Ask Jeff Anything 4-16-13
I warned you we were open for business. I warned you.
Today’s question is courtesy of Melanie Meadors, who has a burning question about my attitude towards pants:
I hope that clears everything up.
Latest Posts
The Witch King of Angmar
Here’s an unpublished story from a few years ago. The meaning of the title is, frankly, forgotten by this writer. WHo forgets a lot of things.
The Witch King of Angmar
by Jeff Somers
WHEN the report that the Beckels Sphere had become unstable, it preempted and interrupted every broadcast in the world. All the uplinks were seized by priority interrupts, and no one complained. I was with Denise, sharing a bottle of wine, when the hulking monitor in the corner of her living room came to life without warning, the looped report stating in clipped, computer-modulated sentences that the world was going to end now, it was unavoidable. Denise took my hand. We were both trembling.
BRING ON THE HELPER MONKEYS
This originally appeared in my zine The Inner Swine a few years ago.
BRING ON THE HELPER MONKEYS
How My Genius Novels Get Written
by Jeff Somers
FRIEND, do you have a book in you?
Note: Not literally. Or, OK, why not: Literally too.
If you’re one of the billions who does, indeed, have a story to tell but doesn’t know where to start, then this issue of The Inner Swine is for you. Because, you see, I myself have written several books. More than was probably wise, actually; if you consider how much time I’ve spent on them compared with how many I’ve sold and made money from, the resulting per-hour salary is depressing (homeless folks begging on the street make more per hour). Still, this isn’t an essay about selling a book, but rather about writing one.
Are you one of those folks who, when they’re introduced to a working writer at a party immediately tell them that you have a great idea for a book? Do you have a notebook filled with random notes for your “great American novel”? Do you work in an English Department, anywhere? Then this essay is for you, because I’m going to show you how easy it is to write a book. Easier than many other things, in fact. Hell, I’m writing a book right now, while I write this essay. It’s that easy.
An aside: I think everyone in the universe has a book in them, yes, but of course not everyone wants to write one, which is fine. I make no judgments. And some folks have self-help books or dictionaries in them, which again: no judgments, but you really should ask yourself two questions: Do I have a book in me, and should I actually write it?
You will almost certainly always discover the answer is: no.
Ask Jeff Anything 4-2-13
Hear ye, hear ye – a new Ask Jeff Anything for your watching pleasure. Or to burn 2 minutes of your day away, to never be found again. Today’s topic courtesy of Patty Blount and regarding book trailers and how they is made:
HUZZAH. I am an genius.
I Been Interviewed
Hola! I was interviewed by the very smart and funny Larry Gent (whose first novel is coming out soon) over at 42webs:
“2) What research goes into a book centered on self mutilation? (insert obvious emo music joke)
I think your standard issue adolescence is all that is required, actually. Including the Emo Music. Which we all have far more of then we’re ready to admit. J’accuse!
In other words: None research. None whatsoever. That’s how I like to roll: Ignorant and defensive.”
Go check it out and tell me how cool I ain’t.
Spring Breakers: MY EYES! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!
Let’s start off with a definitive statement: Harmony Korine’s movies are awful, and we are all lessened by viewing them.
However, sometimes people mature. To be fair, Korine has matured, and Spring Breakers does have a method to its awfulness, I think. The fact that it remains awful is part of the point: This film is meant, like most of Korine’s film, to irritate. So, I didn’t enjoy it. I actually had a curious lack of reaction to it, really: When it was over I honestly wasn’t sure if I had enjoyed myself or not. Or stabbed myself in the eyes or not.
I’ll say two things about this movie that are semi-coherent.
1. Korine Makes Partying Look Painful. This is, I think, a triumph actually. Korine manages to make a film about four nubile college-age girls who spend much of the film wearing bikinis, snorting drugs, and engaging in SexyTime dancing that is about as titillating as a Root Canal. After watching this film the last thing I want to do is go down to Florida and party with the coeds. And he does this with some skill – there’s no abrupt moral event horizon. No one gets sick (in fact, these chicks bust out the coke and booze constantly and never once seem to have a single moment of physical suffering for it) and no one has a bad date-rapey moment. Korine manages to make partying look just as exhausting as it actually is – the sort of good time you have to ingest chemicals to even tolerate, much less enjoy.
2. Korine Uses Irritation Effectively. One technique Korine uses over and over again in the film is an annoying repetition. Lines of dialogue and images are repeated, sequences shown again, and the repetition is continued until you want to claw out your eyes. Curiously, though, this means that when he finally cuts to a new scene, your sense of relief is visceral. I think this has to be on purpose, judging from how often he uses the trick. And it works. It put me on the edge of my last nerve and when he finally switched to a new scene – even if that scene was three girls in pink ski masks holding guns singing a Britney Spears song – I was psyched to see this new scene just because it was new. It’s an interesting effect, if not an enjoyable one.
So, clearly Harmony Korine is not a hack: He’s a thoughtful filmmaker who makes films the way he wants to, with goals and artistry. I simply find the finish products pretty irritating, and that’s fine. In the end, if you’re looking for a movie about boobs, sex, and drugs, you should look elsewhere, despite the fact that there are indeed boobs, sex, and drugs in this movie. If you’re looking for a movie with characters instead of soulless, expressionless puppets in bikinis, look elsewhere.
If you’re looking for a movie wherein James Franco appears to be slathered in some sort of Sex Grease, then this is the ticket you have been looking for.
Ask Jeff Anything Open for Business
As most of you may recall, a few years ago I challenged everyone to ask me anything and I’d make a video response. Over the years I’ve had a lot of fun with that, but the last one I made was about a year ago. What can I say? It was a busy year and I am pretty much incompetent. I let it slide. That’s what lazy incompetent dudes, do, after all. Here’s a collection of previous Ask Jeff Anythings.
But, things have calmed down for the moment, so I’m ready to get back in the Ask Jeff Anything swing. So this is an open invitation/reminder. Ask me about my books, my writing, my personal hygiene, my cats (you know you want to), my childhood, my dangerous drinking binges, my hatred of pants, my theories on life, baseball, and rye whiskey, my upcoming projects, my obsessive and disturbing cleaning, my zine The Inner Swine, other people I know, other people I don’t know, celebrity culture, movies, other writers, book trailers, Godzilla, the Eurozone, the Many Worlds Theory, the Higgs Boson, Linux, guitars, music, Don Camillo, the infield fly rule, how to play an F Chord, blogging, growing up in Jersey City, marriage, writing, the correct way to drink whiskey, exactly what chord is played at the beginning of A Hard Days Night, college life, Miller’s Crossing and whether it is the greatest movie ever made (it is), the terrible television my wife makes me watch, the 1978 Chevrolet Nova’s charms and deficiencies, whether Liam Neeson will make a good Matt Scudder in the upcoming film, Downton Abbey, whether Breaking Bad or The Wire is the greatest television show in history, guitar solos, kittens, how to clean your house, the decline of the Roman Empire, the Fall of the House of Usher, whether or not there’s a bottle of red wine I won’t drink (there probably isn’t but research continues), my published short stories, or, you know, anything else.
So go on and email me a question or leave on in the comments and I will start making these sad, ridiculous videos again. Sure to disappoint, confuse, and irritate.
Steve & Steve’s Startling Shadow Show
The Duchess and I were bored this past weekend and saw The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. I would not recommend this movie. But it reminded me of an imperfect short story I wrote a thousand years ago, give or take, when I was in college. This was actually inspired by Penn & Teller after I saw one of their shows in NYC.
Steve
&
Steve’s
Startling Shadow Show
by Jeff Somers
The theater was small but the act was big, so the place was packed, a humming crowd of expectancy. The posters outside showed a tall, handsome man smiling in a tuxedo, one hand comradely on the shined shoes of an obviously hung man. The poster declared it to be “Steve and Steve … Performers with a Twist.“
The lights were still up, stage hands occasionally jogging to and fro on the stage while casually dressed people waited politely, chatting and pointing out stage details where they could see them. Men talked to their wives and girlfriends carefully, arms loosely around shoulders in civilized signs of possession. Groups of singles scattered like islands in a sea of matrimony chatted amongst themselves and occasionally flirted. Everyone’s eyes kept flicking to the stage, waiting for the fun to begin.
They talked, low and calm: they traded favorite tracks and skits – the hanging of the second Steve was quite popular, but it was an old favorite; most people thought of the much newer suicide bit, first done in New York a few weeks before, where the whole front row got splattered in warm stage blood. It was new and almost no one in the theater had seen it. The people in the front row particularly hoped it was included, thinking that a bloody shirt would be a perfect trophy from the show.
Slowly, the lights dimmed.
No Great Trick
NOTE: This story originally appeared in The Drexel Online Journal, which no longer appears to exist, in 2003.
No Great Trick
By Jeff Somers
1. Black Magic
It was about the time that Norm Cashman began practicing black magic in his little closet of an office that I met Debbie, the most uninhibited receptionist to ever refuse to sleep with me in a long and proud tradition of women refusing to sleep with me. I can remember the time exactly because Norm caused quite a ruckus before he got fired, what with the dead chickens and the black smoke leaking from under his door. It was during a fire drill caused by one of his spells gone awry (involving, from the smell, burning animal fat) that I met her, a tall brunette in her thirties who turned to me in the chill of an early morning and began saying some of the filthiest things I’d ever heard uttered. I was delighted, of course. I stood next to her for fifteen minutes with a grin on my face the size of my erection and wondered if this was the universe’s way of paying me back for all that acne back in high school.
It wasn’t. Although of course I asked her out (34 times to date) she has never so much as shared a cup of coffee with me. She will freely and gladly describe sexual acts and concepts I had until-then thought arcane and possibly mystical, she will gab on and on about all manner of kinks and fetishes and apparatus until I am red-faced and incoherent, but she only smiles slightly and shakes her head when I beg to buy her dinner, gifts, mansions, whatever. I have grown to hate her, in a way, so I call her twice a day.
I was on the phone with her (being put on hold every few minutes so she could answer the other lines and do her job), amazed at how smoothly she could go from “Good morning, Denton Incorporated” to a lengthy discussion of the true meaning of the phrase “ribbed for her pleasure” without any signs of transition, when Norm finally got canned. He’d been chanting in his office all morning, casting some mighty incantation we were all ignoring more or less by habit, when they came. They being Mark Fillmore, Human Resources Director, and Phyllis Gumber, Director of Outside Sales, Norm’s boss. Apart, they were just about the ugliest two human beings I had ever seen. Together, however, their ugliness sort of canceled itself out, leaving them moderately blurred and possibly bland. We all knew Norm was getting canned, and we just kept talking on the phones and tapping our computers as if we’d seen dozens of forced departures, which, of course, we had.
Norm, however, wasn’t ready yet. As they entered his office he let out a cry and there was some sort of purple flash (I only saw it out of the corner of my eye and my mind was occupied with Debbie’s descriptions of the sensual properties of latex) and the door slammed. Then, nothing for about a minute, as Debbie moaned on into my ear about rubber.
When the door opened, Norm was preceded by a thick cloud of smoke, and then he ran into the maze of cubicles yelling “I’m invisible! I’m invisible!” while most of us just stared and held down anything we didn’t want him grabbing up in his frenzy. He dashed around the cubes for a while despite the fact that no one was chasing him, and then disappeared into the halls.
I glanced over at Phil Dublen, and our eyes met. Silently, we said to each other “Who gets his office?”
They eventually found Norm’s clothes down on the 17th floor, but as far as I know they never found Norm that day. Of course, once they were sure he had left the building, they stopped looking.
Sábado es El Día de Guitarra
Someday my agent is going to ask me how it is I have time to compose, record, and post these terrible musical pieces when I have contractual fiction obligations, and when that day comes I am fleeing to Mexico with my entourage. Which is what I call my cats.
Mock them while ye can:
Song544
Song552
Song556
Song555
Song554
Song562
Song564
If anyone wants to hire me to play their wedding, I take payment in top shelf liquor.
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.