Tell Me Neil Patrick Harris Isn't Fisting This Guy

Six

Today I submitted four (4) stories, which makes the submission number for the month six (6). I guess I just got motivated today or something. I also did revisions and started a second draft of a story. It's like I'm a real writer or something. Well, almost Obama time. I don't get the argument that speaking in front of 75,000 might be a negative. Yeah, people like him. Yeah, he's popular. Yeah, it's a fucking election - the most popular guy wins. But I still can't believe opinion polls are so close.

Media Releases Photos of McCain Voters

These guys will probably need an absentee ballot.

Doing the Dad Thing

This is what I come home to every night.

It's like an adorable version of The Children of the Corn.

Quotes

"She comes back to tell me she's gone
As if I didn't know that
As if I didn't know my own bed
As if I'd never noticed
The way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love
Is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you're blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow"

- Paul Simon, Graceland

Rock n Roll Preacher

So I went to a wedding the other day. It was a nice affair, as most weddings are - there haven't been many weddings that weren't nice, at least for the guest. Anyway, amid the usual white wedding dresses, sharp dressed groom's men, tiered cake and ever present stuffed chicken breast was a most unusual preacher. To give you a slight idea of this guy, imagine Garth Ennis and Flannery O'Connor having a baby and that baby becoming a preacher. Everyone in the wedding party is wearing the traditional garb- the groom in his Marine uniform - but the guy presiding over the event is in black jeans (slightly acid washed), black leather jacket and Timberlands. And the whole ceremony felt like improve with the preacher just spouting some religious stream of conscious diatribe as it popped into his head and delivering it in a folksy easy going manner. The hipster baptist preacher channeling his inner McConaughey. I bet his favorite movies are Easy Rider and Vanishing Point. But the best part was his voice - he spoke as if he had Tom Waits stuck in his throat. As he spoke I kept imagining him in some tattered revival tent preaching to a bunch of hicks, each of them swaying to his county-tinged religious oratory - even some of the women folk in the sweltering canvas tent finding themselves sexually aroused. Even though I wasn't buying his bullshit - and it was most certainly bullshit - I could see people persuaded by this man and his talk of Jesus. And then I knew I had found a character. I don't know where he'll find a spot in my imagination - in a novel down the road or lucky enough to have his own short story, but he (or at least my fancied version of him) will show up on my computer screen some day.

You're Gonna Get Yours

In continuing my extremely slow revelation of my recent publications (yes, there's more to come), I give you my latest story in Big Daddy Thug's site of incredible awesomeness, Thuglit. You're Gonna Get Yours is a sort of sequel to my previous Thuglit story, If There's a Hell Below, We're All Gonna Go in that the cash in the first story shows up in the second. The setting is still New Orleans, but it's a couple of years after Katrina. The main character is an ex-con who looks for his son's killer amid the mean streets of a city trying to pull itself together. There's violence and bad language - but no sex, sorry.

So, give the story a read. If you like it, let me know.

How Can We Save Ourselves If We Don't Make Ourselves Sick?

Dear writers of 24, I think I've found your new villain for next season. This guy was poisoning random people with anthrax so he could test his anthrax vaccine? WTF to the nth degree. I wouldn't be surprised if this guy walked around his apartment in full Heath Ledger Joker make-up repeating, "Why so serious?" over and over again.

Shit

Does this mean I have to retire yet another Red Sox t-shirt? Make some room Damon, Manny's coming to keep you company.

Taibbi Quote

"Phoenix, July 13th, Sunday morning. Thank God John McCain has declared that he wants to wallpaper the continent with new nuke plants, because now the chances are better that this wretched slab of hot, birdshit-covered asphalt they call a state will be blown to hell in an accident someday. I hate this place. Once the sun comes up on an Arizaona weekend, nothing moves except the occasional elderly-piloted Buick floating boatlike in the direction of some hideous megachurch."

- Matt Taibbi, "Without a Prayer" Rolling Stone, August 7, 2008

Non-Oprah Book Club: What Makes Sammy Run?

Published in the early 1940's, Budd Schulberg's What Makes Sammy Run? is probably still the best novel about Hollywood, even surpassing his contemporary (and one time collaborator) F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon. It tells the story of a ruthlessly ambitious boy, Sammy Glick, who backstabs his way to the top of the Hollywood studio system. Glick is such an interesting character, one who fascinates the reader without earning any sympathy.

Some, including Samuel Goldwyn, criticized the book as being anti-semetic, calling Schulberg a self-hating jew for writing it. In truth, the character of Glick would be just as wicked if his last name was McCoy. Besides, Glick being a jew has little to do with the actual story. However, the book was enough of a catalyst for MGM to fire Schulberg.

What is more interesting in terms of the novel's plot in relation to Schulberg's own life was the topic of socialism and unions within Hollywood during the 1930's. The struggle between union coordinators and the studios has a major part in the book, with a more favorable view of union organizers. But Schulberg would later testify voluntarily in front of the HUAC and named names, including many of the infamous Hollywood Ten. (This would not be Schulberg's last brush with history - in 1968 he would be one of the men who wrestled Sirhan Sirhan to the floor after the gunman shot Robert Kennedy.) Schulberg would later collaborate with another famous HUAC witness, Elia Kazan, in writing On the Waterfront. The film has long been categorized as Kazan and Schulberg's answer to the criticism they received for testifying since the movie is about an informer ratting out his friends.

But besides Schulberg's history of contridictory politics, Sammy is still a great book; one of my favorites. Well worth a read.

Quotes

I've always admired people who can quote passages of poetry, or parts of their favorite books or memorize whole section of dialog from plays. I can't do it. I also have an inability to figuring out what people are saying when they spell out a word. "Did you get the B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y P-R-E-S-E-N..." Hold it right there because you lost me at B-I-R.

So, I'm going to try to do something about it (the quote thing, not the spelling. I'm never going to be able to do the spelling thing.) From now on, every time I find a quote that I like, I'm going to post it here. Here's the first:


Fiona (Gabrielle Anwar): He's security conscious, he's smart. Smooth in a cheesy Sam kind of way

Sam (Bruce Campbell): Smooth is smooth, baby.

- Burn Notice