bookfraud

I want to share a wonderful addition to the lives of Wife and myself. It has strengthened our marriage, brought joy to our lives, and made us whole. The changes have been manifold. This new member of the family has readjusted our priorities in life, and we are happier than I could have never imagined.

I speak, of course, of our crock pot, the greatest culinary invention of all time. (What, were you expecting a baby? Like I’d ever blog about that. Or my impotence.)

As a holiday gift from the in-laws, the crock pot (now dubbed a “slow cooker,” following the decision of a drunken Madison Avenue marketing executive), our newest baby sat unused for about a month. Until, against all odds, against all of the better instincts in me, I broke it in. And I made the mother of all crock pot dishes: a pot roast.

What a crock

And it turned out, well, better than I could have hoped for. (I’m not kidding — it tasted great. Word. I mean, think of those slow roasted juices…mmmm…gravy…juices…bodily fluids…juices…)

The pot roast was easily the best thing I have ever cooked, which, granted, ranks right up there with my hitting the toilet basin once in a while. But I made a decent pork stew a few days later, and an edible chicken dish.

We have a cookbook called “Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker,” conjuring images of a beige howitzer shell with cheezy stencil floral patterns. However, these days crock pot cooking is hip. Wife insists on calling it a “slow cooker” because of the awful connotation of “crock pot,” not the least of which is the association with its 1970s heyday in 1970s. You know, disco, bell bottoms, crock pots, and my massive pre-teen Afro.

This addition of slow-cooking greatness has made me a better writer. I wish I had discovered its salubrious greatness years ago. (Here is where my “real experience” morphs into the condescending blather one feels uncontrollable urge to unleash on the world after turning 40.)

If you are a young and single male, and have pretensions of literary achievement, as I once did, listen closely. There will be a day when you will discover your beloved, and decide to make a life together. You will find that after a few years, you have developed a heretofore unknown talent of messing things up. Suddenly, your housekeeping skills are less than inadequate, while your choices in life are suspect at best, particularly your decisions on hygiene, leisure pursuits, and, most of all, what you choose to wear when leaving the sancutary of home. Worse, you are informed that you need a hearing aid, though you can hear everybody else just fine.

This happens because after a time, your spouse or live-in thinks its OK to get on your case because informing you that it’s a bad idea to wash her colors in hot water or to surf hotbarelylegalteens.com won’t lead to a separation.

Now, if this sounds like a sexist caricature of an henpecking, ball-n-chain wife, you are 100 percent correct and win a new dining room set from Broyhill. There’s no excuse for perpetuating it.

However, If you think that this is an indictment of Wife, you are 100 percent wrong, because, when it’s all said and done, I do screw up and deserve any tongue lashing she dishes out, even though she is usually gentle, sweet, and understanding of my delicate nature.

In any case, these conditions lead to an ironclad rule of marriage, enshrined in this space previously, and will be henceforth known as Bookfraud’s First Rule of Betrothal: A husband’s main role in any marriage is to be a source of constant disappointment to his wife.

This is a vital issue to me as a writer, lest you think I am dishing out trivial bitching in my usual trivial bitchy manner. Since my marriage, I have been forced to take on tasks I would not have as a bachelor: clean the toilet more than once every two months, that type of thing. For all the housework, cooking, paying bills, and such (and we don’t even have children), subtracts from the time you can write. Being over 40 while possessing a full-time job and some semblance of a social life, free time to write is, like Gollum’s attachment to a certain piece of jewelry, my precious.

It is now my duty to make half the meals in this house, which as a bachelor, I satisfied by answering that age old question, “Which Ragu tonight?” I have learned many things about cuisine since marriage, such as beer does not count as an appetizer, main course, or desert.

That’s where the crock pot comes in. Any culinary buffoon like myself can make a decent dinner in it. The best part is that it is hardly any work at all: chop up some onions and carrots, add some spices, take some cheap-ass cut of beef, throw it in the crock pot, and you’re done. You don’t have to watch over it, get second-degree burns from hot oil (happened to me, yay!), or spend obscene amounts of money on third-rate Chinese takeout. You can literally cook and write at the same time.

YOU GET TO MAKE YOUR WIFE HAPPY, YOU GET TO MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY, AND YOU GET TIME TO WRITE.

Get yourself a crock pot NOW. Learn how to use it, delight your partner, and free yourself from the bonds of housework. It will strengthen your relationship without the extra work of having a child, and your gal will think you sexier and stronger for it. Which is no reflection on my marriage, of course.

My life has gotten interesting since I signed up for e-mail.

For instance, a week ago I had a dream in which I played baseball on a day that was extremely HOT; HOUSEWIVES were in the crowd. I hit the ball STRONG AND SUPER LONG. If I’d hit the ball an EXTRA 6 INCHES!!! I would have gone ALL THE WAY. We live in the country, but a good night’s sleep for me is a MIRACLE. “COCKS-a-doodle doo!” the rooster beckoned at 4 a.m.

The next day was Sunday, and my wife and I went to church. After services, I asked the reverend if I could become a lay minister. “A position of LAY? VIA GRAham FOR YOU,” he said. “I mean, through Billy Graham’s ministry.”

Sing, heavenly muse

We went home and watched a documentary on AMAZON PHISHING DANGERS. The natives were NAKED; CELEBRITIES hosted the show. We switched the station to a show where a drug deal was going down in a shopping mall. A character yelled, “You want me to PAY? PAL, SECURITY NOTICES everything.”

The next day, before I went to work, I put on my FREE IPOD!!! , and played Atomic Kitten’s CAN’T MISS THIS, the Talking Heads’ ONCE IN A LIFETIME, and Elvis Costello’s OPPORTUNITY. Usually, when I go to work, I have a CLEAR, HARD DRIVE. NOW! I couldn’t because the car’s acceleration was LIMP; DIPSTICK? readings showed the oil was low.

I took the train instead. The commute was great, because the train fares had GREAT LOW RATES! But the crossword puzzle was as HARDER AND LONGER than the day before. I read a newspaper story about endangered eagles, which were BALD. NO MORE! would the GOVERNMENT AGENCY WATCH over them.

Next to me, a fellow was reading about a hatchery that never delivered its goods to poultry farms, leaving the birds high and dry. It was actually a BOOK. “FRAUD: CHICKS ARE WAITING,” it was called.

I struck up a conversation with the man next to me. He was a businessman. “I own a MEXICAN PHARMACY and sell CANADIAN DRUGS,” he said. The new locale had 500% MORE VOLUME than his old place.

There was turmoil when I got into the office. People were bothering me, they just wouldn’t let me BE. MY OWN BOSS was even yelling and screaming. I was working on a project of involving Colorado’s biggest airport, so I did a search on YaHOO!: “DIA WEIGHT; LOSS ratios,” I typed in.

At lunch, I went to the diner across the street, only to remember that it had been accused of serving cat meat. I didn’t want to EAT PUSSY even if the owner said she would LOVE ME FOR IT, so I went somewhere else. At the other place, the waitress brought me soup that was really STEAMING. “MAN, CHOWDER is great!” I said.

I dropped my cash on the floor. “Pick that up,” the waitress said. “NO MONEY DOWN!” But after I had eaten, I thought I was going to be sick. The waitress said, “I can’t give you cash back, but I’ll admit, your food is BAD. CREDIT?”

I also went to a house wares store. I wanted to buy a hammer, so I asked if they had one in STOCK. “PRICES LOWER than ever before,” they said. Instead I bought some gloves that were made of STEEL. “HARD ON the hands, aren’t they?” the manager said. I also bought a bedspread for my wife so large that I could COVER HER IN IT.

Back at my desk, I listened to a ESPN radio interview by a guy named Joe Moneypenny interviewed a former basketball player, World B. FREE. “MONEY, AT HOME there’s lots of ladies for this playa,” he said.

I couldn’t leave work fast enough that day. I’m in community theater, and after work, I went to an audition. But I stood on stage and did nothing. The casting director, pressed for time, yelled, “ACT NOW! YOU HAVE TO ACT NOW!” But I didn’t get the part of the Minotaur because I couldn’t BE HORNY ON DEMAND.

As I was walking home, Wife called me and said she’d cooked a big meal at home, so I should CUM HUNGRY. Dinner was delicious, but I wanted to give my food to people who were hungry, especially WOMEN WHO NEED IT BAD. They have full households to take care of.

When I got home, my wife had a surprise for me — a new pet, a 20-foot boa constrictor. He was angry looking, but I was so happy that I had THE LONGEST MOST INTENSE ORGAniSM EVER.

That night, I went online. “You have no messages,” it said.

BE SURE AND E-MAIL THIS TO EVERYBODY YOU KNOW.

Writers all have flashes of brilliance — the witty dialog, the wacky character, the amazing mise en scene that solves the problem of 35 pages earlier — that fill us with excitement and generally make our lives worth living.

But few of these abstractions will make it into print. Because most of them can’t be fitted into a story, or they just plain suck. Like your children, some ideas appear to be the brightest, smartest, most brilliant young things when they’re new. Then they grow up, start stealing cars, and suddenly you’re spending your weekends upstate.

Oh, they seemed-oh-so-clever at the time, but now it’s painfully obvious they are silly, ridiculous crap. I mean, how are you going to write a story about a castle made out of Big Macs, unless Ronald McDonald is narrating? (Hmmm. Come to think of it…)

Another bad idea

I’ve had more than my share of dogs over the years. Some were conceived many years ago; others, in the last 15 minutes. These brainstorms have one thing in common: they are so idiotic that I’m exposing them to the light of day, so I may exorcise myself of them, and do something that every writer dreads, which is allow somebody to steal them.

Take them. Please.

BOOKFRAUD’S BIG, BAD, ROTTEN IDEAS

Neo-Nazis who have full facial hair except under the nose, where a “Hitler moustache” would be: It was to be a story about a bunch of facists who run a diner, and who hire 7-foot tall uber-menches to stage a putsch against the Detroit city council. They would identify each other not by a password or secret handshake, but by their facial hair.

Also, they served meat cookies in the diner, and did not allow themselves to scratch themselves even when they itched, as a sign of discipline.

Get it?

The Yarmulke Jockeys: The name of a Jewish reggae band, which actually made it into a story that got published. Still, it makes me cringe — a classic case of being too clever by half. It is kinda funny, I guess. You can steal this one, but I’ll sue the shit out of you.

In a dream sequence, the protagnoist dreams he is working on an assembly line, wiping dogs’ asses as they pass him: I wrote a terrifically bad novel when I was in my early 20s, which included this scene. Can’t say what I was thinking, except I thought it an amazing sequence. One of the canines, a bulldog, starts talking to the protagonist and flexes his front leg/bicep, like Arnold Schwartzenegger.

Except he speaks with a southern accent and talks about how Japan is taking over the world. Your typical day at the office.

Bookfraud’s idée fixe

Titles Division:
“Beware of Pretty Hair”
“She Looked Like G. Gordon Liddy”
“Carmen the Vibrator” :
Funny (or not so funny) titles! No story to go with them!

Dialog Division:
“I try to avoid mustard these days.”
“I’m not one of those Hannibal Lecter wackos who teases the police about who he ate.”
“Can’t you see I’m making beer right now?”:
Not necessarily bad, but a clear case of the “dialog tail” wagging the “plot dog.” I’ve got lots more of these gems lying around, rotting. Notice that all of the above are about food, more or less. And that leads to…

A BBQ joint named “It Tastes Like Chicken”: If you think this is a laff riot, as I once did years ago, it’s all yours. I must have been high when I wrote it. Speaking of which…

Two stoners getting married who register at a headshop: Humorous, I guess. But it’s hard to fashion a story around a joke. I just said no.

“At the end of ‘LF,’” I wrote on a slip of paper, “make it clear that Chris gets a lobotomy”: I have no clue what that means. I don’t know what “LF” means, or who Chris is. Though it has the whiff of easy closure — a hospital version of “and he shot everyone and everybody died. The end.”

Wait a minute! Now I remember! “LF” stood for “Lingua Franca”! It was about a hospital built like the Tower of Babel, with different languages spoken on each floor, and it had 500 elevators and 1,000,000 patients and like 3,000,000 doctors and nurses, and somebody swimming in a sea of milk at the end and television sending subliminal messages, and, and…ah, just fuck it.

“Man Has Sex With City Street!”: I wrote this down immediately after shagging the corner of Park Ave. and 81st St.

Try not to think about it

The Golf Novel: This may or may not be a good concept for a novel, but I’m never going to write it. The novel would be about a foursome playing a round of golf, each hole being a chapter.

The first chapters would start simply, with the language becoming more complex with each hole. By the ninth hole, it’s in stream-of-conciousness; for the last nine holes (”The Turn,” it would say on a page divider), the language does the reverse. And the score each player gets on a hole is indictative of his or her moral/intellectual standing on whatever it is they are talking about.

I have started this novel approximately 1,325.48 times. If you want it, it’s yours, but just mention my name in the credits, please.

Tune next time to see what happens when a pathetic, shriveled, limp idea (not listed above) gets turned into a blog entry! Don’t miss it!

Since I seem to be “on a tear” with movie criticism and how it relates to fiction and literature, I will continue on this “unstoppable roll” of brainy dialectic that you will drink up like a skid row drunk sopping up the last drops of a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Kountry Kwencher.

A couple of weeks ago, Wife, Friend of Wife, and I went to see a French movie called “Cache.” The movie opens with an extended, static shot of a Parisian home. Two hours later, the movie ends with an extended, static shot of a Parisian lycee. In between, videotapes were sent of that same Parisian home to the couple that lives there, as well as awings of a beheaded rooster, and a lot of not-groovy flashbacks.

“That happened,” Wife said.

Derrida Does D

We “got” “Cache,” but only in the sense we understood the events on the screen. The movie’s central conceit — who sent those damn videotapes? — is never revealed, at least overtly. Wife and I went home and surfed for answers, and read about 50 different interpretations of what we’d just seen, from the personification of France’s blind, evil treatment of Algerians (OK, I can buy that, being that the characters yakked about this) to the possibility that all the characters are dead and we’ve just witnessed a dream, which, if true, means the filmmaker has an I.Q. of 37.

(Now, I know that each and all French intellectuals will say they understood “Cache” completely, but they’d rather go on a diet of Vegemite than admit otherwise.)

Admittedly, interpretation is not my strong suit. My powers of reading and interpreting literature are as limited as my ability to figure skate, fly an F-15, or cook, a skill of which my talents are so limited that I find it a triumph if I can just make it to the point where I get to fuck up. Like when I manage to burn a vat of boiling water.

And yet…and yet I was an English major, and did pretty damn good. How, you ask? What was Bookfraud’s huge, compelling secret?

Now, listen closely, especially for all of you under the age of 18, and thinking that English could be The College Major For You. This extremely valuable insight that will make your grades rise, cut down on your workload, and has 50% more whitening power than the other leading toothpaste.

Here it is: take a relatively esoteric idea, apply it to literature, and write the same paper about it, over and over (with different professors on different writers, of course). Your academic patrons will love you, because he or she probably has never seen the pairing of, say, subjunctive reality and Aeschylus, or evolutionary psychology and Saul Bellow. And if they have seen such a pairing, they’ll at least think you’re grad student material. Or that you didn’t write a paper that began, “In Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost,’ there is the interesting topic of Satan.”

Me, I rode a horse called Entropy. Entropy is the second law of thermodynamics, which I don’t understand well enough to explain, but that I “found” in just about every great author and work of literature ever written in the English language.

Entropy in Marvell, Marlowe, Donne. Entropy in the sisters Bronte. Entropy in Joyce, Wolfe, Faulkner, and even Hemmingway. Entropy in everyone except Thomas Pynchon, who wrote a story called “Entropy.” Every paper that I wrote containting the word “entropy” in the title got an “A.” Damn, I was smart.

But beware, boys and girls. This doesn’t work with everybody. In particular, watch out for those wacky profs who are in thrall to Really Fucking Smart French Philosophers. (Yes, it’s those French again.)

Take, for example, an English class I took that examined the Oedipus myth through literature, starting with the Famous Original Dad Killer and Mom Diddler himself to Hamlet to Faust and so on. The teacher was a dyed-in-the-wool deconstructionist, which means you analyze all text in minute detail, down to the letter. Being a deconstructionist also means that when you were writing your dissertation, Derrida, Foucault, and a bunch of other French philosophers flew over from Paris and raped you.

This particular professor was a gentle man, soft-spoken and soft-bodied, but he became quite animiated when he got all textual on us. For instance, the first words Hamlet utters are “A little more than kin and less than kind,” a nice pun on his whole messy family situation. Or so I thought. No, the teacher says, the real meaning of that is the difference between “kin” and “kind,” that being the letter “D,” which he drew with a grand flourish on the chalkboard.

And what does “D” indicate? he asked, as if it were ever so obvious. Us teenage, corn-fed Midwesterners tried our best. “Death.” “Denmark.” “Disco.” “Devo.” Nope. The “D,” Professor Softie said, stands for “Deus,” indicating Hamlet’s disconnection between the corporeal of his literal world and that of the spiritual, internal storm that makes him want to kill his uncle and bed his mother.

Oh, of course.

So, the moral of this rambling, pointless typing exercise is (and coming from someone who absolutely loves la France): if you watch a French movie, take a class from a teacher who loves French philosophy, or are considering that vacation in LaCôte d’Azur, just remember one thing. We now call them Freedom Fries.

Since I want to talk about motivation, I want to talk about “Brokeback Mountain.” And not about my motivation to see it.

Wife, a friend, and I saw “Brokeback Mountain” a few days ago, and after seeing it, wondered what all the fuss was about. OK, it’s a big-budget epic involving two gay characters, a first for Hollywood. But it’s still your basic love story, except with two guys, who can never be together because of the times in which they live. (Think of “Roman Holliday” without Audrey, Rome, Eddie Albert, or comedy). Lots of gorgeous scenery, horses, sheep, drinking, smoking, mumbling, averted stares. Just happens to be two guys.

Sadly, “Brokeback Mountain” moves about as fast as a vehicle in the middle of a ten-car pileup. The movie is all about love unfulfilled, love repressed, love stymied. Nobody is ever happy. This seems to be Ang Lee’s stock in trade. “Sense and Sensibility.” “The Wedding Banquet.” “The Ice Storm.”

Give me one good reason

Even in the totally awesome “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” the central tenet is that love does not conquer all. “Brokeback Mountain” is “Crouching Tiger” without any ass-kickin’ fights. I mean, if Chow Yun-Fat could not find it in his bones to jump Michelle Yeoh, he musta been seriously repressed.

There’s almost no sex in “Brokeback Mountain,” which even us straight men could have watched more of, if only to break up the boredom. (At least, a lot more hot man-on-man action* would make angry homophobes patently crawl with disgust — because they might like it.)

The specific motivations of the two cowpokes stuck up on Brokeback tending sheep, Ennis and Jack, are never given voice. We’re supposed to infer their hidden desire by sideways glances and furtive looks. And the fact that Ennis speaks an entire sentence to Jack.

As they share a tent one night in the mountains, they give in to their nature, and, though they proclaim they ain’t queer, it was a one-shot deal, their proclamation is about as convincing as me telling Wife, “Oh, my forgetting to flush the toilet — don’t worry, that was a one-shot deal.”

Their subconscious motivation — they’re gay, they’ve fallen in love, and opportunity presented itself — is obvious, even if they aren’t aware of it. And that is what I find interesting.

Motivation is the point, and it’s a sore spot of mine when it comes to writing. Because I’m lousy at it, and don’t think enough about it. Unfortunately, knowing a character’s motivations is about 95 percent of the battle.

In a fiction workshop, when one is asked the reason why one of your characters slept with his best friend’s girl or blew everyone away with a Kalashnikov or masturbated on the front lawn of his junior high school in front of Principal Skinner, the worst answer you can give, the one that will earn the most scorn of teacher and students and make you look like a Blithering Idiot is, “He did it because he just did.”

Sadly, yours truly was the one uttering those blasphemous words. As a young writer, the idea that characters needed motivation was alien to me. They did what they did because that’s what they did. Jesus Christ! Isn’t it obvious? But such insouciance does not a good writer make. Even if it’s not clear to the reader, the writer needs to know what makes their characters tick, beyond the usual lust for power type of stuff, which we know makes all men tick.

Actors totally have it over writers here. You go into any Acting 101 class, and you hear the same mantra everywhere: what’s the character’s motivation? Why is she doing this? What does she want out of this situation, this person, this life? Why does Ennis want to shag Jack, then keep him at arm’s length?

My motivation for writing this blog, for instance, is to garner all the power, wealth, fame, money, and chix that I can lay my grimy, ink-stained hands upon. (It’s working really well). That’s the only reason I write. That’s the only reason I live.

Don’t tell Wife.

*(I do not use the phrase “hot man-on-man action” as a cheap way to attract people looking for sexual content via search engines. I mean, if there’s hot man-on-man action, there’s hot man-on-man action, and no amount of mentioning hot man-on-man action is going to eliminate hot man-on-man action that’s in hot man-on-man action. I mean, hot man-on-man action.)

One of my many White House contacts, who have been courting me assiduously ever since my 15 seconds of recognition last week, called me in a trembling voice.

“Hey, ‘fraud, we have something for you,” said one of the many “high-level contacts” in my extensive intelligence network. Turns out, he was leaking haiku. George W. Bush-written haiku. I’ll bet you didn’t know that our President wrote poetry. I sure didn’t.

This is all top-secret, hush-hush: even Alberto “VO-5″ Gonzales can’t even write a twisted legal opinion approving it, a la torture or wiretapping or an Oval Office showing of the NC-17 director’s cut of “Brokeback Mountain.”

Haiku is his middle name

I have posted haiku once before, in the name of Elvis. Now, if you, the reader, are thinking, “what a cheap, sleazy, lazy way to make a new entry, posting other people’s poetry, while recycling an old idea,” you are absolutely correct.

But still. President Bush’s haiku must be exposed to the harsh light of public knowledge, so that we can have a free and thriving democracy!

What I have to do
is stand tall to Osama
if I could find him

When a hippie asked,
‘War? What is it good for?” it
Was a trick question

Hidden WMDs
Iraqis are evildoers
Saddam tossed a loaf

Vice said I’d messed up
Dick had turned totally red
begged for His mercy

It is so true that
wealth is earned by the owner
just like I have done

The new budget has
no Al Gore-like fuzzy math
There’s no math at all

Just try to keep up

Even though gays are God’s
children, they should not marry,
but I like their clothes

Burning Danish flags
Why? It’s not like we’re talking
about Jesus here

I don’t know why you
could hate Muhammad, as he
knocked out George Foreman

They said I was “dissed”
at Coretta’s funeral –
What does dis mean? Really?

Brownie got bad press
He did a heck of a job
Sucking up for work

New Orleans flooded
I had cried a million tears
Pat O’Brien’s was gone

Plato, Socrates
Nietzsche, Hegel, Sartre, Rousseau
Read ‘em all on tape

Can’t let due process
block me from fighting for the
American way

We’re wiretappin’
All around the great big globe
Why do they hate us?

We have to listen
to foreigners talkin’ trash
Makes Dick kinda hot

The only thing that
I thought was going to be tapped
was a keg of Coors

If this is the last you hear of me, you will know the reason why. Send your cards and letters in c/o Abu Ghraib.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote famously, “There are no second acts in American lives,” and while this pronoucement has the air of wisened truth, the only thing dumber would have been for Fitzgerald to say “Zelda is the most sane person on the planet.”

No, Mr. Great American Novel, America is full of second acts. America is about second acts. We’re the great nation that gave us the “Comeback Special.” Sports foists upon us “Comeback Player of the Year” awards. Donald Trump wrote “The Art of the Comeback.” (Though if The Donald had been a better businessdude, he wouldn’t have needed a comeback to begin with.)

O captain, my captain

One of my favorite comebackers is William Shatner. Shatner is Canadian by birth, but his second act — his third, really — is truly American. Once Star Trek was canceled, the former Captain James Tiberius Kirk gave the showed the world all of his acting glory as supercop T.J. Hooker (wearing a girdle).

T.J. Hooker, by many accounts, the worst T.V. show of all time. It jumped the shark before there was anything to jump.

Shatner got wise, though, making fun of his own overacting in those Priceline commercials, and has been doing well ever since. Now he has an Emmy, a starring role on television, and when he’s in a movie, it’s not supposed to be a punchline (”Come over to the TV, you gotta see this movie! They’ve got Captain Kirk playing a game show host who is really a gay-pornstar secret agent! Ha ha!”).

He also recorded an album last year, “Has Been,” his second such effort. Haven’t heard any of the man’s music? You’d know if you’d had. Like your first shag, the first time you hear William Shatner “sing” is a memorable experience.

(I imagine that most people’s first sexual experience is just like mine, totally hot and even surpasses the fantasy, which I once related in Penthouse Forum, when 16-year-old blonde virgin twins with Double D boobs knocked on the door of my snowed-in mountain house, asking if they could borrow some sugar. And I gave them some sugar. I mean, the first time you have sex wouldn’t be awkward, embarrassing, or humiliating, or anything like that.)

Back in 1968, Shatner recorded “The Transformed Man,” a “spoken-word” LP of famous songs to cheezy background music. Two of the songs on the album, “Lucy and the Sky With Diamonds” and “Mr. Tamborine Man” stand out as two of the most unintentionally hilarious songs ever committed to vinyl. It is the ultimate fusion of amazing source material and wretched interpretation — imagine Ed Wood doing Shakespeare.

“Hey, Mr. Tamborine Man!” he screams for recognition at the end of the song. “Mr. Tamborine MAN! MR. TAMBORINE MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!” It sounds as if he is constipated and masturbating at once.

So it was not with mild anticipation that I approached Shatner’s latest musical effort, “Has Been.” Half covers, half original tunes, “Has Been” received a professional treatment, from producer Ben Folds to Henry Rollins and others making a vocal contribution.

The first song I heard was “Common People,” a cover of a song by a British quartet called The Pulp. I was expecting, praying, for the sublime moments that characterized his previous musical efforts. As a low-key rhythm section backing him up, Mr. Bill talks of a rich princess who wants to sleep with him, one of the “common people.” The song builds up from there, adding a guitar, actual singing by Joe Jackson, and a boy’s choir towards the end.

I kept waiting for the badness to begin. Instead, the song flowed along, and was kinda catchy. After a minute, I had to admit I kind of liked it, without irony. And then I had to admit that I liked it more, and yet even more. Like the story of Walker Percy reading a shriveled manuscript of “A Confederacy of Dunces,” I listed first with surprise, then anticipation, and finally, incredulity: this song can’t be this good. But it was. And I can’t stop playing the damn thing.

There is a lesson here, especially for us insane typists who write fiction. If William Shatner can go from “Star Trek” to “The Transformed Man” to “T.J. Hooker” to Priceline commercials to “Boston Legal” and, finally, “Has Been,” there is hope for all of us foundering on the slick slopes of artistic achievement. Bookfraud can go from angry young man to angrier grad student to mellowed-out married man to sycophant blogger to who the hell knows what the next step will be (though it won’t be releasing “Come Fly With Someone Else, Get the Fuck Away From Me,” his album of his exciting pop-punk-jazz standards).

We can produce the worst crapola ever, and, if we’re smart, nobody has to ever see it. Of course, if one publishes novel that sells 14 copies, you won’t get a chance at a comeback, though a novel that sells 14 copies probably doesn’t warrant a comeback from. Not that I’m advocating suicide or anything like that.

Don’t forget to check out the Über-Offensive Bonus Blog below!

Despite the fact that I am genuinely uninformed and generally underwhelmed by my own intellect, it is my duty as a writer to weigh in on the “Kartoon Kontroversy” involving the matter of offensive drawings involving Muhammad, Islam’s sacred prophet, and the riots that these pictures have generated.

As with all blogs, there is a temptation to lecture you, “the reader,” on the “evils of censorship” and “intolerance,” or the spinelessness of Western governments in not condemning the subsequent violence after these cartoons were published (several months after the fact), and how, no matter how distasteful and disgusting the message might be (and, having viewed the cartoons, I can say they are offensive), we must stand up for freedom of expression, stand up for freedom, stand up for the right to speak freely without fear of retribution.

Been there, done that

But since I really don’t believe in any of that liberal democracy crap, and because there is a special, protected tiny subset of Muslims (of which about 1 billion are no more violent than than your Auntie Liz or the bike messenger who almost ran me down a few mintues ago), a subset that condemns cartoons and not, say, crashing planes into office buildings or the killing fellow Muslims, or who apparently are patiently awaiting their turn as ruler so they can kill those who don’t share their beliefs, not unlike many other religious groups, I’ll move on.

Not that I’m cynical or anything like that. There are, after all, some hopeful and intelligent responses to the violence. Islamic clerics with common sense have condemned the violence — you can be offended and protest and not trash buildings, burn flags, or kill anyone!

There will always be “crimes” against religious belief, but they’re usually not worth rioting over. It’s not like anybody is storming the Bastille over the upcoming musical (and I am not making this up) “Sidd“, from Herman Hesse’s novel “Siddhartha,” although if Keanu Reeves reprises Siddhartha role from “Little Buddha” for the Broadway stage, you can bet I’ll be leading the posse with a sawed-off shotgun.

As a writer, one immediately thinks of Salman Rushdie, whose life was turned upside down after “The Satanic Verses.” Like the fatwa for trying to engender debate about Islam in his novel (or, like the supposed Koran-in-the-toilet scandal), we’re seeing mullah-inspired rioting that regional politicians have no problem in encouraging, even if it means innocents are killed or Danish embassies are trashed.

That freedom-lovin’ leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued Rushdie’s death warrant because the book was “blasphemous against Islam.” Riots ensued. Rushdie’s Japanese translator was stabbed to death. Rushdie himself went into police protection. That he outlived the Ayatollah — and wrote “The Moor’s Last Sigh,” one of my favorite books of the last decade — is of little consolation.

But this whole Danish brouhaha really isn’t about Muhammad or even Islam. Islam, like Christianity, Judiasm, Buddhism, etc., doesn’t need protection from a buncha stupid cartoons, even if your local mullah or politician says your beliefs are under threat.

My not-very-original-thesis is that such disturbances aren’t about protecting a religion or an idea, they’re about people in power trying to stay in power.

These people who are inflaming violent protest aren’t threatened by the cartoons — they’re empowered by them. Point out all the infidels, and how the infidels are defaming something sacred, and how you need to take to the streets, and, hopefully, nobody will notice that you’re an incompetent, power-mad dictator or one in waiting. That you have nothing to offer the world except your rallying cry of hate.

Look at the fatwa on Rushdie — it happened at a time when there were stirrings about the Ayatollah’s grip on power. He was able to deflect the fact that Iranians were miserable, the stumblebums in power had ruined the economy, and was beating back dissidents.

This type of demogogery has gotten much play in the Middle East, where Israel and Jews are the evil of choice. But simply extend the practice to its logical conclusion, recall history, and you’ll see plenty of bad, bad people who use this tactic, creating straw monsters to consolidate power. Think of Hitler and Jews. Mao and bourgeois intellectuals. The White House and those who dare oppose their views on terrorism (You’re either for this administration, or you’re supporting the terrorists; never mind all the bungling on Iraq, Katrina, Medicare, Where’s Osama?, etc.).

And that’s my ascerbic commentary for today.

As sala’amu alaikum.

The pictures in question analyzed! Plus, anti-Semitic newspaper cartoons that appear regularly in Arab newspapers that nobody’s rioted about yet!

Please, men and women of planet earth, listen to my cries. Never has so much anger been spent on bad, ignorant cartoons. I mean, it’s not something worth going out into the streets and destroying property over, like “Barney and Friends.” Or The Macarena.

So, in the interest of world peace, I offer reinterpretations of these “works of art” that I wish others would consider for the sake of humanity. Read with an open mind and heart! This will change your mind and bring sanity back to our peoples!

(These are probably more offensive than the original works themselves, so please, don’t get on my case. And if you deface this site, please follow two simple rules:

1. Write in English.
2. Have your work proofread beforehand to ensure proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Nobody likes carelessness!)

OFFENDING IMAGE #1


In the Name of Love Interpretation: Anybody fool can see that this artist was trying to simply say, “This dude’s awesome — He’s da bomb!!!”

Why Does Bono Get All the Press & Chicks Because He’s Solves World Issues Interpretation: Did anybody consider the possibility that someone put a bomb on the man’s head, without him realizing it? Muhammad is obviously the victim here! And it was a Jew who did it!

I Mean, Where the Hell Is Bono Right Now? This Would Really Mean He Would Win the Nobel Peace Prize Interpretation: Come on baby, try to set the night on fiiiiire…!

OFFENDING IMAGE #2


C’mon, Give Me a Nobel Peace Price Already Interpretation: Just because there’s a Star of David on the gentleman’s hat, doesn’t mean he’s Jewish! Madonna wears a Star of David! So did Elvis! And Abraham Lincoln! And Ludwig von Beethoven! And Plato! And the dude who wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh!

(Actually, the person pictured is that mean old man down the street who waves a shotgun at trick-or-treaters and yells “Git off my porch, you stupid kids!” Except he’s wearing an eagle’s nest under his chin.)

Hell, If Henry Kissinger and Yassir Arafat Can Win a Nobel Peace Price, Anybody Can Interpretation: I told you before, I gave at the office.

But Henry Kissinger Doesn’t Even Keep Kosher, For Shit’s Sake Interpretation: Hell, if I looked like that ugly old coot, I’d be anti-Semitic, too.

OFFENDING IMAGE #3


I Really Think Bono Is the Answer Here, Really, I Mean It Interpretation: A clear case of someone misinterpreting the original Danish. What he really said was, “Stop, stop, we ran out of the Crunchy, Wholesome Goodness of Kellog’s All-Bran!”

No, Damnit, ELVIS Would Have Just Thrown a Few Karate Kicks and Solved Things Intepretation: Nobody said virgin girls, did they! It could be virgin boys. Virgin Olive Oil. Maybe “The Virgin Suicides,” that lyrical masterpiece of voice and mood, by Jeffrey Eugenides. C’mon!

Get Out, Dude! If Elvis and Bono Fought With Nunchuks, Bono Would Have Kicked Elvis’ Bloated, Drug-Fattened Ass Interpretation: Did anybody burning the Danish flag and urinating on Danish butter cookies stop a second, and realize these suicide bombers were going to heaven? I thought not!

OFFENDING IMAGE #4


Hello, I’m Bill Gates, and I Was Also TIME Man of the Year, And I Just Felt Like Including Bono (and My Wife) Interpretation: Cue the music: “Ah-ah-ah-ah stayin’ alive! Stayin’ alive! Ah-ah-ah-ah stayin’ aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive, iiiiiiiiiiive!” John Travolta never looked as good in his white suit, and he’s a Scientologist.

In Fact, Since I’m Bill Gates, and Even If I Give Billions to Charity, Only I Can Solve the World’s Problems Because I STILL Own Your Ass Interpretation: Why is everybody upset about this? It’s obviously not the prophet Muhammed. It’s simply a Middle East version of Tony Orlando and Dawn, for gawdsakes. “Tie a yellow burka round the ol’ oak tree…”

And it fits in nicely with all of those yellow Support Our Troops car sticker messages seen in suburbs all around our great nation.

OFFENDING IMAGE #5


Hey, Mahn, This Is Sammy Davis Here, and, As a Black and a Jew, I Totally Do Not Dig What’s Going On Right Now Interpretation: Simple. Somebody crashed a plane into the Statue of Liberty, and a guy from Williamsburg leading a field trip just happened to be there with a menorah, and he was lighting up as a distress signal. Easy.

Listen Here, Sammy, I’m the Chairman of the Board and I Say When These Commie Liberal Religous Wack-Os Knock Off the Rioting Interpretation: Obviously an accurate interpretation of Jewish influence in America. I mean, look at the Jews running everything. I mean, Slash is a Jew! Rodney Dangerfield was a Jew! Sammy Davis was a Jew! They control entertainment, they control everything!

Now Listen Here, Frank, If You Don’t Get Me Another Bottle I’ll Sing “That’s Amore” Again Interpretation: “You paid how much for that menorah? My uncle in Minsk could have gotten you that menorah for half the cost! The very same menorah!”

OFFENDING IMAGE #6


We Don’t Listen to Punkified Musical Rock Down in Crawford Interpretation: Joey Ramone never sang “Gabba gabba hate”! And he was a Jew!

Did ‘Ya See Them There Steelers Super Bowling Victory, Oh, What’s That Hatifed Evildoers Making A Ruckus? Interpretation: The international ambassador of Islamic-Jewish dialog, and a man who promotes peace, love and harmony. “Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.” Even the worst anti-Semite has to agree.

What’s That? No, I’ve Never Met the Ambassador from Ramoneastan, But I’d Love to Have Him Down at the RanchInterpretation: Joey Ramone, may he rest in peace, was Jewish.

And this is the religion people are all upset about?

It’s been several months since I sent a batch of stories to lit mags and the like, and only a few have rejected me. There are still about 10 submissions floating out in the ether. That means I gotta wait and wait some more.

If “Waiting For Godot” entailed an eternal vigil for something that will not happen, “Waiting For the Goddamn SASE Back” is a less-than-eternal vigil for something that mostly likely will not happen, that is, acceptance.

As anyone who has submitted to literary magazines and journals will know, the usual rejection (it’s never a letter, but a slip of paper, those cheap bastards) contains no encouraging words, no critique; it’s nothing but a heartless form letter that might as well be an extremely sharp kitchen instrument.

Waiting for a response

What is most evil about this process is that one will wait months for this scrap, this Xeroxed piece of paper that rips out the heart and renders you suicidal for 24 hours. If your story sucks, you would think they could tell you in less than eight months.

Worse, the longer one waits, the greater the expectation becomes. They haven’t rejected me yet, you think, so I must be close to getting published! I’m in the finals! Then, reality crushes you like you’re a bug and they’re Sidney Greenstreet.

Several months ago, I wrote about sending stuff off to the Great Literary Vortex & Cabal. Now I wait. So, in case you’re wondering, here is how I pass the time before getting the inevitable rejection letters:

–Write new stories that I pretend are essential, perfect pieces that those SOBs will have to take the next time.

–Delude myself into thinking that the Northwest Shithole State Journal is reading my prose with rapt attention, with nubile 23-year-old grad students swooning in my wake.

–Provide support to Wife, who is getting rejections of her own, except hers are actually nice, handwritten letters that beg of her to send more stories.

–Waste time on blogging.

–Expand the mind via televised media (WWE Raw, South Park, Brain Surgery Network), exciting new hobbies (computer games, a musical instrument gathering dust, crashing cars into piles of dead refrigerators), or exploring old favorites (sports, porn, beer, porn, rearranging CD collection, porn).

–Read books that are either a) well written but not too well written, so that I believe that surely that I could get my stuff published; b) that are written like manna handed down from the gods, to the degree that I consider hacking off my digits, one by one, for what the fuck am I doing compared to, say, Nabokov or Garcia Marquez; or c) reading crap in the same literary magazines that are going to reject me, and screaming, Jesus Christ!, wondering why they wouldn’t publish me as I am obviously writing circles around these chuckleheads.

I’ve always said that to varying degrees, writers are malajusted, neurotic, or social outcasts. (Me, I’m all of the above, proud of it, and heading to a mental ward near you.) I’m beginning to believe that these various mental conditions are a result of waiting for rejection letters. It’s a virtuous circle of despair, you see.