Bullshit

The Beauty of Being Slow

Author: jsomers February 16, 2013 1 Comment

When I was really young, I lagged behind some of the other kids in school when it came to pop culture. All of a sudden these kids were listening to rock on the radio and going out to horror movies, while I remained a little more sheltered. Naturally, I took some shit for it. I remember once, desperate to seem at least marginally cool, I claimed to be a fan of Led Zeppelin. I was challenged to name on song, and couldn’t, and my shame was complete.

Luckily, I have a very short memory for shame, as anyone who has gone out for a drink with me can attest.

The lesson stuck with me, though, and in High School and College I became one of those people who worked really hard to be on the cutting edge of everything. The first to hear about a band, the first to see a movie, the first to refuse to read a book for English Class because he could write a paper on it and get an “A” without actually reading it, a skill I carried with me through my entire education. I did that for a long time. I refused to listen to spoilers, too, because I wanted to rush out and see that movie or TV show right away.

Now? Not so much.

These days, I am in far less of a hurry. I wait. I wait for reviews to come in. I wait for TV shows to hit their stride. I wait for songs to filter up through the chaff. And you know what? It’s SO MUCH BETTER. Because I know longer watch things and realize I’ve wasted another two hours of my life. I no longer waste my time worrying about being on the cutting edge, because there is, actually, zero value in being the first person to know about something. And spoilers? Fuck spoilers. If something isn’t able to stand up to spoilers, it wasn’t very good in the first place.

Part of this, of course, is due to technology. In the ancient days, otherwise known as my youth, if you missed a TV show or movie, good fucking luck ever seeing it again. Certain classics got re-run all the time, but generally speaking if you missed it on its first run, you were SOL. Today with DVDs and on-demand and the Pirate Bay, seriously, you can watch just about anything any time. The better question is, should you? Because most of the stuff out there isn’t worth all that much effort, and we all know it. The vast majority of the entertainment you consume — including, probably, my own books — will be completely forgotten in due time, and you might be forgiven for wondering why you’re wasting your time on it. So why bother breaking a sweat to experience it in the first place?

That’s where the Slow Method pays dividends: By the time I make an effort to actually see/read/listen to something, there’s at least some reason to expect it all to be worth my time. The question is, is my time really all that valuable? Nope. Carry on.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul

Author: jsomers January 29, 2013 5 Comments

Hell is Other People

I’ve never been a huge Facebook fan. I see the point and all , and I know a lot of folks get a lot out of it, but for a misanthrope like me Facebook is just another way to feel smug while ignoring people. Now, for some folks, Facebook serves a real useful purpose in their lives and that’s great. For me, Facebook has become a glimpse into the Horror That Is Other People. As a result, Facebook has also become the least reliable way to communicate with me – though to be fair, the only truly reliable way to communicate with me is to stand directly in front of me and shout at me while at the same time slapping me in the face. You then have a 66% chance of gaining my attention. Or being vomited on. Depends on how drunk I am at the time.

Other ways of communicating with me and their reliability:

Email: 5%
Text Message: 0%
Telephone: 1%
In-person but At Normal Volume and No Slapping: 10% (50% chance I will later remember this meeting as dancing the waltz with a bear)
Note wrapped around rock thrown through window: %50 (51% if it hits me)

The Five FaceBook People You Will Meet in Hell

I do, of course, check Facebook from time to time, because I’ve been informed that completely ignoring people on Facebook is a Dick Move. So I have become painfully aware of the distinct personality types you meet on Facebook. Let’s stipulate that one of those personality types is what we’ll call the Normal. The Normal enjoys a bit of social media notoriety, likes to post the occasional picture and chat with people. It’s a broad category which we’ll ignore because it’s essentially boring.

Instead, we’re going to explore the Five People on Facebook You’ll Meet in Hell.

1. The Bragger. You guys! I can’t believe I am so lucky and successful! Whether it’s how many books they sold, the big promotion, their amazing relationship, these folks like to brag. Fuck them. Fuck them all. Oh, they get hidden so fast.

2. The Sad Sack. You know what’s great about the folks who post mysterious sadness all the time? The fact that they never tell you what the fuck they are complaining about:

SadSack436: OMFG my life is so awful I can’t believe what just happened

Concerned Fool99: What happened?

SaSack436: It’s personal. But so awful it would turn your hair white.

Note to everyone in the universe: If it’s personal, DO NOT REFER TO IT ON FACEBOOK.

3. The Parent. We get it. You performed the most basic biological function of any organism and procreated. Your child is not special. Shut up. Look, I have nothing against people being proud of their kids and expressing their affection on Facebook. What I don’t need is your torturous twisty logic that somehow equates the fact that your kid remembers to breathe means they represent the next stage in human evolution.

4. The Politico. I don’t care what your political leanings are, your endless posting of borrowed wisdom and half-assed rants are hidden so fast I give myself whiplash. I don’t know for certain what Facebook is supposed to be used for, but it sure isn’t so you can lecture me on politics like some drunk old man in a bar.

5. The Mystery. The Mystery favors one-word posts. Stuff like Gherkins, or, possibly, Bad day. Certainly nothing that makes any sense unless you just spent the last thirty-six hours or so hanging out with them. I’m not sure if this is supposed to underscore that you’re not one of the cool people who understand their codes, or if they’re just incapable of having thoughts longer than one word. And, I find, I do not care.

So, am I a Normal? Of course not. I’m a Lurker. I scroll through your Facebook posts but barely interact, because I am far too cool and mean-spirited to engage on Facebook. And, possibly, lonely. So terribly lonely.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements

Let’s Do a Free Book Trailer

Author: jsomers January 2, 2013 5 Comments

Trailer for the Book “Jeff Drinks His Life Away”

Well, it’s 2013. How this happened is a mystery. After all, despite the fact that god reached down from the skies and gave me and everyone else on my block the Middle Finger of God (a.k.a Hurricane Sandy), the world did not actually end in 2012 as scheduled, leaving me in a pickle, because I sold everything I owned and told a lot of people to go fuck themselves, because I figured I’d be swept away by a tidal wave of hellfire in December. This did not happen. And I’ve been on the run with John McAfee ever since. May I say this sucks, because John McAfee snorts bath salts and waves his gun around all the time. I don’t think he never sleeps, and he keeps eating my peanut butter, no matter how much I complain.

Dear lord, I apparently need to right my karma, friends. Rarely do I think anything like that, and I guess I could do something like donate a kidney or volunteer at a homeless shelter. Instead, I’m going to give away a book trailer. Not because I am a good person (it is to laugh) but because I really enjoy making book trailers.

Kids, if you didn’t know that I make book trailers, I do. I usually do it for cold, hard American cash – you can see a few examples here. Now, not to brag but some of these trailers have gotten some notice, and one has over 12,000 views as I write this (which is ONE BILLION FEWER VIEWS than Gangnam Style, so fuck me, but anyway).

Go and send me the answer via email to mreditor@innerswine.com – the first person with the correct answer wins!

Altruism, Book Trailers, Bullshit

Book Trailers Galore!

Author: jsomers December 30, 2012 0 Comments

So, I continue to make book trailers for money. Which is a lot more fun than, say, dancing in taverns for nickels, which I’ve done, or luring touristas into hostels in the jungles of South America, which I’ve also done. Nope, on the scale of squick-to-cool jobs, making book trailers is pretty cool.

Here’s the trailer for Falling for You by Lisa Schroeder.

This one was interesting for me. The book is told in a complex structure, and the author was very worried about giving too much away. She didn’t want anything too literal. Instead of a straight-ahead narration script, I instead opted to take a poem written by the main character and use that as our trailer script. I think it worked really well.

Here’s the trailer for Comes the Night, book one of the upcoming Casters series by Norah Wilson and Heather Doherty.

I love the creepy music I found for this with a passion I can’t explain. The VO script for this one was a bit longer than I usually work with (I usually try to hit about one minute, including intro and outro) but I think in the end it needed to be longer, because this trailer works differently: It wants to give you as much information as possible.

Anyways, they were both fun. And I get to read a lot of great books I might otherwise not get to, and meet (virtually, but still) a lot of interesting authors. Lord knows they don’t want to meet me in person. I might have to put on pants. And also, buy a pair of pants.

Book Trailers, Bullshit

Tuesday is Guitar Day

Author: jsomers December 17, 2012 2 Comments

Okay, so you might have assumed that a little thing like having my house 1/3 destroyed by a Hurricane would make me reconsider how I am wasting my life and stop frittering away time and energy on guitar songs no one wants to hear. So, so wrong.

Herewith:

Song529
Song533
Song534
Song537
Song542
Song543

It’s all me, baby! I am an genius.

The usual disclaimer: 1. I admit these are not great music; 2. I claim copyright anyway, so there; 3. No, I cannot do anything about the general quality of the mix, as I am incompetent.

Bullshit, gee-tar

Rookie Mistake: Juvenilia

Author: jsomers November 29, 2012 1 Comment

Drunk Jeff Working Hard at “writing”

You’d think that by now I’d have this writing game down pat. Six novels with two more due out soon, over twenty-five short stories published, a few anthologies – I may not be a genius, or a bestseller, but I’ve done this for a while now. You’d think I’d have figured out how to not humiliate myself any more.

You’d think.

You have to remember, I am a lazy man. Lazy, lazy, lazy. Like, seriously lazy. Lazy Men like me have a lot of really bad habits born out of this laziness and we’re always getting ourselves into pickles because we try to be lazy and shit gets real and then we end up working twice as hard in order to pull things back together. Lazy Men are probably pretty much responsible for every tragedy and horror in history, just a long series of guys who’ve been wearing the same pants for six days shrugging and neglecting to do something.

So, my most recent laziness-related humiliation came from submitting a story. I write a lot of stories. Most are crap, but a few linger in my memory as pretty good. Sometimes I go back through the archives and find a few gems — pieces I didn’t appreciate at the time, but which have something to them. A more mature, diligent author would revise these. I prefer to just submit them.

Sometimes this works out. I’ve sold a few, much to my surprise. But then I’m always surprised when I sell something. When my agent called to tell me we’d sold Trickster last year I spent several weeks chuckling at her excellent joke. When the advance check arrived I was puzzled for a while, then assumed it was a hoax. So selling a few pieces of juvenilia doesn’t rattle me: Sometimes I think the central idea is good, but the execution is kind of meh, so I can see how it happens.

Recently, though, I submitted an old story with a nice idea and I didn’t really read it through very closely. I’m far too Rock Star for that, as long as we agree to define Rock Star as very drunk. It was recently rejected, and the comments from the editors were … not kind. They were also: Not inaccurate. I re-read the piece and frankly I’m a little ashamed of myself. Note the emphasis on little. I remain pretty much in love with myself.

The story can be saved with a bit of revision, and I’ll be dumb enough to submit it again. Lessons: none. I make it my business to never ever learn anything. So far it’s worked out remarkably well. And if you allow yourself to learn lessons from your writing career you’ll end up giving up writing because the lessons are always along the lines of you will never be able to quit your day job or your author photo makes you look like a dweeb because you are a dweeb. Still, this could be a lesson for all of you: Be careful when submitting your juvenilia, kids. There’s probably a reason you let it rot all those years.

Bullshit, Filthy Lucre, Writing

When Booze Attacks

Author: jsomers October 19, 2012 0 Comments

This first appeared in The Inner Swine Volume 14, Issue 1.

In general, liquor been very very good to me. In a storied career stretching back several decades I’ve had a lot to drink, and certainly had my share of hangovers. I still have a suit of clothes I woke up wearing in Philadelphia one night, with absolutely no memory of how I acquired it. It hangs in the closet waiting for the day that we either invent cheap at-home DNA testing or time-travel, and the truth will be revealed. Until then I assume I drank too much and traded clothes with a much richer man of my approximate size and weight.

Still, I’m an old, frail man now, and I think I’ve tested my depth when it comes to killing myself with The Drink. Or at least I thought so. I mean, I ought to know my limits, right? I ought to be able to walk up the watery line of Lake Puke and toe it gingerly, and do a jaunty little dance of defiance. And usually, I can.

Recently, however, I’ve had several inexplicable brushes with the ancient stigma of being over-served, and the only thing more depressing than being a middle-aged zine publisher is being a middle-aged zine publisher who’s about to hurl his cookies all over the place like a high school kid after his first pint of blackberry brandy.

The first time, to be honest, I had consumed enough booze to pickle myself, I admit it. The evening got away from me in an excess enthusiasm for someone’s whiskey collection, and despite the way everything ended I don’t have any real regrets. The most recent episode, however, involved barely enough booze to register, and yet I ended the night swimming home in a taxi, turning various shades of green.

This is disturbing.

The cycle of life, as far as I imagined it, was this: You’re born. Then nothing happens. Sometime around your thirteenth birthday, you have your first drink, and then you fuck up multiple times, spending brain cells to gain experience. A period of happiness ensues, wherein you can pretty much drink without fear of consequence. This goes on until your liver explodes and you die, probably around age fifty. Suddenly returning to the earlier stage puts a distinct crimp in my plans for the future. Not to mention supplying me with ample embarrassment for those occasions when I attempt to be witty and erudite with my adult friends.

The only course of action is to continue to experiment until I figure out the problem in my technique. I’ll continue to report my progress as events warrant.

Bullshit, The Inner Swine, Whiskey

The Worst Whiskies in the World Part One

Author: jsomers September 4, 2012 0 Comments

Many people exist in this world with a purpose, to make the place better for those who come after them. I’ve never been one of those people. I was, in fact, kind of bummed to have an epiphany at age 28 and realize I was not only not immortal, but I was not even living in a universe custom-create for me. I was just one of several billion shlubs muddling through, and that was kind of depressing. Then followed a period of Super Villainy, where I not only didn’t try to help my fellow man or improve the world, I actively tried to ruin both.

But now I am mature. And I am here to do what I can to help. How can I help? I considered my talents: Rare and often not obviously useful. I can, for example, almost remember your name after meeting you just four or five times. It’s eerie. Also, I can do simple algebra equations in my head, so if four ounces of chicken has ninety calories, I can tell you how many calories three ounces has. Every time.

Still, none of these talents seemed like the sort of thing that would help the world in a significant way. So I despaired for a while and turned to writing, and we all know the damage I’ve done there. And then it hit me: If there’s one thing I know something about, it’s booze. And I’ve had a lot of really, really awful whiskies in my time. Why not share that horrible knowledge and spare my fellow man such suffering?

Of course, even there I fail, because I am not a fancy man who can tell you things like how whiskey is made or what it is, exactly, I am tasting. I have the palate of a bum used to drinking moonshine and antifreeze. All I know is whether I would gnaw off my own foot to escape further shots of a whiskey or not.

So, our first candidate is a German whiskey called Slyrs. German whiskey! Next thing you know we’ll have a lady president or something! No, seriously: German whiskey. Rather than bore you with a befuddled and confusing essay about the horrors going on in my mouth when I drink Slyrs, I thought I would use a simple video representation of the fact that if told I had to either drink instantaneously fatal poison made from the crushed testicles of dung beetles or drink another shot of Slyrs, I would choose the poison without hesitation.

Here’s the visual of that reaction:

You’re welcome.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Whiskey

Interview with Little Old Me

Author: jsomers August 14, 2012 0 Comments

Larry Gent interviewed me a while ago and the glorious results have been posted:

http://42webs.wordpress.com/2012/08/13/panic-view-jeff-somers/

“What is your favourite book/author? Why?

I don’t have one! I do have writers I am hatefully jealous of, and would kidnap, Misery-style, at the first opportunity. But I should probably not implicate myself in any future mysterious kidnappings of famous authors, so let’s change the subject. To your original question. Which I suspect you are impatient for an answer to. I just ended that sentence with a preposition. I am a horrible writer. Yes, I’m a little drunk.”

Go read it. Because I am fascinating.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing

WE ARE THE MORON BROTHERS

Author: jsomers July 19, 2012 0 Comments

Bad Writing in Movies

by Jeff Somers
[This essay first appeared in The Inner Swine Volume 15, Issue 1]

LEST we forget, movies and TV shows get written too. And plays. And advertising jingles—the term writing covers a lot of ground, some of it sad and strewn with rotting carcasses, some of it merry and lined with beautiful gardens. This wide field means there’s also a lot of room for bad writing, about which Your Humble Editor here knows entirely too much.

When you do something on a professional level, you tend to lose some of your wonder for it. It’s an unfortunate consequence: Magicians don’t get wide-eyed when cards are made to disappear, computer programmers don’t get excited when email pops up on their screens, and writers wince and groan a lot when terrible dialog afflicts our television shows, books, or movies. We see the connective tissue, and we know all the tricks.

Normally, I can keep my mouth shut. Normally, I can manage to swallow clunky lines that fall to the ground with an ear-popping thud. Normally, I can handle a surfeit of cliché and a heavy hand with the purple—this because I am a firm believer in the Rules of Polite Society, that web of semi-transparent rules that keeps our world functioning, and one of those rules is that you don’t bother other folks with endless snobbish assessments of the quality of your entertainments. We’re writers, after all; for a lot of us, the reason we started writing in the first place was dissatisfaction with the stuff on TV and in the theaters, leading us to try and do it right.

Recently, though, I’m losing control of my temper when it comes to one time-honored tradition of Bad Writing: The Moron Line.

Their company is something you won’t miss
When your icetrays are filled with piss

The Moron Line is, quite simply, a line of dialog that is spoken only to help those in the audience who either haven’t been paying close attention or are mentally incapable of understanding anything even remotely complex or fanciful. Here’s a totally made up example:

<In the sewers beneath Los Angeles, The Villain is seen placing a large bomb against one slimy wall. A few scenes later, the Hero and his Sidekick stumble upon the bomb.>

HERO: Look!

SIDEKICK: Jeepers! A BOMB!

HERO: It must have been left here by the villain, earlier, when we weren’t here.

Most of that dialog is not only unnecessary if you have a heartbeat and an attention span of any length, it’s actually annoying, because it’s like that guy at a party who keeps telling you things you already know in a tone of voice that strongly implies he doubts you have the brainpower to know such things. It’s like an echo.

One of the popular uses for Moron Lines is to remind the audience of subtle plot points; having a character regurgitate a little exposition in the guise of summing up or arguing a point. Another is the time-honored Salazar Gambit, where a character—usually the villain—appears onscreen and, just in case you just wandered in from another movie—someone hisses their name:

<The Hero enters SALAZAR’s OFFICE. Cut to SALAZAR, grinning behind his desk.>

HERO: Salazar!

Again, the only people in the room who would be confused as to Salazar’s identity (assuming, of course, that he was in the story previously and this is not some complicated switch of identity or some other potentially confusing plot gymnastic) are folks who fell asleep shortly after the lights went down. Yet the Moron Line survives, because a) it often sounds dramatic to untrained ears and b) a lot of people creating entertainments for the rest of us have nothing but contempt for us, believe me.

They may not go down in history
But they’ll go down on your sister

Once you notice the Moron Line, you can’t unnotice it, and it starts popping up everywhere: Characters describing the clearly visible actions of other characters, characters repeating names and facts for no other reason than to make sure you remember something that happened, oh, fifteen minutes before in the narrative. Often these examples will be paired with quick-cut flashbacks, just to make sure you really notice what you’re being hit over the head with. This last technique could be called The Sixth Sense Are You Paying Attention Technique.

Are there people who need the Moron Line? Probably. I’ve been out to movies where future Nobel Laureates sit and have lengthy conversations about other movies while a movie is playing, and no doubt the Moron Line helps them keep track of at least the Bullet Points of the plot. And sure, there are probably a few functioning morons out there who need the Moron Line. Should these fine folks be abandoned? Of course not. What we need are a sort of reverse Director’s Cuts, where all the Moron Lines and redundant flashbacks are edited in, with a normal cut released for the rest of us with functioning brains.

Bullshit, Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Someone Else's Writing, The Inner Swine