. It's hard to write about life in America if you've never been here.

What are you talking about! We watch "Friends"! We watch "American Idol"! We watch "The Facts of Life"!

Look, Santa, I may lose my regular, 9-to-5 job to somebody in a cubicle farm a million miles away. But you can't replace creativity. You can't make someone a brilliant writer just by paying them.

I don't understand. Everything can be outsourced! Writing is a repetitive, rules-based process that a young man can do on the cheap. It is inevitable, Mr. Bookfraud. There are several best-selling authors who already send their work to us. Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, and all of chick-lit is written in India.

You know, you're right. Go ahead and write all of the fiction for us.

Macy's latest hire

Um...you mean that?

Yes! Because I don’t get paid for doing this, anyway! Because I have lost several years of my life and mental health in pursuit of writing fiction! Because I would gladly pay for some stranger to get my goddamn life's work in print if I could, if I could also transport all the suffering I've endured for it! Do you know what I'm talking about?

I can understand why you might be upset at losing your job, however—

No! No! It's not that! You can't outsource creativity, you buffoon! Like Einstein said, “If I had not been born, somebody would have discovered relativity, but if Beethoven had not been born, there would have never been a Ninth Symphony.”

Please, do not get hostile because the world's economic forces are turning inevitably against your nation. I must go now. I have to deliver a teddy-bear sweater to somebody named "Dick Cheney."

Fine, do what you have to do. But it’s obvious that your company has a long way to go in this outsourcing Santa Claus deal.

Why is this?

I'm Jewish. And Santa doesn't visit Jews.

Oh. I did not know this. I apologize...uh, may I ask you something?

Yes.

What's a Jew?

TB and Me

2006-12-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

I’ve discovered the reason why I’m not a better writer. It’s antibiotics.

Let us start with the Christmas season and the personal pain I feel during it. Not the mental kind of anguish, with drunken fathers pissing on the X-Mas tree on the ABC Movie of the Week or choking on Aunt Bertha’s Fruitcake of Death. It is not the financial pain over paying $500 for Junior’s MegaManPlayStationTalkingAnusSuperDoll or the legal woes when you’re arrested for assault after mugging an old lady over a parking spot.

(One of the great things about being Jewish is that one doesn’t have to fret over such Christmas evils, and if there ever was a Festival of Lights that approached these holiday dramatics, I daresay it was only because somebody tried lighting the Christmas Bush instead of a menorah.)

My pain is quite literal. Read one or more of my entries, and you may detect the bitching in regards to my knees. These oft-injured joints have put at least two orthopedic surgeons’ children through Harvard, and more recently, I have had trouble with my back, which twisted into something resembling an advanced knot from the Boy Scout Handbook.

The dry, cold weather only exacerbates my aches and pains, and if there was ever a bright spot to global warming, it’s that my knees petrify into stalagmites in January instead of November.

Feel my pain

Among the younger set in my cohort of friends (those youngsters under 40) my various aches and pains are a standing punchline. I’m old, cranky, and curmudgeonly. I can’t play basketball or tennis; forget that hike into the mountains with an incline over 3 degrees high or 15 minutes long. I injured my knees many years ago, and my back only a few years ago, and I all roll this into my inevitable decline into decreptitude.

Getting old is not that interesting, as Groucho Marx once said: all you have do is live long enough. While aging brings wisdom and patience to some, it just makes me neurotic, as in, I’m too old to be having my first child, and too old to publish my first novel. The former will happen in several months, and the latter may not happen ever.

But my aches and pains are simply that; they are not life-threatening diseases. For slackers like myself, modern medicine is the worst enemy of art. Even though I may not admit it, subconsciously I figure that I will live until I’m 70 or 80. Though I’ll probably be a blubbering fool by then, there’s plenty of gas left in the tank to waste.

Most of history did not afford this luxury of assumption. You made it past 40 and you were doing pretty good. This is where penicillin comes in. I wonder how I would have lived in the days before modern medicine, for it is antibiotics that combat the 19th Century’s favorite disease: tuberculosis.

Everybody and their mom died of TB back when, and it seemed half of them were famous writers. Keats plotzed dead from tuberculosis at 25. Emily Bronte also succumbed to tuberculosis at 30; her sister Charlotte wasn’t 40. Chekov kicked from consumption, as did George Orwell (and in the 1940s). Neither man was yet 50.

Thanks to antibiotics, an American is more likely to die today from laughing himself to death than from most bacterial infections, and though TB still exists (and kills millions worldwide) , your typical American can reasonably expect to make it to 70 without coughing up blood or spending one’s final weeks at a sanatorium.

And, of course, Chekhov

If I had that figurative Sword of Damocles hanging over my head, I might have more, say, urgency in writing. If the consumption was, well, consuming me, I might not obsess about other people’s successes or my failures. I might not waste time thinking about whether or not TomKat’s baby will grow up slightly fucked up or completely fucked up. If I were sick, or if reaching 70 was considered a miracle, I would feel the urgent need to write to create, put all of my other concerns aside, and devote my time, energy and soul to writing.

Damn mold ruined everything.

Now excuse me while I go watch the end of the Bears game.

Notable, but Not Necessarily Good

2006-11-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

It is an odd fact of human nature that some people will not plunk down $10 to see a 90-minute movie without the security blanket of overwhelming critical praise, yet they will gladly pay $25 for a book that could torture them for weeks without bothering to consider if the thing is any damn good.

I say this following the release of the New York Times' "100 Most Notable Books" of 2006. I do not come to bury the Times' list, but not to praise it, either, since I have read a grand total of zero selections.

It's impossible to critique something you haven't read. Wife has actually read one of the "100 Most Notable" -- David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" -- making the Bookfraud household a stellar 1 for 100. For those of you keeping score at home, that's a batting average of .010, which happens to match the on-base percentage of the Cubs' new $136 million leadoff man.

In further research, I took a scientific poll using the list to see what readers were "likely" to read or what they were "interested" in reading. According to my results, poll takers selected 32 percent of the titles as something they might read, not a bad number when you consider the number of books.

Well, OK. Wife selected 17, and I added on another 15. But really. The fiction section didn't make me want to run to the book store. Am I going to read yet another collection by Joyce Carol Oates? Or worthies like Jennifer Egan, Allegra Goodman, Cormac McCarthy, Colson Whitehead or Alice McDermott? Nope, primarily because there's so much else to read (which is a bad thing, since modern fiction is no longer widely read).

Or even m I really going to read Marisha Pessl's "Special Topics in Calamity Physics," written by a gorgeous 20-something wunderkind, who is also an actress and surely could win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry if she just put her mind to it?

Pessl: proof that life is not fair

I can't even say that I had any special enthusiasm for Thomas Pynchon's "Against the Day," which, by all accounts, sounds like a "Gravity's Rainbow" retread. (There was a time when I inhaled everything the fellow wrote, seeking a higher understanding of humanity through the sheer density of his work, but I would ultimately have an easier time getting Pynchon to do shots of Jagermeister with me than comprehending his work.)

There's plenty of novels, story collections, and the odd book of poetry thrown in. There's the usual suspects (Updike, Roth, Oates) along with some lesser-known but talented names. Throw in a few foreign writers, and you got a list of fiction.

The non-fiction leaves me cold. Bob Woodward's "State of Denial" chronicles in detail what I already knew: the Bush White House is full of authoritarian nitwits, starting at the top.

There's a book on Reconstruction, a couple on Hurricane Katrina, the usual memoir and celebrity (Katherine Hepburn, Ava Gardner) biographies. There's science books, sports books, and quirky and intellectual histories (Spinoza Vs. Lebnitz, for instance).

I haven't gone back and looked at last year's list, but I would bet the contours are the same: 50 percent fiction, 50 percent non-fiction; 15 percent short stories, 12 percent books on food, 38 percent novels, 3 percent on intellectual history, etc.

But just about every book on the list has one thing in common: major houses published them.

You won't find an unheard-of masterpiece in the lot, because the Times reviewed all of the books, and just about the only way a book can get reviewed is if a Random House or Knopf publishes it.

It also leads me to wonder what, precisely, "notable" means. I didn't see a Nora Roberts, Nelson DeMille or chick lit book (though Stephen King's "Lisey's Story" made the cut), though a single novel from either Roberts or DeMille probably outsells all the rest of the authors put together. I didn't see any "Sundays With Syd" or "The Eight Addictions of Highly Stupid Businesspeople," either.

My kinda list

It would be easy to chalk this up to intellectual elitism; after all, even if a book sells 23 copies, that doesn't mean it isn't notable. If you want to be notable, you have to get reviewed by the New York Times; but to be reviewed by the New York Times, you have to be notable.

Thoughts? Comments? Can you get me Marisha Pessl's phone number?

Thomas the Money-Making Engine

2006-11-26T18:34:00.000-05:00

Over Thankgiving at the family home, I was exposed to a major problem that threatens households across our nation. It has nothing to do with breast feeding, reasonable day care, or the price of Huggies. Nor is it about affordable health care or killing several innocent adults to get your hands on a PlayStation 3. It is something more sinister.

The rot to which I refer is called “Thomas the Tank Engine.” And we have literature to blame.

For the uninitiated—that is, for those without children—this Thomas plague looks like just another innocent juvenile obsession. “Thomas” is a series of children’s books featuring a steam train engine with round eyes and moon face. He and his train “friends” reside on the island of Sodor (insert joke here), and have adventures about hauling freight, people, and farm animals (another joke here).

Humans and other anthropomorphized vehicles also reside on Sodor, which, upon close inspection, is quite like the island known as Great Britain, from where Thomas originated.

You can pee out of his face

This British Invasion is as bad as the War of 1812, and not nearly as entertaining as the Beatles. It has taken over the hearts and minds of children across the United States, infiltrating their souls with annoying songs and consumer lust to make Imelda Marcos blush. Specifically, it has taken over the life of my young nephew, who has been thick in the Heart of Darkness known as Sodor Island for at least half of his 42 months on earth. He plays with the trains, he watches the show, he hides in his Thomas the Tank Engine tent—it's all Thomas, all the time.

You see, the books spawned a television show, first in England, and now in the U.S., along with Thomas train sets, which involve hundreds of miniature trains. Thousands of trains. Not to mention tracks, buildings, and other model-train-esque apparitions, both in wood and metal versions (Twice the Cost! Twice the Fun!). This ignores Thomas kiddie wear, bed sets, clocks, temporary tattoos, toenail clippers, and enema kits.

Google “Thomas the Tank Engine” and you are confronted with 1.36 million hits, many for buying Thomas the Tank Engines and Friends Craptastic Crap. (Personally, in the name of verisimilitude, I think they should have Thomas-brand anthracite coal, a three-fingered, one-eyed engineer action figure, and a soot-covered boiler doll that sings, “I’ve been working on the fucking railroad, all my fucking days.”)

“I transform into a wallet-sucking monster”

This didn’t happen in a vacuum. An Englishman by the name of Rev. W. Awdry started the book series in 1945. Since then, “a generation of children have grown to love the cheeky engine and friends on the Island of Sodor,” proclaims the Random House Web site. Apparently, the books just weren’t enough. Somebody named Britt Allcroft turned “Thomas the Tank Engine” into a television show in the 1980s, which, Random House says without a shred of irony, “can now be seen in over 120 countries and inspired a multimillion dollar ancillary entertainment empire.”

That’s it. It’s not about literature, it’s about maintaining the multimillion dollar ancillary entertainment empire! Rule Britannia!

This rant probably stems from the fact that I will soon be a father, and I am already making plans to keep this smoke-blowing monstrosity as far away from my child as possible. Of course, as parents will gladly point out, this is a futile endeavor. And if it isn’t Thomas, it’ll be Barney. Or Barbie. Or Carburetor Al, or something yet to be devised in a marketing guru’s evil dreams.

I’m sure the Thomas books are probably great reads. But they've turned children's literature into product, aimed at the segment of the population most likely to Screaming Fits for Ancillary Junk. There are plenty of Dr. Seuss dolls and, of course, some great cartoons, but had Theodor Geisel lived to see “The Cat in the Hat” or “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” into live-action movies and Burger King figurines, he would have just let Sam I Am stick a fork in his heart rather than into green eggs and ham.

Resistance is futile

Every childhood pleasure is super-sized and turned into a commodity. It would behoove me to just accept this state of affairs, as I am sure that our little one will get hooked on something, and I guess it’s better to be obsessed Thomas the Tank Engine than Bratz dolls, violent video games, or bad books (the worst).

Now I have to go and buy more Pre-Baby Crap and complain about it on my blog.

Ah, it’s good to be back.

Why Blog?

2006-11-16T20:59:00.000-05:00

I am departing for a week to visit my family for Thanksgiving, in environs familiar, but not really my own.

They'll be a computer at the house where Wife and I will be staying, though I doubt I will be able to use it to write of the Bookfraud Dysfunctional Family Holiday. This post will have to do for a week or so.

Over the past month or so—a period coinciding with my birthday—I have neglected the blog, but also others' blogs that I regularly visit and comment upon. (The mere thought of it actually made me wince.) The combination of depression and insane busyness at work and home has not made a happy camper out of yours truly.

A couple of days ago, this blog was reviewed by a blog that reviews blogs. The site rates "humor blogs," and though I don't think of this blog as "ha ha ha, I'm gonna wet my pants!" funny, it was gratifying to be considered. Two areas stood out for reviewers, which I readily admit are shortcomings: design and frequency.

This got the gears working. Shouldn't I redesign this tired old Blogger template? Maybe I should add really cool features and links, and even get my own domain name. Add podcasts! Video! Free beer! If need be, I could write more entries. Everybody would then flock to Bookfraud.

But what purpose would that serve? Just why the hell am I doing this?

I started blogging because I fancied myself a columnist, thought I might have something interesting to say, and didn't have any other forum in which to do it. The fiction thing was grounded indefinitely, and I wasn't really making concerted stabs at writing non-fiction.

I promised myself that the blog would be about "the writing life," and I have tried to tie even the most arcane pieces of trivia to writing. Though my personal life often spills over into my entries, I try to make it relevant to spinning tales of fiction or fact.

I wasn't going to blog about how the waiter at the restaurant treated me like a dog, politics, or pop culture, a rule I broke in about, I'd say, 5 minutes. And I starting writing “concept” blogs (for want of a better description).

"I don't care how many people visit and comment," I proclaimed to Wife, but of course I do.

I had an extremely unpleasant experience with an agent recently, and while many writers would have blogged about it as soon as they turned their computers on, it didn't appeal to me, as would read like a six-year-old in an extended time-out.

The fact is yes, this is a "community," and writers over the age of 17 know that the practice of writing is difficult and solitary. Blogging can connect us for support and advice. While I didn’t set out for this, it's become perhaps the most rewarding part of blogging.

I received a simple comment on one of my entries lately: “Hi, Bookfraud,” from someone whose own blog I had not visited in some time. It made me a little queasy. Am I just going through the motions? Don't I owe it to others to visit?

Which begs the question: why do we blog? Why do we choose what we blog about? And what do we expect to get out of the whole thing?

Have a happy Thanksgiving, y'all.

And R.I.P., Bo. M Go Blue.

You Can Be a Writer!

2006-11-15T21:11:00.000-05:00

Can you describe the following, with words you might use in everyday conversation?

If you said something such as “drawing,” “hubby,” “prison bitch,” “Johnny Depp in that movie,” “my crack dealer,” or “horny Uncle Jim,” you can be a writer!

It’s easy to enter the wonderful world of the written word. The Bookfraud School of Writing can help make your dreams of literary success come true—and you’ll be shocked at how easy it is!

Through our correspondence school, you will be able to master writing like never before! Just think: soon, you can be a full-fledged member of the world of “literature” without any difficult years of reading, classes, or endless hours at the computer.

You don’t need to get any fancy degrees like an M.F.A. in writing—I can tell you from personal experience, you’d do better by investing in Enron! And don’t worry if you lack a college or even high school degree, and your idea of “literature” is "Dancing With the Stars." Our E-Z, stay-at-home, learn-at-your-own-pace course will have you writing in no time!

Here’s just a small sample of what you get with the Bookfraud School of Writing instruction plan.

Lesson 1 — The Basics: After your first check clears, you’ll receive a set of simple yet illuminating exercises to get you on the “road to riches.” For instance,

Every day, sit down with a pen and paper, and write for 10 minutes. Anything that comes to mind, as long as you keep putting words on paper. It will free your mind of doubt. Only use words with four letters or less.

Multiple choice: You’ve sat down to write but feel stuck. Do you a) keep trying; b) eat several bowls of Count Chocula; c) watch “Sanford and Son” reruns; or d) play “Wango Tango” at 11 and do air guitar with a pool cue? (Remember—there are no wrong answers!)

Learn at home!

Practice your sensory descriptions by filling in the blank: “Bookfraud is a _________. ” Be as detailed as possible—let your imagination run wild!

Which of the following is NOT a struggling writer: waiter or billionaire?

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun. An adverb modifies a verb. Use them wisely.

Lesson 2 — Intermediate Study: Following Lesson 1, you'll receive a list of “writer’s secrets” that you’ll usually learn only after years of intense study. Take, for example, the following:

One of the most important lessons in writing is to “show, don’t tell.” It's the same thing you might hear at a highway rest stop.

A famous old writer's saw goes like this: if your favorite writer is Shakespeare, Joyce, Faulkner, or Pynchon, your book will sell about 16 copies.

Never start a sentence with “and.” Also, don’t start a sentence with “Jism.”

If you want to write a best-selling novel, include long chunks of dialog that sound like they’ve been lifted from a potted-meat food product instruction manual: “‘I beg of you to reconsider. You don’t want to use the XC-491 with the infrared scope and automatic re-loading, which is not to be confused with the XC-490, which had slight defects in the night vision gyroscoping, when you are in a firefight with maximum payloads in a high-stress battle situations when collateral civilian damage is feared. Please, as your wife, I beg you.’” (Tom Clancy, watch out!)

Lesson 3 — Advanced: Exercise your powers of description—and your lyrical use of language—by sending us a 10,000-word account of your hottest sexual experience. The more details, the better. In fact, send pictures. Double points if you are a lipstick lesbian, or if it involved three or more women.

Lesson 4 — Master's Degree Level: Read The “DaVinci Code,” and study how Dan Brown structures his plot, writes dialog, and his use of language. If you think that this is a great book, you are halfway to writing your own best-seller.

And don’t forget to send in that second check!

Lesson 5 — Rocket Science: Now you’re really close to becoming a “master writer.” Sit down and write a novel of at least 300 pages. Don’t worry if it’s any good—we’ll be happy to critique it for a small fee.

Lesson 6 — Einstein and Beyond: It's time to graduate! We’ll explore the “ins and outs” of finding a literary agent and publisher for your completed work. Don’t listen to those “nattering nabobs of negativism” who complain about their agents, and say it is impossible to get their novel published. It’s simple, and you don’t have to sleep with more than two strangers, neither of whom has an STD!

Don’t worry if those lessons seem difficult—our handy, 15-page instruction booklet will guide you through the process!

Brainfood for writing

But don’t fret if the “world of fiction” isn’t for you. There’s helpful tips on obtaining a writing jobs in accounting, aerospace, agriculture—and that’s just for the letter “a”!

Yes, the Bookfraud School of Writing can help you get that career you've always dreamed of, like writing technical literature for auto-parts manufacturers.

And remember, if all else fails, you can always write a blog!

Sign up today! (Cashier's checks or money orders only.)

Britney's Boswell

2006-11-10T22:25:00.000-05:00

Let’s face it, Brit. You’re not as hot as you used to be. Your marital problems generate bigger headlines than your concert tours. The 55-hour nuptials and this “FedEx” divorce are national punch lines.

But I write this as a friend, not a critic, despite the fact I am completely unfamiliar with your music (though I did come up with some particularly vile alternative lyrics to “Oops!...I Did It Again” when I had too much to drink at a baby shower).

Though it was you who filed divorce papers, it’s just a matter of time before K-Fed strikes back in the press. He's already asking for custody of the kids. You have to nail him, fast. And I know how.

Let me write your memoir.

“Help write” your memoir, I mean. I don’t mean this “Britney Spears’ Heart to Heart” stuff that you wrote with your mother. Or any of that autobiographical, pre-packaged paperback pabulum that you “wrote.”

No, I want to help write a hard-hitting, brutally honest work that will flatter the memoirist’s art. To wit:

When I first met Kevin, he was a dancer doubling as a pizza delivery driver. But I am not one to dwell on looks or status. I immediately saw that despite appearances, a talented, wonderful, tender, sensitive, strong man stood before me. Even though he was seriously lacking in the “manhood” department.

Now that’s great writing, my midriff-baring friend!

Follow in Bill's footsteps

There are many angles you have to consider. FedEx is going to toast you for that little problem with “Driving Miss Baby.” Britney, I beg of you, get this book out now so you can tell your side of the story:

Kevin was pleading for a fix. “Please, you have to give up the drugs and place your trust in Christ,” I pleaded, but he was holding Sean hostage with a stapler. I had to run out fast and barrel past the paparazzi in the driveway. That’s why you saw all those unfortunate pictures of me with baby Jayden in the car, when it looked like I was using the little bundle of joy as an airbag.

And what about this:

The men in his wedding party wore track suits that said “Pimps” on them. We handed out wedding gift bags that had jeans and candy. Then he had the idea about calling himself K-Fed, even though I warned him it sounded like the name of a prison—or a dog food! And then he released that video of me totally sounding stoned, and then the sex video thing!

All of this was Kevin’s idea!

You see how your side of the story gets fair play? You’re not going to get that in the Inquirer, I promise you that!

I must admit there is a personal agenda on my part. People don’t think writers are worth more than a pile of used pooper scoopers. That we don’t really have a place in the world other than in entertainment or journalism, professions with little public esteem. But I want to change things, starting with you.

If you had advisors who were worth a damn, you would have filed your divorce papers concurrent with the release of your autobiography—it’s kind of like Noveltainment! Your real-life woes would be packaged with your real-life book sales! And you get the upper hand in the publicity department, to boot!

The greatest thing about writing your memoirs—hold on to your piercings—is that they don’t have to be true. You can “stretch” things, like Our Friend James Frey, just adding little details so that things are “truer” than they were before.

Addicted to Brit!

Take, for example, the following:

I had heard all about Christina Skankuilera—that’s her real name, by the way—so I invited her to church to meet her. While I wore my Sunday best, she was just wearing a butt-floss thong and no top. Needless to say, she was never invited back to church!

I mean, this isn’t true, in the sense it didn’t really happen. But since it illustrates a larger truth about her, and she can’t prove she doesn’t wear butt-floss (take a look at her videos!), there’s no harm.

You’ll be able to resurrect your entertainment career with one fell stroke. You’ll sell a million books, and be able to redeem yourself in your fans’ eyes.

The capper? I’ll only take 25 percent off the top of your advance and royalties. Consider it a discount from a friend who is looking out for your best interests, one who isn't concerned with his amoral, greedy self, just like Col. Tom Parker was with Elvis, except I'm not a Dutch nutjob gambling addict like Col. Tom (and not Elvis, who handled fame and fortune with perfect grace and proportion—just like you).

Up With Food, Down With Foodies

2006-11-07T22:36:00.000-05:00

Like most any man crashing into middle age, yours truly could afford to shed a few pounds, especially considering that my knees and back are slowly disintegrating into a fine powder-like substance one associates with ground chalk.

Of course, I want to be in good health when Wife gives birth next year, so it would pay for me to lose weight. As an exacting, thorough researcher, I have discovered the following fool-proof, scientifically proven, guaranteed-not-to-fail weight-loss techniques: the Palm Beach Diet, the Akins Diet, the Ultra Lipo Lean diet, the Laze Diet System, the Phat Predator diet, the Loose the Bums Diet, and, my favorite, something called “Zumba by Beto,” which has the distinction of sounding like the name of an Orc in the Slavic-language version of “The Lord of the Rings.”

I imagine that in this pantheon of diets is the idea that if one expends more calories than one consumes, weight will indeed be lost. The simple plan for me would be to lay off the nightly six-packs of Schlitz Special Reserve.

Research apparently posits that low-calorie diets will help prolong life, with some adherents to this philosophy eating 1,500 calories a day, though most people on such limited nourishment are so weak that they can’t think of anything except their next meal, have stopped paying attention to the world at large, and will be hit by a bus.

(And if it turns out tomorrow morning that the bad guys keep control of Congress, I’ll put on 10 pounds this week, cashing in my Dunkin’ Donuts gift certificates.)

She never went to Taco Taco Taco Bell

Diet plans generally do not inspire great literature—Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” aside—but food and drink does, all the way back to Eve pulling that damn apple off the tree, continuing through that first Roman who said “in vino veritas,” through Rabelais, that fine master of excess, and so on.

But “food writing”—non-fiction about the “art of eating” and other such swill—that’s another rodeo altogether. I’ve always thought that food and wine reviewing must be one of the hardest of all critical pursuits. You can only describe how something tastes in so many ways until fresh adjectives become scarcer than truffles; I would get stuck after “hot and spicy,” “spicy like,” and “spicy spice.”

I imagine there are great sentences in describing the joys of food, but while I love to eat and drink, I am no connoisseur of food and wine writing. If something tastes good, I like it, if it tastes bad, I hate it, and no amount of verbal bullying is going to make me enjoy olive paste or curried tomato chutney.

There was a time when I met in succession several comely women who said they wanted to quit their professional job and become a food writer, “like M.F.K. Fisher,” who wrote several memorable tomes on food. I hadn’t read the estimable Ms. Fisher, but this “I wanna write like M.F.K.” mania, which seemed to have peaked in the early 1990s, was replaced with “I wanna write a screenplay” craze, then “I wanna write children’s books,” and finally “I wanna write a blog (and get a book deal),” all of which were elaborate ways of saying “I wanna do anything but spend one more fucking day as a lawyer.”

One detects the faintest whiff of superiority in such types, especially those who declare themselves “foodies.” Not only does the word make no sense, it is one of the Five Worst Words of All Time, and anyone describing themselves a “foodie” to my face is in grave danger of having their lunch money forcibly removed from their person.

Foodie-like snobbery+wine=raging alcoholic

Calling oneself a “foodie” probably means, “I really enjoy food, much more than others, to the point of obsession.” I guess that makes a lover of Bach or Black Flag a “musicie,” and, if obsession is the standard, by nature the male half of the human race are “fuckies.” Me, I’m a “musicie fuckie readie writie sportsie combat-robotie,”* and in a few months, “daddyie.”

Which brings us back to the whole diet thing. To be fair, as Wife grows into round tumescence, I should probably hop on the Lose LBS Express. Still, my weight is probably the least of my worries. There’s baby crap to buy, wills to write, insurance to consider. There’s birthing classes to take and many more trips to the doctor. And many books on parenthood to read, hopefully none authored by an unhappy lawyer in dear need of a career change.

*After the original posting, I remembered another one: "tittie."

Daddy Sudoku

2006-11-05T20:50:00.000-05:00

Deadly fear. Self-sabotage of the highest order. A vicious circle of procrastination, inaction, frustration; then, more procrastination.

Any one of the above describes how the writing life is treating me—or rather, how I’ve been treating the writing life in recent weeks.

It goes beyond mere output. Instead of writing fiction, penning my blog, watching television, downloading porn, brewing beer, bungee jumping, moving to an ashram, or even reading a book that consists of more than 1,000 words, all of my time, energy, and precious little mental health has been spent in a futile pursuit, a destructive and banal effort that threatens my livelihood.

Sudoku. Again.

Every evening, I retire to my study (the “man room,” as Wife calls it, citing the beer cans and issues of “Bonerama Monthly” on the floor), fire up the ol’ iMac, and let my fingers clack away on the keyboard. If one was eavesdropping—I might play some Bach or Schubert to confuse a snooper—he or she might assume I was happily typing my way to a best seller, untold riches, and a spot on the U.S. National Figure Skating Team.

Unfortunately, as all the taps are simply my fingers entering numbers, all the clicks are my mouse moving over the grid of an online sudoku puzzle. This particular Web site allows yourself to rank yourself against others, and I will work on puzzle after puzzle to “beat” the average time.

I try the “Hard” puzzles and pride myself when I complete them under 10 minutes. Like an addict, however, this high is simply temporary, and I must continuously push the edge of sanity to get a buzz. I move on to the “Evil” puzzle and try to finish it under than 15 minutes.

This is not exactly shooting heroin, but still.

I have refered to this Japanese-bourne illness in the past, and if I were a conspiracy theorist or racist, I would posit that sudoku was invented to destroy American capitalism, reducing us to robot junkies whose productivity is spent on filling in a box with numbers. (Not unlike anime, the PlayStation, toilets with cameras, or the ultimate weapon, Hello Kitty.)

This photo has no bearing on anything

What makes sudoku doubly evil is one can rationalize that it is not a waste of time. Unlike watching pro wrestling or Fox News, sudoku operates on the premise that you are doing something “smart.”

Make no mistake about it, sudoku is addictive, at least to a geek like myself. Why bother with grappling with yet another underwritten and disliked story that won’t see the light of publication when you can smoke a puzzle in less than 10 minutes? Why try to rewrite a particularly nasty passage in the novel when you’ve got this harmonic convergence of numbers, calling my name, awaiting my pen?

If you are saying, “Enough with the blogs about how you waste your time, because I can procrastinate and waste the precious minutes remaining in the hourglass of our pitifully short existences on earth in ways you can only dream about, you stupid neurotic writer,” I [heart] your pain. If there’s something I do better than writing about writing, it’s writing about ways not to write.

But, as an old editor of mine used to say at length, if you don’t have a reason for writing a story, there’s no reason anybody’s going to read it, so I actually have a reason for sharing my latest pathetic psychodrama.

I will admit this: my obsessions—my fears, actually—these days have no limits, and the more I consider it, the more I realize that sudoku is just a way for me to deal with the fear. I am plaited with anxiety, but not from work, my marriage, or the despair that Paris Hilton (R-Hollywood!) will be president one day.

I suffer from fear of what, you ask? What could change my attitudes towards work and life, to the point that I turn to a puzzle instead of living out what I once considered a Manifest Destiny of literary fame? This fear is familiar to many of you: the fear that I will never create again.

A common fear, one that haunts every artist and probably doesn’t merit more than 30 seconds of deep consideration. Yet mine is specific in its scheduling: in five months, I will cease to write for the foreseeable future, forsaking my love of the written word in favor of another, a love that Wife and I will share, whose activities in life will consist of sleeping, eating, crapping, crying, whose arrival makes me sick with worry, who will turn my cynical essence to mush and turn Wife and I into the protective equivalent of a psychotic Mamma Bear, and who shall, I predict, if we do not lose our sanity from lack of sleep, make our hearts swell to proportions I thought not possible.

Smashing, baby!

(And if so inclined, I might even write about the new arrival, and produce verbiage that is sappier than a forest of pine trees. You have been warned.)

I Need Your Help November 7

2006-11-01T19:59:00.000-05:00

(Phone rings)

Hello?

(Silence.)

Hello?

(Silence.)

Hello?

(Long pause.)

Hello, this is Jim Dongle, asking for your help on November 7.

Hello?

On November 7, this country will go to the polls to decide what they want for this country's future. Now, my opponents will have you think that their tax-and-spend, pro-abortion, cut-and-run platforms are good for the nation—

(Hangs up.)

(Next day. Phone rings.)

Hello?

Hi, my name is Jim Dongle--

Goddamnit, hello?

...and in a few days, you're going to the polls to decide whether you want a strong, steady voice in Congress, or a weak pussy Democrat--

Goddamn fucking recorded message! (Hangs up.)

(Next day. Phone rings. "Blocked Number" on Caller I.D., but Bookfraud foolishly answers, hoping a certain woman is returning his calls.)

Hello? Uma, is that you?

Hello, this is Jim Dongle. If you don't elect me, Osama will become Dictator, sell you into slavery, and worst of all, take away your SUV as we cede the country to the bad guys.

Vote early, vote often

(Slams phone to receiver. Calls directory assistance. Gets phone number. Calls it.)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle. Hello?

Recorded voice: "Hello, my name is Bookfraud. And on November 7, I want Jim Dongle to help me—"

(Person on other end hangs up, but is immediately called back.)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle.

Recorded voice: "With your help, candidate Dongle, I want to eliminate the politics in the writing world. Together, I know we can do it."

(Hangs up. An hour later, phone rings)

Hello, the Campaign to Re-Elect Jim Dongle.

Recorded voice: "You see, Jim Dongle has the power to ensure that the thousands of crappy books published each year don't see the light of day. On November 7, Jim Dongle, using special powers given to him by the President, will declare a moratorium on book publishing in this nation, in the name of security."

I'm not hanging up, whoever you are. Just play your tape and get it over with.

Recorded voice: "Thanks. As I was saying, Jim Dongle can put a stop to the plague of awful literature sickening our great nation. We can make sure that Dan Brown, Danielle Steele, and Candice Bushnell never subject American readers to the nauseating dogshit they call literature."

Uh-huh.

Recorded voice: "Think of it. A land in which great literature flows across the open prairie, from sea to shining sea. A land in which people of all colors, ethnicities, and body types can be free of the weight upon our necks known as Chick Lit or Fan Lit or quasi-plausible thrillers and courtroom dramas. A land in which we all read books by great writers, like myself."

Yeah, whatever. Are you going to do what, a book burning or something?

Bad books win, he wins

Recorded voice: "Well, hell, let's get this out in the open! If you can record my phone conversation and torture innocent men because they own a copy of the Qu'ran, you can give me the power to save this nation from a threat as great as terrorism!"

Bad books? You think terrorism is the same as bad books?

Recorded voice: "If our nation is continuously subjected to crap literature and Ann Coulter, their brains will turn to mush! We will just become a nation of docile TV watchers who allow the forces of fascism to take over just as long as we have our Plum Sykes and John Grisham! If 'The Bridges of Madison County' wins, the terrorists win!"

OK, are you happy now? Are you going to stop calling?

Recorded voice: "Thank you for your time. I'm Bookfraud, and I approved this message."

Because I Have to Post Something, Even Though I'm Still Wondering About This Writing Thing

2006-10-27T10:48:00.000-04:00

Sometimes you write what you know, even if you don't know you're writing it.

Let's start at home. My mother has arrived this week for a visit, the first time she's made a trip to see Wife and I since my father died.

As a result, there's been a veritable beehive of activity at the Bookfraud household, most of which has consisted of cleaning the World's Dirtiest, Nastiest Windows (step up and see 'em -- 25 cents a look!). Suffice it to say that it took a screwdriver to scrape out all the dirt underneath my fingernails.

In addition to the cleaning duties (another great excuse not to blog!) I've been wondering how, if somebody put an Uzi to my head, I would write such a homecoming. My father had made it up here only a couple of times, and none since Wife and I moved into our swinging apartment five years ago. As a setup for a story, the situation is rife with possibilities. Mostly bad ones.

Melodrama would be the easiest path to follow; however,instead of recriminations and over-the-top wailing like in a soap opera, I would probably would spin something about a writer complaining to his mother about the sorry state of his writing career, a mother who says how great the writer is, and don't worry, etc. (Pitiful, in every sense of the word).

We are family

This gets to the Theme for my modest post, which is writers who mine their families' for fodder. Writers who have taken their family members and based characters on them -- or just written about them while they still trod the earth -- are as common as rudeness or bedbugs.

Kathyrn Harrison's "The Kiss" is par exemplar of such writing. It's about her sexual affair with her father. You heard that right! She banged her father -- when she was an adult! -- and wrote a best-selling memoir about it.

The more I think about this, the more I want to take a shower in extremely hot water. Though I don't know if Harrison's father is still alive, she does have children, and the possibilities for playground taunting are as endless as they are cruel.

Why write such a book? I don't know, except to say the taboo it addressed was sensational enough to sell enough books to fill two dozen U-Hauls.

The general defense of such exploitation is that honesty is the only manner in which art can be created, and if she slept with her father, she has every right -- no, an obligation -- to share it in print with the rest of the world.

Well, if you ever wanted an example of "failing the imagination," that's it. Or "writing what you know." Or narcissism on the grandest scale.

You've probably gathered that I am loathe to chronicle family experiences as fodder for fiction. Unfortunately, I'm as guilty of it as anyone, though not consciously, and not to talk about my family's deepest, darkest secrets, which, I promise you, do not include incest.

To wit, my unpublished novel. On the surface, the protagonist's family has little to do with mine other than geography, religion, and the size of the family. The parents do different jobs, the children have wildly different grandparents, and the siblings are about as true to mine as wire-haired schnauzers are to pit bulls.

But that's just on the surface. Upon closer reflection, the father resembles mine in some respects, in terms of temperment and speech, and the mother, if she does not look or behave like mine, at least shares some familiar interests and ideas about motherhood.

Major yuk

All this talk about Daddies and sex and such is so grossing me out, in fact, that I would rather clean the apartment than write any more about it, except to wonder: how the hell did I end up writing about this?

I guess I'll be back to writing more than once a week. Before 2007.

Who Do I Hate?

2006-10-18T21:07:00.000-04:00

I had initially titled this posting "I Suck," but it is such an obvious fact to that there's really no reason in reiterating it in lights.

Self-loathing is the cheapest trick in the writer's bag of rhetoric, but it is also part-and-parcel of an artistic temperament. Those who write or paint or compose and have the facade of supreme confidence are to be avoided at all costs.

You know the type. They've got the novel published. They've gotten the great reviews. They've got money, fame, and literary esteem. But they hate themselves.

It's not just that such folk are Holden Caulfield phonies, but I daresay that a suicide attempt has rained on their past, or soon will. A hyper-confident facade is overcompensation, and for all the psycho-babble in our culture about self-esteem, it may not do well for writers. If you had perfect self-esteem, you would believe that you were incapable of doing wrong. You know, like the Nazis or George Bush. Not that I'm comparing the two.

Though they may have their own pools of self-doubt, however, most the successful artists I know don't hate themselves. But I do. At least on October 18, 2006.

Avoid phonies -- in any language

You see, there's a reason why I'm not looking at other blogs or posting on my own save for the most lengthy of intervals. My stories are getting turned down. My novel rewrite is on the road to nowhere. I see rejection everywhere I look.

As this translates itself to the art of fiction, every word becomes leaden, every session at the computer is exquisite torture. I haven't put up any blog posts lately because every time I start writing one, it gets deleted after a couple of pained, strained, drained, maimed, lame, tamed sentences filled with ridiculous adjectives.

My writing feels like an amalgam of juvenile poetry and adult schlock.

This hasn't been helped by certain problems at work, which have put me into a deep funk for reasons you don't need to know, except a certain individual is making me miserable.

Of late, certain developments in my life should, on the surface, make me very happy. And the course of my existence is good, by all possible measures. But there's one area in which I feel inadequate, and that is in the written word.

It's funny how one can be humming right along, and then a harmonic convergence blows one's confidence to shreds. To wit: I get a rejection letter, I sulk, I'll watch football on TV, then feel guilty about not writing, try to write, give it up, and watch football on TV. It's like being roasted on one of those sterno weenie burners.

One thing I've noticed is that I'm not reading a book that is making me want to write. I've just started Christopher Isherwood two-novel set of "The Berlin Stories," as I figure since I have seen the musical and the movie, I might as well be familiar with the source material. The book is interesting for its anachronistic tone and writing, but so far, Mr. Isherwood, I'm Just Not That Into You. (But we'll go out on a couple of more dates.)

See the movie, read the book

Is there anyone I hate more than myself? Let's consider the possibilities:

Bookfraud: inability to publish stories, massive tolerance for abuse.

George Bush: Satan.

Bookfraud: constant sense of alienation and the paranoid fear that the writing establishment is a "club" to which he shall gain entrance.

Dick Cheney: Right Hand of Satan.

Bookfraud: Paralyzed with doubt, inability to achieve on his writing goals.

Donald Rumsfeld: Satan's lawyer.

Well, there's three for you.

I have to stop writing. I just hate it too much.

Mr. Beer

2006-10-11T19:34:00.000-04:00

For those of us who follow such things, the recent death of New York Times reporter, editor, gourmand, oenophile, and expense-account abuser R.W. Apple marked the end of an era. I can't say what era that might be — perhaps the Protozoan Era, given Apple's long history with the newspaper — but he was one of the last old-time lions of political reportage that pre-dated the Internet, e-mail, and, of course, blogs, which usually have no reporting in them but lots of half-assed, ill-informed commentary, just like mine.

Apple's coverage of the Vietnam War and of politics are legendary in journalistic circles, but just as legendary were Apple's appetites. He knew the best restaurants in every town, where to get the right vintages in Osaka, and the best room in the best hotel of every city. Apple ate fois gras by the pound and vineyards were like second homes.

Now, I don't drink much wine, especially since the red stuff gives me headaches of the pneumatic variety, in which the pain can be measured in pressure per inch. Beer is a different story, and since last holiday season, when I scored a Mr. Beer home brewing kit, I have been semi-obsessed with beer-making, to the point I have actually made two entire batches over the course of nine months! That must be a record for sustaining an outside interest.

The fact is, I don't really have any hobbies. I mean, I read, I do sudoku, I'll watch television, go to movies and museums, but the bulk of my free time is spent at the keyboard. Writing has become my hobby, though I always dreamed writing fiction would be my profession and I'd have time to take up piano, educate my palate, learn French, or spend all my free time playing video games while Wife cooks and cleans. (Some dreams will never come true).

Apple at work

Do writers even have hobbies, besides drinking and raging on blogs? Does Toni Morrison garden, does Michel Houellebecq whip up a mean coc au vin?

Flannery O'Connor advised young writers to take up drawing, as it forces one to observe an object for an extended time. Not only will you be able to draw a passable still life, but you will be able to interpret it, such as figuring out the talking bannana like the ones I have in dreams.

Here's the rub: I can't pay attention for more than a few days on any given hobby. I tried to learn French. I tried to learn the harmonica. I tried to build a combat robot. Every time, I would lose interest in the time it took you to read this sentence.

It wasn't that I didn't like learning a new skill, or that my lousy abilities proved so frustrating that I quit like an eight-year-old, such as I did with a power tool a few weeks ago that was tossed clean across my mother's driveway.

No, my reticence was due to another factor: spending time with hobbies took away from my time to write. Every spent away from the keyboard doing something for its pure enjoyment became a neurotic spiral from which there was no escape: I haven't written all day because I'm learning how to kayak. I got to get back! I gotta write — otherwise, failure! Noooooooooooo!!

Mr. Beer — oh yeah

For those of you who have full-time jobs and write on the side, do you have well-developed hobbies? Do you spend your free time enjoying life? Do you have friends? Do you sleep 3 hours a night of your own choice?

Maybe you don’t do stuff like commute, eat, or waste time on the shitter. Perhaps you are one of those genetic freaks who would rather sit down and scribble away rather than, say, watch television, freeing up other time for hobbies and such.

Those with little ones don’t count. I know how busy you are. I know. Quit reminding me. I know who you are.

Old, Old School

2006-10-08T19:06:00.000-04:00

Admittedly, I am a dinosaur, and few incidents illustrate this more than the following.

On the morning of Nov. 3, 2004, I arose after a night of fitful and miserable sleep. There was nothing that could help, nothing that could relief the burning malaise — no, make that fury — in my soul.

I went to work as always, newspaper in one hand, iPod in the other. I wore a dress shirt, slacks, my usual gnarly shoes and twelve-year-old set of undergarments. But there was once difference. Instead of the Beatles, the Stones, or the Starland Vocal Band, the only tunage I could stomach that morning eminated from those San Francisco punks, The Dead Kennedys.

Specifically, one song in particular, the greatest song ever written about Republicans, "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now." Dated in its mid-80s references, the song had special import that morning:

Last call for alcohol
Last call for your freedom of speech
Drink up — Happy Hour is now enforced by law...

The song moves from a lounge singer parody into a punk frenzy:

Die on our brand new poison gas!
El Salvador or Afghanistan
Making money for President Reagan
Making money for President Reagan
And all the friends of President Reagan!

California Uber Alles
California Uber Alles
Uber Alles California
Uber Alles California

Perhaps you need to actually hear it to understand. Still, on the morning after President Bush was re-elected to office, the DKs was the only thing that could soothe my tired, angered self.

The DKs first two releases, the EP (remember those?) "In God We Trust Inc." and "Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables," comprised a manic cri de coeur, slamming greedy Republicans, hateful Moral Majority members, evil plutocrats, Nazi punks, stupid adults...you get the idea.

The DKs railed against the closed-mindedness, political apathy, and general ignorance of the nation. You might be able to fool all of the people some of the time, but that's enough to allow democracy to crumble; and, after our great nation elected to its highest office a draft dodger and war criminal over a war hero, they were the perfect vehicle for my unlimted anger.

Me so angry

This extended reflection on a now-defunct punk band is not intended to be a rallying cry to fight the evils the DKs dispised (though, given the state of our the United States, it should be). It's more to show that the only music that gave me solice on that awful morning was over 20 years old.

Is it that there hasn't been music as corrosive since the DKs, or have I become a dinosaur, listening to ancient and defunct rock bands, watching black-and-white movies, and, most disturbingly, reading novels by dead white people?

Wife has commented to me that I have an "old soul," usually because the only concerts I attend anymore involve a conductor, a spate of violins, and an average audience age of 74.2 years. But as a writer, I've always neglected following the latest and greatest, trying to keep up with whatever Important Astonishing New Talent is shooting across the atmosphere.

Zadie Smith, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nell Freudenberger, et. al. have one thing in common: I haven't read any of their work. Wife bought me Gary Shteyngart's "The Russian Debutante's Handbook," and I still haven't cracked it open (though she read it and reported on its OK-ness).

I'm drawn to Hardy, Dickens, Brontë(s) and the like. Even among the living, I'll read relatively old fucks like Philip Roth or Margaret Atwood. Mick Jagger said not to trust anyone over 30 (an age he passed, like, 120 years ago) but I don't trust any writers under 30.

Is it that the classics or the old-reliables are just that much better than contemporary fiction by writers young enough to get kicked out of bars?

Or is it that my blood starts boiling like vats of hot oil when I see all the fame, fortune, and recognition these talented (I admit) young writers are getting while I stew and fume, discharging my anger on blogs lest my brain explodes like one of the dudes in "Raiders of the Lost Ark"?

It's obviously a combination of these two things. When I pick up "Return of the Native," I'm pretty much assured a great read — after all, it's a classic, baaaaaby! — but I don't have to worry about the specter of Thomas Hardy appearing in Poets & Writers or in the NYT Book Review.

Little Mister Sunshine

What I've come to realize is that being a writer is more about learning from other writers, not being jealous of them, even if they still have zits or are making $10²¹ on their next book or movie rights. Realization is easier than action, however, and it almost takes a force of willpower to read someone under 30 years old.

If you're reading this, Jello Biafra, be glad you have 40-somethings who love the DKs. Otherwise, you'll be as forgotten as yesterday's Bookfraud.

Literary Catfight! (Between Two Older Guys)

2006-10-03T14:55:00.000-04:00

Normally, I don't put a post up just to link to another article, but this was just too awesome to resist. In an interview in The Guardian newspaper, my boy Salman Rushdie rips into John Updike as revenge for Updike's review of "Shalimar the Clown" in the New Yorker.

The good stuff is in the second paragraph.

My favorite line is, "Somewhere in Las Vegas there's probably a male prostitute called 'John Updike.'" Awesome!

Stream of Unconsciousness. Or Why I Should Not Drink Heavily at Weddings

2006-10-01T10:51:00.000-04:00

I need some coffee, some serious hardcore bean man, I can't take a dump until I have some coffee, but damn, what did I drink last night I can't remember except there was there grenadine in it or perhaps that nasty red shit you can't drink on its own? Maybe there was some tequila involved...that's always trouble, fucking tequila. I do the stupidest shit when I drink tequila. Some involving my penis, others involving my feet, some involving my feet and penis. What if one's penis was shaped like a foot? Or feet like a penis? That would hurt, either.

Ah, thank you caffeine, I worship at your altar...I like to imbibe M&Ms when I drink coffee for hangovers. I don't buy this shit that M&Ms are poison. Wait — some of the M&Ms have imprinting on them..."Sept. 30, 2006" and "[Bride's name] & [Groom's name]". Damn, we were at a wedding last night. Now it all makes sense. We were at a wedding last night in Aruba. Or was it Bermuda? I can't keep those straight. Just let me have some more coffee, and I'll remember it.

This is why I don't write stream of consciousness in my fiction...the only thing I write is what happened to me in the past 24 hours. I had a weird dream last night, eight drinks later...I had a $10 bill but it was labeled "ELEVEN DOLLARS" and half of the "10s" were "11s" and I wonder if this dream had something to do with Spinal Tap or that I'm a counterfeiter or does anybody really care about a drunkard's dream, and if not, why are they always found in really bad fiction?

It's really hard to nail down stream of consciousness though if you are Irish or Really Smart you can do it, but since most of us are not Irish or not Really Smart, or at least as Really Smart as Brainiac Writers Who Could Have Been Physicists and Solved Unified Field Theory or Could Have Been Doctors and Cured Cancer.

Take away his writer's license

But try and try we do...like robots, we think that great, profound writing is embodied in long, complicated sentences without punctuation or in italics or separated by elipses...but I've seen it too often, and done so amateurishly that there's really no point in it anymore, I mean, if it were the 1920s all over again, it might mean something innovative and not lazy like I'm being today because it feels like there are a million gremlins stomping out fires on my body...

I remember trying to read Ulyssess a long time ago...I was in college, thinking I was reallysmart and my Jesuitprefabuliststreamofthinking would carry me though the text like a lifeboat on a sea of lava....but then my cantankerous talking canker cabliasian McLeary land-lord told me i love you you love me i said but why do we love my love said and

when I was in graduate school we had some lousy writers who would put a flashback within a flashback, like "I remembered when I was twelve. I was walking down the street with my friends, and then I remembered when I was four and my brother pushed me down a flight of stairs wearing a backwards san diego padres hat and I cannot go to san diego, I thought."

but what did you write i said you cannot have a flashback in a flashback unless you're reallytalented nobody can really get away it but she said, i can do what i want you stupid writer of stupid stories and friends said bookfraud you are a fraud and can't you see this is so brilliant because you write stories without enough information about the male protagonist's relationship with his girlfriend and i said what the fuck, i can't stand this any more, if i read one more "my first period" story i'm going to throw up and you're making this about me, you can't do that oh yes we can oh yes yes and yes I said yes I will Yes.

man, my head hurts right now i should not have had that sixth tequila sunrise and taken the bride away from the groom during the first dance and hit the security guard in the solar plexus then hurled all over the drumkit while the bride's two nfl-playing brothers were using my head as a mop to clean up all the vomit ohboy did i really go to this wedding or is it all a dream sequence like the end of "star wars" when yoda woke up with a couple of skanks from a 70s porn movie (or was it from a shakira video) and says, "the force was with me all night long!"

Stately, plump Bookfraud

So I try to avoid writing stream-of-consciousness, as it has become an easy shorthand for "I'm really weird" or "Look at me!" I once tried to write a story when I was in my early 20s about a fellow whose father had absconded with the family's money and made off to Brazil, but it was even less accomplished than the writing you see above, and because I am older and I can see the past and there were these Faulknerian habitualizations of narcoleptic love fury enviromizing our fecundic polarities and I say Yes.

Pay Attention

2006-09-28T18:57:00.000-04:00

Ever see this card trick, available at a Website near you?

You may have been alerted to it by an e-mail forwarded from your uncle's best friend's sister's dogsitter's third cousin. (It's been floating around for years.) Simply pick one of the cards below:

Concentrate on that card. Really hard! Don't look at anything else for 15 minutes! Then click to a new screen, and viola! Your card has disappeared!

Of course, the card you picked disappeared because all the cards have disappeared. Though they resemble each other, the cards on each screen are different. The trick is predicated on the fact that you can't remember all the cards from the first screen to the second, because you weren't paying attention. Showing all the cards on one screen makes it obvious.

When I lined up the cards next to each other, as above, and, remembering how this trick fooled me, I thought, "I shouldn't have put lead paint chips on my baloney sandwiches growing up, even though the chips gave it that pure crunchy goodness."

While people pay copious sums to Ricky Jay and Penn and Teller to dazzle them, for absent-minded folks like myself, this attention deficit disorder can be a killer in the fiction game.

When we are writing fiction -- really in a groove, riding that caffeinated buzz or just high on life -- our attention is so sharply focused that we could cut a frozen steak with it.

If only I could keep that going. I get up to pace. I get interrupted by a phone call. I need to eat something. And so on.

Perhaps more importantly, we are constantly reminded as writers to read fiction for more than entertainment: examine the structure, characterization, symbolism, and language. Learn from Moby-Dick rather than simply enjoying it, though most people enjoy getting their thumb staple-gunned to a wall than reading Moby-Dick.

Future novelists

Wife is particularly good at this kind of reading, because she has reservoirs of discipline that never welled up in me, much less evaporated over the years. For instance, when we're discussing books we've both read, wife will say something like, "The narrative voice in Ragtime is unlike anything else, and the plotting remarkable, in how the connective tissue of the historical characters all fit perfectly.

"And Doctorow can get away with so much because he has the perfect voice -- the prose just flows off the page. I've learned so much from that book that I can use in my own writing."

"Yes, I agree" I say, thinking, "Well, I know I liked it."

I can blame this propensity on my abject, dissolute inability to concentrate on anything for more than six minutes, which in turn I can blame on being brought up on the television farm. I can hum the theme song from "The Price Is Right," but I can't verbalize what I learned from reading "Invisible Man," one of my favorite books, other than "In order to be a great writer like Ralph Ellison, you have to write really, really great."

(It's unclear to me what would have happened had I been born in the era before television, particularly in the 19th Century. Ignoring the fact that I would have been a peasant in The Pale, I may have been more focused. There was no "Price Is Right." Hell, there was no radio. All you did for fun was push a hoop with a stick, study Torah, and hide in the basement during Monday Night Pogrom.)

I have a sorry history of wanting to quit something if I can't do it right the first time. That's why I don't play guitar, speak French, juggle four balls, or bother to put the cap on the toothpaste.

I don't know art, but I know what I like

I am curious if there are others who write fiction yet do not consciously "study" novels or stories, or who have microscopic attention spans. Do you also burn everything you cook? Miss the plot twists in a movie? Have gotten into three (3) or more automobile accidents when you were driving?

Admittedly, I've been in three accidents when I was behind the wheel, but only two were my fault. Nobody was hurt. And one happened when I was 18, so it doesn't count. Right?