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Posted June 5th, 2010 at 04:12:26 EST
I’m about three weeks behind on dispatches. I’ve been busy and sick and rivers have flooded and entire cities lain waste and reclaimed and fortunes made and spent and women loved and lost and loved some more, often with the aid of digital devices and strange composite materials specially imported from parts of New Guinea where white men are used as furniture and wall decoration exclusively.
In addition to screen tradecraft, I’m maintaining a slim tether to two things many people seem to think I’ve left behind: podcasting and fiction publishing. I have a short story featured in the new anthology The Sovereign Era: Year One set in the universe of author Matthew Wayne Selznick’s novel Brave Men Run (Swarm Press, 2009). You can find it in print form and for the Kindle on Amazon, and Selznick is also making an eBook bundle available that plays for nine different formats. Because the only thing you fuckers love more than your shiny gadgets is having nine other shiny gadgets to turn up your hip haughty tech noses at.
Someone recently described where I’m living as halfway between the mountains and the ocean which sounds a little too like psychedelia lyrics or Frostian poetry or an affirmation about Jesus except it’s entirely apt in a way that reveals more than the desert cold that’s been eating my bones every night. Which is all to say your second month in LA is obviously when you’re issued intense introspection on how you ended up here from wherever the fuck it is you came from and what you’re doing now that the dust is settling and your jaw’s stopped rattling from impact.
I’m writing this on my one-month anniversary. It’s been one month since I landed in Los Angeles. One month since I repatriated, became a born again Angeleno, forsaken by all civilized gods, embraced solely by the sunny freaks and ethnic tribes and brittle palm leaves. One month and I’m even more ready to sell out than when I arrived. I can hear them coming around the corner, gnashing and idea-pruned and speaking in tongues that jangle. I’m ready to take on all comers. Truly there has never been a more willing whore than I. There is no dream I’m not willing to cash in. If I could dream in the shape of casino chips I would.
The vibrations of time are felt differently out here, and I’m not just talking about jet lag or the general precognition of experiencing every moment three times sooner than every New Yorker.
My first full week as a repatriated Angelino is in the books. Or will be when I write my inevitable memoirs. The ride started virtually the second I landed and didn’t stop, hasn’t stopped, and I am in fact writing this on the back of a Harley tearing ass down the Strip dodging jets of habanero sauce and hooker spit and the discharge of tinsel cannons. I’ve got stained clothes and split knuckles and psychic fractures and all of that good shit your imagination conjures when you think about some illusory thing called the LA Experience. It’s all happening. It’s all just as deserving of its own comic book as you think. I am already a legend, already a millionaire, already nominated for five Oscars and there will be full-frontal illustrations of it all to follow.
Last night. Countdown to absolute zero. Tonight the berg is blown. The ramparts fall to dust. Tonight that voice in the darkness gets lost, its owner gets gone, and the echo of our last frequency gets sucked into the vacuum, decimated, no longer to reverberate.
When I hit a new city, that city’s third cousin it never even knew it had who was lost at sea at the age of two and who was subsequently raised as a Polynesian aristocrat, later rejected that upbringing, and now owns a head shop in Amsterdam just off the Redlight District feels it.
Texas death matches and your future as a professional writer; the former ends with a ten count, the latter begins with one. At least here and now it does.
Geeks, like any other culture, fetishize everything; movies, music, books, clothing, accessories, toys, video games, anything even loosely related to the internet. But geeks possibly more than any other culture communalize their fetishes. Community is everything in the subsets of geekdom. It’s what keeps conventions like Dragon*Con in yearly business. This characteristic isn’t confined to the geek set, but I think they exemplify it, possibly because acceptance and belonging is so deeply encoded in their personal trip. Geeks seek community because the majority spend their early lives shunned by it.
The new issue of Britain’s number one fiction and comics periodical is now on the stands in the UK. Everywhere else in the world you can grab a copy from Murky Depths on-line for a few pounds sterling or a few more dollars American (you can still blame Bush).
Life, big picture life and everyday life, is composed almost entirely of revolutions. Some revolutions you fight, most you just complete, traveling along invisible rings that always seem to bring you right back around in the end; except there isn’t one, not to the rings themselves. We don’t see the curves, there are no markers, and rarely if ever does someone define the starting point for us. We just keep dancing our fucked up ghost dance of contracting circles, moving in towards the fire and back out again until the last ember turns to hash and we follow suit.
Angels scream for you. No, seriously. You, the compromised artist, are the highest target of a seraph’s screeching, sobbing rage. Fuck displaced Haitians. Fuck crack babies. Fuck African AIDS statistics. Fuck the forgotten children of the Mujahideen caught between Taliban tyranny and NATO bullets. The banshee tears of every heavenly choir are spilt and sung and shrieked solely for your pain and pocket book.
You might've read about Macmillan Publishers having all of their titles pulled (which include imprints such as Tor and Thomas Dunne Books) from Amazon.com over a price dispute. And if you didn’t you might have noticed the sudden disappearance of thousands of popular titles from Amazon. Or maybe this is all new and irrelevant to you and you just want to know when new episodes of American Idol air, I don’t fucking know.
It's December, kids. It's the holidays. I love Christmas. I love Christmas stories, movies, and especially songs and the Christmas episode of TV shows. I've put more effort into my holiday playlists of both than most people do into raising their children.
So I like hooking up something special each year around the holidays. Last year for December I did The F'n Advent over in my old, currently out-of-service LiveJournal. A blog post a day. Like any one-thing-a-day format it was hit and miss, but people seemed to enjoy it.
After all the classes and workshops and seminars, after all the bullshit about craft and structure and the elements of
style, here’s what it boils down to: Words and time.
Words are your money. Words are your future. Time is roasting your ass on a spit and the clock literally never stops working
against you. As such I find myself increasingly less motivated to write any kind essay or article unless someone is paying
me for the time it takes away from my other projects to do it. It’s just necessity, plain and simple.
I found myself moved, however, to bust out the following.
By now you’ve all seen that live-action Halo: ODST commercial (“We Are ODST”). They’re streaming it before and/or during
every video on Hulu. At first I was just so taken by what a truly badass piece of filmmaking it is that I was inspired to
revisit all the other live-action shorts the Halo marketing machine has produced in the last few years. I mainlined them in
one shot, strictly for my own personal enjoyment.
Scott Sigler is many things. He’s a pioneer in the field of podcasting. He’s a New York Times best-selling author. He’s a
three-time runner-up in the Mr. Jewish Five O’Clock Shadow contest.
But above all, he’s a needy little bitch.
Seriously. Knowing of my turgid, rock-hard prowess as a writer coupled with my confirmed status as a combat sport
enthusiast, Sigler approached me about laying down a little joint storytelling effort set in his ROOKIE universe. You’ve
been enjoying the results—TITLE FIGHT—on Sigler’s Bloodcast, Variant Frequencies, and as part of Future History here on KILL
(the) FEED.
“Coincidentally” our Rookie-centric novella comes just in time for the release of THE ROOKIE in limited edition hardcover.
Sigler is hitting the road for a month-long book tour in support of that release, and in usual Sigler fashion he’s making
things as convoluted and punk rock as possible. Rather than a traditional book signing, he’s doing this thing up tailgate
style. Sigler will be hitting a different pub in a different city every night to meet-and-greet fans and drink the
unfortunate town dry.
It’s THE ROOKIE TAILGATE TOUR.
And, also in his usual fashion, he’s hit me up for yet more free help.
I’ll be joining Sigler for two stops at the start of the tour, first in Nashville and then in Indianapolis (why he’s chosen
to blow his wad so early in this traveling freak show is beyond me, as all other stops after these two will obviously be
weak sauce). I’ll be there to booze it up with you common folk types, talk TITLE FIGHT, and generally underpin all the
Sigler worship with a distinct note of hate/envy/sarcasm.
But WAIT. There’s more.
Since this will be the start of the tour and one of my ultra-rare public appearances, I wanted to do the sumbitch up right.
So I asked myself, “What is Scott Sigler *really* all about?” The answer, striking and obvious and immediate, came to me
like a bolt of lightning from some bizarro Mount Olympus: Corporate sponsorship and beer.
With those themes in mind we have sought out none other than BUDWEISER to sponsor the Nashville stop of the Rookie Tailgate
Tour. That’s right, THE KING OF BEERS HIMSELF HAS BLESSED THIS EVENT AND BY PROXY SIGLER’S BOOK AND TOUR.
What does that mean? Simple. Lots of free booze, lots of free swag, and lots and lots of corporate branding.
It’s win-win-win.
So here’s the deal: If you show up to the gig with either a copy of THE ROOKIE or a copy of THE NEXT FIX you’ll get a VIP
wristband that entitles you to drink for free all night courtesy of Budweiser. If you buy a book at the gig itself you’ll
also get a wristband and free beer. Budweiser is also busting out free soft drinks for the kids and/or you clean-livin’
types.
In addition, there will be free swag for all *AND* Budweiser will be sponsoring a raffle to benefit the Wounded Warriors
Fund. Grand prize will be an iPod and an iPod docking station/speaker set-up. Tickets will be sold at the door for a buck
apiece.
Just look for the Budweiser Avalanche. It’ll be parked in front of the Crow’s Nest in Nashville with its sonic system
blaring and a huge banner draped from bumper-to-bumper proclaiming: SCOTT SIGLER’S ROOKIE TAILGATE TOUR.
There may even be a few Bud Girls on-site. Who knows?
This is an exclusive for the folks turning out to the Nashville stop, and I guaran-damn-tee you it will be the biggest
blow-out of the whole tour.
WHEN: Tuesday, September 8th, 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Budweiser won’t be joining us in Indianapolis, but I’ll still be there at the CROSSROADS OF MOTHERFUCKING AMERICA to blaze
it up like a spliff rolled by Bob Marley’s ghost and moistened shut by the carnal fluids of those hot elven chicks from Lord
of the Rings.
WHEN: Wednesday, September 9th, 5:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Anyone who knows me is aware I’m a man of many passions. I am renowned for my collection of antique Icelandic kabuki masks.
I enjoy freezing the blood of my enemies and carving their likeness in ice sculpture form. Which I then melt. By pissing on
it. I vigorously perpetrated the first incident of meerkat luge and have facilitated its rise to becoming the national sport
of Uzbekistan. Much like chicks and guns and fire trucks, these are all the things that make life worth living.
Add to the top of that list: cooking.
It’s true. And it surprises some. Yet cooking is the ultimate manly skill, key to self-sufficiency and survivalist tenet.
And fine dining is the ultimate expression of the ultimate manly skill. Because any asshole with a Bowie knife and either
balls of steel or brains of shit can gut a bear and eat it. But it takes the ultimate alpha male to turn that bear into a
petite citrus-ginger carpaccio.
So it was no surprise that for my twenty-seventh birthday last weekend my mother treated me to the annual Taste of
Rutherford. Over twenty of the county’s finest vendors, most of them out of Murfreesboro, from high-end restaurants to
caterers to those who desperately want to be counted among high-end restaurants and caterers (IN HELL, Publix) set up shop
under a massive tent and gave away free eats.
The entire shindig went down at the estate of Ronnie Barrett, founder and CEO of Barrett Firearms. I didn’t realize this
until we got there, and it presented a brief ethical dilemma for me. I’m not a gun guy. I know how to shoot (I’ve been to
gun ranges in Texas, for fuck sake. That’s practically the Muslin pilgrimage to Mecca of firearms), but I’ve always
preferred to know how to take a pistol away from someone else rather than be the one brandishing. My thinking is if
statistically most people are killed with their own handguns, then the same must be true for criminals.
Probability can’t stop a bullet, but it can confuse it.
Anyway. Then I remembered something. I’m not Jesus. I’m a starving freelance writer with two major fetishes: 1) Lady’s beach
volleyball. 2) Free food.
Like I said, it was a brief ethical dilemma.
My mother even scored list status at the patron’s party before the tasting officially kicked off. And so, in the Barrett
mansion, among a mounted fifty-caliber machine gun and digital pix of Barrett chilling with Lou Ferrigno (seriously, man, it
was like a right wing surrealist painting), I absorbed opulence and appetizers provided by Maple Street Grill so fucking
good they could’ve been the whole show by themselves. Popcorn chicken with a wicked wing sauce, beef medallions in gravy,
mashed potato cakes. They even rocked a full chocolate fondue bar with everything there for the dipping but a whole live
midget.
Oh, and two magical, mystical, orgasmic words: Open bar.
Pretty soon the slop was on in the main tent for the rest of the attendees not as exclusive as I. They had a live lounge
band (the front man of whom sounded like Nat King Cole, which means he did not sound like Otis Redding when they cued up
“Dock of the Bay” later on), they had another open bar staffed by lip-ringed pixies, and the doors to the garage containing
Barrett’s classic car collection were flung open. Because WE WEREN’T FULLY GETTING JUST HOW GODDAMN RICH THIS MAN IS (no,
seriously, they were incredibly gracious hosts).
Kids, when I die this is what I envision Heaven’s snack bar approximating. There was Cajun crab dip so good I wanted to
stick my dick in it. There were chicken wings slow-smoked for twelve hours so good I wanted them to stick their dick in me.
But the high-end trophy for the night had to go to Chef Palace by Julio for their elegant cups of shrimp ceviche (for the
uninitiated, ceviche is generally a seafood salad in which the seafood marinates in citrus, and since it is technically
cooking without fire I think that makes it from the Devil), and their miniature caviar ice cream cones. That’s right. Tiny
little cones filled with “ice cream” that was mostly Asiago and topped with caviar sprinkles. It was clever. It also tasted
like a mouthful of cheese.
Aesthetically it made me feel like I was back in NYC. Until I realized they hadn’t cleaned the shrimp. They can call it a
“vein” all they want. It’s crap. It’s shit. It is shrimp poopie. You are eating feces. You are eating several black threads
of living waste. I should not have to bypass the shrimp’s exoskeletal crap armor in order to enjoy it. Although I can sense
the presence of ninjas (that’s right, motherfuckers, I have ninja-dar), I am not a shadow warrior in matters of crustacean
boom-boom defense.
In a way that was a metaphor for the evening (I have to finish on a poignant and philosophical note or this becomes just
another blog, understand). It was quite literally a taste of the mythic “good life.” Beautiful grounds, beautiful food,
beautiful people (mostly). And hey, I am and always have been *all* about living beyond and above one’s means. But instead
of tapping on the glass it was a lot like licking it. And yes, the snozberries tasted like snozberries. But you don’t get
keys at the end of the day. I think you can take experiences like that and enjoy them for what they are, resent them for
what they’re not, or use them as fuel or something to aspire toward.
Personally, I make it my goal to convert all useable matter into energy.
Still and all, it was a fantastic birthday present, rivaling even the autographed Manami Toyota t-shirt Christa Faust sent
me.
Maybe next year I’ll host one in my own fucking mansion.
