Oh fatal ambition!

This is what happens when you decide to better yourself following that pleasantly boring interregnum called "unemployment,"get a job and move cross country. You drop off the face of the Internet for several months,lose Internet service altogether,lose the four readers of your blog,and lose contact with the rest of the world.

Right now,our new apartment is a disaster. Little Boy (formerly “Baby”and “Baby-Tot”) insists he lives in his previous city and demands to visit the playgrounds of our former home. Wife is running around like a madwoman and I’m not far behind. I may turn into a woman at this rate.

So,in order to pretend that I still have a “blog”and that I’m a “writer,”I’m posting this “down n’dirty”entry for now. Thus I bring you…

Five Hard-Earned Lessons Learned From My Moving Trip

1. If one must attache suitcases to the roof of the rental car,make sure that they are firmly tied down so they don’t fly off on to the Interstate,making Wife nearly have a breakdown,almost causing an accident,forcing the assistance of two state troopers with crewcuts and dour demeanors,and causing you to find the nearest post office where you must mail your suitcase to your new home. Yes,you really can mail a suitcase.

2. Little Boy,now two years old (Now Two! Now Able to Answer "No!"to Everything!),does not like sleeping in hotel rooms with his parents and makes his displeasure known through not sleeping. And making copious noise punctuated by tears.

In addition,the $3.18 Disney TV show (about a talking bear who can drive a car but needs help to learn how to brush his teeth) one orders in the hotel room to pacify Little Boy will only make him go insane with lust for more craptastic $3.18 Disney TV shows and make him cry all evening in withdrawal.

3. DSL is one of the worst technical innovations of the last 400 years and should be put out of its misery with an extremely large-caliber weapon. Also,I cannot think of a suitable acronym for what DSL should stand for,though “Dong Sucking Lousiness”or “Defintely Shitty Linkage”come to mind.

4. Bad moving companies are very,very bad,but good ones are very,very good. We were lucky to have the latter. (Added so you don’t think everything was awful.)

5. No matter how many boxes you’ve opened,there’s more to follow.

If only I could say the same about my blog entries.

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Great. I just updated WordPress,and now all the comments are gone. Technology giveth…

Long before getting food poisoning last Sunday night and its subsequent vomitus Monday morning,before there was Sarah Palin or "Obama Girl,"before Baby had been conceived or Bookfraud had made its debut,before Steve Bartman had his date with infamy,before the non-plague of Y2K or the real plague known as "Bush Cheney 2000,"even before Girlfriend became Wife,I saw a Neil LaBute film called "Your Friends and Neighbors."

Besides seeing Ben Stiller with a goatee,"Your Friends and Neighbors"was notable for the music accompanying the title sequence:disturbing,basso profundo violence of what sounded like a string quartet whose instruments were on ‘roids. It was loud,cacophonous,and was the most memoriable aspect of the movie (other than Jason Patric playing football with a baby doll).

Move ahead 10 years,to Saturday,36 hours prior to consuming the extremely bad scallops that led to a 5:30 a.m. technicolor yawn. A friend of Wife’s is a cellist,and upon learning that Baby is about a music-besotted 21-month old as can be,graciously lugged her instrument to our home and gave Baby a concert that included a Bach cello suite,"Twinkle,Twinkle,Little Star,"and several cat-death notes created when Baby tugged on the strings.

For some reason,I thought of "Your Friends and Neighbors"and the soundtrack. The cellist friend didn’t know what I was talking about (though we did note that a group she was in and Kronos Quartet both had covered "Purple Haze").

Following further research that day,I finally discovered the source of the music after a decade. It was a trio who play heavy metal on the cello.

Yes,that you read that correctly.

Apocalyptica (see pictures above and below) are three classically trained cellists (I imagine there’s no other kind) plus a drummer. Of course,they’d have to be from Finland.

Though I am not familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work,and will not become familiar with Apocalyptica’s entire body of work in this or any other lifetime,they are known for playing covers of Metallica songs,including "Enter Sandman,"the song from "Your Friends and Neighbors"that had perplexed me all these years.

Even longer before I had seen this movie,I had written in a stupdendously bad novel (one of three stupendously bad novels that have flowed from my fingers) a scene involving a tuba quartet:

“Gerard’s Tuba Quartet No. 3,‘The dance of the piglets’”the program read. “A T.U.B.A. command performance.” Yves Gerard’s third Tuba quartet, The dance of the piglets,c.1989,represents a return to form for the great French composer. It reflects Gerard’s obsession with livestock and the deconstruction of agriculture as metaphor,a theme reflected also in his Tuba Concerto in C-major (the “Farmer St. Jean”Concerto) and his famed “Barnyard suite.”

I don’t repeat these silly lines to show the craptastic nature of my writing,but to illustrate that no matter what I or anyone else writes,reality will trump it. Philip Roth’s famous screed that fiction writers cannot compete with the news of the day ("The actuality is continually outdoing our talents,and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist") is made flesh each day: . . . →Read More:I’ve Found a Reason to Blog,and Its Name Is Apocalyptica

This is less a blog entry than an exercise in that thing called writing,which I’ve done precious little of in the past three weeks.

Fun times in Bookfraud-land:

Trapped in a conference room with a nice,perky lady,a moribund old guy wearing a hearing aid,and a librarian who gives "cliched"new meaning. A poor schlub yakking for ten minutes about a computer patch management system. Half the room clearing out after lunch. The worst computer tutorial in the history of the world. Suicidal thoughts.

If you haven’t figured it out yet,this was my introduction to "outplacement services,"or a three-month tour of duty that’s supposed to help me find a new job. My previous employer paid for this service,though I would have preferred that they had given me the cash outright.

I arrive early one morning,find a seat in a crowded conference room,and think about ways I can leave gracefully. Enter the perky lady,once an airline employee (no,not a flight attendant),who will be our instructor for the morning.

Our instructor introduces us to the office managing partner,an older fellow who reeks of wisdom and Fixodent,for a pep talk. He tells us that he knows what it’s like to be unemployed,for he’s had to change jobs four times in his life,but there’s positions out there,if you know how to look. It’s like finding a needle in a haystack,he says. Though with this economy,"the haystack is twice as big,"a comment that effectively reverses the happy caffeinating effects of my Starbucks in a millisecond. I look around the room for a samurai sword to impale myself upon,with no luck.

Then,all the enthusiasm sucked out of the room,we go to work.

The morning features a couple of highlights. First,as a matter of "defining"our skills,the patch-management dude talks about a work-related "challenge,"and how he overcame it. How any of this will help anybody find a job I don’t know,and the homunculus residing in my left temple starts tossing pain-tinged darts at my brain.

Not before or after:instead of

Later,everybody has to write a two- or three-sentence explanation of who you are and what you want to do. Stupidly,I volunteer to read mine. 

As I should have expected,it’s ritual humiliation. Double for me,as I’m supposed to be an expert in the art of communication. It’s not punchy enough. It’s got too much information. It just sucks.

We break for lunch,when I wander around the lobby for 45 minutes in a catatonic state of Faulknerian realization that my job is gone left for parts unknown for budgetcuttingpinheads lopping off the department,the interstices of brain and soul and bodyspirit,the accursed soil,bookfraud without direction is bookfraud without faith without hope without…

After a security guard slaps me,I find a sandwich shop and whomp down a lunch of indeterminate matter (carbo,protein,sliced vegetables) and a Diet Coke,then return to a classroom now one-half full,the rest of our former classmates apparently going to job interviews,finishing that novel,or having sex with tranny prostitutes. Then,the fun begins.

The outplacement agency has a members-only Web site to which we will have access. An older,bespectacled . . . →Read More:Placed Out

 A number of you perceptive folk have asked me,"Bookfraud,it’s been weeks since you posted. What the fuck?"

For this I have no answer,except to tell you I was laid off last week after 11 fun years at my job. 

Yay capitalism.

The following post is far longer than my usual fare,but I feel weirdly entitled to do so,as my job,retirement money,and what reason I had for getting up each morning have now evaporated.

It was a Saturday morning,and I was about 10 years old,furitively watching Memphis Mid-South Wrestling. This show was strictly prohibited in the Bookfraud household,but my father was out of town,and my mother was watching my brother and sister in parts unknown.

A wrestler of great local import was addressing the camera. "I’ll wrestle anyone,anytime,anywhere!"he said to a hapless emcee holding a microphone with an unsteady hand.

"And that includes…"the emcee said.

"Yeah,and that includes the heavyweight champion of the world —Muhammad Ali!"

"And I understand you have an interview with Ali you want to show."

"That’s right,Lance. Now,I haven’t seen this yet,but I guarantee you that I will whip this man in the ring —I don’t care who he is!"

Lance grimaced and nodded,as if he’d seen this type of ridiculous gamesmanship before. And he had. The wrestler,Jerry "The King"Lawler,had a long list of local enemies —Jackie Fargo,Tojo Yamamoto,Dutch Mantell,Bill "Superstar"Dundee. Every week on Memphis Mid-South Wrestling,Lawler,who was currently playing a "heel,"would yammer and rant about he was going to put Fargo in the hospital or Dundee out of wrestling.

But this was not Jerry Lawler challenging Dutch Mantell,a man whose body hair could support a wig factory,or Tojo Yamamoto,who was actually Hawaiian. This was Muhammad Ali —The Greatest. The Greatest of All Time.

"Let’s take a look,"Lance said,gesturing to the camera.

Ali was standing at an airport gate,wearing a gray trenchcoat buttoned to the neck. It was a couple of months after he’d regained his title by knocking out George Foreman. A small,elderly man with white hair but deft movements held a microphone,standing in front of Ali. (Sadly,it was not Howard Cosell.)

"We’re here with Muhammad Ali,the heavyweight champion of the world,"the man said in a nasal voice that sounded as if he was chewing gravel. "Muhammad,first of all,congratulations on reclaiming your title in October–"

"That’s right,Leo. I shocked the world again,didn’t I?"

"You certainly did,Muhammad. Now,I understand that another professional wrestler,Jerry Lawler,has sent you a challenge to meet him in the ring."

Of course,I had seen Ali before on television and in the papers,but today he looked benign,his face a little cheekier than I had remembered.

“Well,let me tell you something,Leo,”began The Greatest,his voice laconic and knowing. “Every day I get telegrams and phone calls and letters from ordinary folk sayin’they want me to fight them. Now,I ain’t afraid of any man,but I don’t want to fight no Jerry Lawler King or whatever he says he is. I’m sure he’s a good rassler and all that,but . . . →Read More:Why I Really Write,Part 12:Muhammad Ali

I am really the last person on earth who should be writing this.

I can’t add to the blizzard of encomiums for the late David Foster Wallace,who died of an apparent suicide Friday night. I have read precious little of his work,had not met the man,and have no claim upon recognizing anyone’s greatness,even among those authors I have read widely and idolize.

And the title is a misnomer of sorts —it is not specifically because of Mr. Wallace’s genius that I am inspired to write,either in appreciation or disdain.

In short,I am woefully equipped to write about the man. But since I heard the news of this awful event,I’ve felt sick to my stomach. It’s as if someone I personally knew had hanged himself.

By all accounts,Wallace was a generous soul. Among many works he left behind,his now-famous commencement address to Kenyon College is a testament to his open-mindedness and degree of intellectualy honesty. His interviews,magazine articles and essays displayed a remarkable range and brainpower. His 2000 feature story on John McCain,"The Weasel,Twelve Monkeys and the Shrub,"is required reading for those following the 2008 presidential campaign.

Of course,his magnum opus,"Infinte Jest,"is certainly one of the most well-read cerebral novels of all time. (You usually don’t get many people to read 1,000-page books with 100+ footnotes.) In a sense,he was the Thomas Pynchon of his generation,or Pynchon had been the David Foster Wallace of his generation. He displayed more literary talent and smarts in one short story —hell,in one page —than I could ever hope for in a career.

But,as mentioned above,I have no expertise in assessing Wallace’s life or literary production.

I have a little experience with depression,however,and the more I read of his life,the more depressed I have become. He published his first book at 24,won a MacArthur "genius"award at 35,and could write for any publication he desired. Wallace had a teaching position in California and was beloved by students and faculty.

Having it all was not enough. Wallace had struggled with depression for two decades,and the last episode was too much for him to bear. He was all of 46. Through all of his pain,he wrote. He persevered until he could no longer.

So I do not write because David Foster Wallace inspired me through his style,intellect,wit,or otherwise. It wasn’t because he could turn a simple feature story about tennis into a cross between Hunter S. Thompson and Derrida,considered one of the better pieces of sports journalism the past decade. Nor is it because of his unstilting committment to probity,his questioning of widely held truths and striving for something not confined within the boundaries of the page.

It was the fact that this man,so blessed with talent and the will to turn it into art,did this despite the agony that daily living could present to him. He didn’t just churn stuff out because of his depression,though he could have,and he didn’t quit writing because of his depression,though he could have and nobody would have questioned him.

He kept writing,and kept his work at the highest possible standard because,I . . . →Read More:Why I Really Write,Part 9:David Foster Wallace,R.I.P.

And now,for something pretty much the same as everything else. Yet another entry in listing the reasons I’m a masochist writer.

I was all of 19,home in Memphis for the summer in an unpleasant 1984,and in a perpetually bad mood. For “home”was a city where I hadn’t lived for seven years,knew not a soul,and had to take two jobs to pay off my freshman-year debt. That entailed about 80 hours or more of work a week,which left very little time for fun. Bookfraud was a dull boy indeed.

One of those two jobs was a government “internship”with the county government. My job was to sit an a car and help catalog tax-lien properties. It paid minimum wage,offered nothing in the way of personal fulfillment or actual experience to help in the job market,and entailed driving into parts of town that were less-than-savory.

My partner in crime was an older man,a man whose name I will not reveal here except that it is so perfect for a character,it’s a shame I can’t use it. I will allow that he had been a colonel in the Air Force,his nickname was “Bubba,”and that Col. Bubba was so over-the-top that if I were to make him up as a character,you would never find him plausible.

He was about 65,stood about 6-5,and would have weighed 650 pounds if he’d had his beloved pork barbeque sandwiches every day for lunch. Suffice to say he probably tipped the scales at 250. He wore houndstooth jackets and fine leather shoes,shiny silk ties that looked like they’d served time since the 1960s,and his combed-back hair looked like he’d cleaned out the local Walgreen’s of Grecian Formula.

Col. Bubba sounded like a stereotypical southern sherif:“Boy…”he would start sentences when addressing me,managing to stretch “boy”into three syllables.

He loved to give me a hard time about my attendance at a college north of the Mason-Dixon line —“This here boy goes to a Yankee school,but we’ll forgive him for it”he’s say by way of introduction to others,not to mention my relative ignorance of the ways of the opposite sex.

“Boy,lemme tell you,when I was runnin’my own oil company,I had all the poontang thrown at me I could shake a stick at. But most of them was married women,and I never do it with a married woman. I’d rather beat the meat than do it with a married woman”—which,in Colonel Bubba’s world,was worse than dying a virgin.

His favorite (actually,his only) topics of conversations were sex,his adventures in the Korean War,his life in business,and the 1942 University of Tennessee Volunteers football team,“coached by the great General Neyland,undefeated,untied,and unscored upon,”on which he played defensive end.

There was plenty of time to talk. We would usually catalog three or four properties by noon,finding them on unnamed and deserted streets,and drive around for the rest of the day. I can still hear him reproaching me,saying,“Boy,we’ve already done three for the day. If we do five or six,bossman will expect us to do that every day.”

He occasionally used the . . . →Read More:Why I Really Write,Part 4:Colonel Bubba

More than on his birthday,I miss my father on Father’s Day. It wasn’t as if this Hallmark holiday was special in our household,but now that I’m father myself,the day simply reminds me of things incomplete: I can’t talk to him about what it’s like being a father,what it’s like to worry and fret over things you can’t control or to share the mysterious joys of Baby’s first steps,words,or smiles.

This is ostensibly a literary blog;Dad was not a lover of literature. However,he was a learned man,his tastes veering to math and science,history and politics,and his forays into literature were mostly in genre fiction.

That’s one of many reasons I never told him that I’d gotten a literary agent for my novel,much less let him read it,despite his numerous protests otherwise. It was almost parental in nature:you’re my son,I raised you,I have a right to see your book,even though you don’t want your old man to read it. 

But there was a more cowardly motive behind my reticence. I didn’t want Dad to think that the insanity of the teenage protagonist’s home life —the narrator’s family suffers a massive reversal of finances and social status as he enters adolescence —was based on my own. Of course,we really never had a massive financial position or high status to reverse,but the portrayal might have stung him.

He had a difficult life in many ways,usually due to problems of his own creation. My father did calculus for fun,but never could never really translate his prodigious smarts into a decent living. He chose the wrong jobs,the wrong professions,and usually sabotaged himself with inappropriate displays of temper. 

I spent a good deal of my teens and early adulthood cataloguing my father’s faults,which were not just aligned with his inability to make money,while letting resentment slide towards the scale of "hatred."I promised myself that when I grew up,I wouldn’t be like him.

That point of view changed,thankfully,long before he died. He always supported his children and never criticized us for our failings in school,athletics or otherwise. (The only thing he disdained was when we quit or didn’t try.)

My father liked debate,and insisted no matter what our beliefs,my siblings and I should have a good reason for believing them. But even if he disagreed with what I believed or did,he always stood behind me,be it my choices in careers or significant others,or even how my siblings and I pursued our religious beliefs.

And when the chips were down,he always made things better. When I was a child and first cognizant of death,one night I started crying in my bed,fearing parental abandonment,until Dad came in to my bedroom and calmed me. When I was in college and in despair of a financial matter,Dad was able to help. When I was an adult and slept with someone I shouldn’t have,ultimately leaving me depressed and upset,it didn’t occur to me not to call my father. And he made it better (and didn’t tell my Mother).

When he was in the hospital before he died,he said to me,"You’ve done well for . . . →Read More:A Melancholy Father’s Day

In light of the hubub regarding same-sex marriage,not to mention the premier of the "Sex and the City"movie,it’s time to address one of the more pernicious linguistic constructions of the last few years:"gay."

No,I do not refer to its common use to mean "homosexual male."Or in the archaic useage of "happy"or a name. Instead,employing it as a pejorative adjective,as in,"That shirt is so gay"or "A capella singing is really gay"or "Watching the ‘Sex and the City’movie is completely,totally,utterly gay."

It’s got to stop. I’ve been as guilty of it as the next person of saying it,but that doesn’t make it any less forgiveable.

I mean,when was the last time you heard someone say,"That bank is totally Jew,""Basketball is really Black,"or "Immigrants are so Hispanic"? Probably not for 20 years,unless you spend your time at bars where the clientele arrives by swimming out of the toilet.

But when was the last time something or someone was called "gay"? Probably a few minutes ago.

Calling something "gay"is another way of calling it emasculated,stupid,and unworthy of one’s time. And by extension,that means that liking any cultural artifact associated with gays is,well,"gay."

Now,I have about as much real insight into gay culture as I do tribal Indonesian theater,but saying that there are some gay men who like to dress well,are active in musical theater,and like certain singer-divas is about as earth-shattering as saying that Imelda Marcos likes shoes.

But I like musicals

But here’s where my problem lies:I like nice clothes (despite my lousy wardrobe),musical theater,and Judy Garland (and Liza,too),and I’m not gay,or at least the last time I checked.

All these stereotypical "gay"things are good,just as most gays and lesbians are regular folk,so if someone "accuses"any thing,person,or trend as "gay,"it actually is like saying that it’s good. To wit,a few years ago,a fellow member of tribe of Hebrews told me the perfect comeback when told that she "looked"Jewish:"Thank you."

This is perfect because it addresses two things at once:to say someone looks Jewish is ridiculous,and even if it were true,there’s nothing wrong with it. Sure,the offender may be referring to the size of one’s proboscis,the texture of one’s hair,or how one dresses (i.e. the size of the wallet),but why should it be an insult to be associated with being a member of the oldest religious club out there?

In fact,though you are certain to be branded an anti-Semite if you were to say I "looked Jewish"to my face,for although I am not insulted to look a certain way,it means you are engaging in stereotype:there are African Jews,Asian Jews,Arab Jews,and Jews of other ethnicities,not all that begin with the letter "A."

Now,I don’t know how other persecuted minorities feel about it,but if there’s something that makes me unconfortable,it’s when something is too "Jew-y,"a direct reflection of not only my own self-loathing but the desire to assimilate —I have known people who are truly astounded that Jews love wine, . . . →Read More:That’s So Gay (and OK)