Have you checked out Literary Disco, the new twice-monthly podcast I co-host with Julia Pistell and Rider Strong? In case you've missed out, it has fundamentally altered the course of human history by asking and answering some of the most profound questions of our time, like:
I have a box of them somewhere. I also have a box of cassette tapes, which I found, two huge containers of CDs, and then hundreds of gigabytes of music in various places around the house, in the cloud, on my phone and, right now, as I type this, streaming through Spotify. But I want to find my records and short of shaking my wife awake to tell her how urgent this is, even though we don't have a record player, I'm stuck assuming they are in a box in the garage, though clearly mislabeled, or else I'd have those records in front of me right now. See, I'm looking for something specific: the 12" single of "She's On It" by the Beastie Boys that I've had since 1985. I bought it at the Record Alley in Palm Springs on the same day I bought the 12" of LL Cool J's "I Can't Live Without My Radio". which is also in that box. I was 14 and what I remember is that I'd taken the SunBus down to the store -- something I did on a fairly regular basis -- and had spent a long time talking to the excessively cool girl behind the counter about music. I was really into New Wave and Goth music at the time but was slowly getting into bands like The Replacements and Husker Du and also, more slowly, rap and hip hop, which was only just then starting to occasionally find its way onto MTV, but was completely absent from the radio in Palm Springs, though sometimes at night I'd be able to get KDAY from LA on my radio if I turned the antenna just so and held a piece of tin foil in my mouth.
"If you like RUN DMC," the girl said to me, "you should listen to this." She handed me a record that featured three Jewish guys sitting in their underwear at the beach as the cover photo. "They're white guys who rap."
That sounded preposterous to me, but, like I said, she was excessively cool, I was 14 and the deal was sealed. Plus, the guys on the cover looked like they could be my cousins. I took the record home and put it on. I listened to the B-side first -- "Slow and Low" -- because the girl said RUN DMC had written the song, and my mind was completely blown: It's never old school/All brand new...By the time they got to the part about White Castle fries only coming in in one size, I had my new favorite band. And I didn't even know what White Castle was. "She's On It" was an entirely different beast -- it sounded like a heavy metal song with rapping. It was also, well, dirty: It's gets annoying, so high on the tip/If a pirate had a Def Jam shirt, she'd be hard on his tip. When you're 14 and the most compelling thing you've ever experienced is scrambled porn, this was like having someones cool older brother suddenly show up in your bedroom with a whole new language and some secrets, too.
I've had that record now for 27 years, along with every single other record the Beastie Boys have made. So when I found out Adam Yauch died last Friday, I found myself horribly sad, near tears, and then eventually in tears. I don't really think of the Beastie Boys as the kind of music I'd choose to sit in my house crying to, but there I was no less, tears streaming down my face while I listened to "Sure Shot". You see the thing about the Beastie Boys is that I'd not only grown up with them, I felt like I'd grown up around them, too. When I was 15 and wanted nothing more to be cool and pick up girls and drink beer, they were there with their first album. When I was 18 and heading off to college, experimenting with even more things, there was Paul's Boutique. When I was drinking 40s and wearing hoodies with the rest of my fraternity brothers, Check Your Head showed up. And when I was in love -- really in love, with the woman who would become my wife -- and realizing that women weren't bitches and whores, weren't objects to objectified, there was "Sure Shot" with Adam Yauch telling us it was about time to end the disrespect of women.
What the Beastie Boys also did, in a very fundamental way, was show that being an awkward Jewish dude with too much pop culture trivia at the ready was something that could be cool. The Beasties didn't start out erudite and enlightened, but they ended up there and that, too, was cool. When you're young and Jewish and want to make art, role models aren't exactly thick on the ground, but here were three guys who looked like me who were making art. It would eventually be great art. The Beastie Boys have been playing behind me since I was 14 and so I've tended to think of them as belonging to me, which is ludicrous, I know. But that's what makes some art great: it comes so close to you that you forget it's just words, or pictures, or sounds that played while you were young, when you were older, but still so young, and then again today, when you weren't so young at all.
A few years ago, I was asked to speak at the 20 year reunion of the fraternity I'd been in during college. I was a great frat boy: at times misogynistic, racist, sexist, homophobic, probably an alcoholic...though, in truth, I wasn't really those things at all. I had sisters that I loved. Great female friends. Girlfriends I cared about deeply. I had friends of every race. I was -- as I am now -- a fervent believer in gay rights. But when you gather young men together and add alcohol and drugs, well, you end up doing things you regret in retrospect. What we wanted to be then was simple: we wanted to be the Beastie Boys, or what we thought were the Beastie Boys. We dressed like them. We drank like them. We played their music constantly. It was, in retrospect, absurd. They were characters in a drunken western who, eventually, became adults embarrassed by their own youth. We didn't know that then, of course. But the thing is: those are also some of my fondest memories of being young and dumb. So when I wrote my speech for that evening I wanted to make sure to pay homage to the past and also apologize for the stupidity of our actions. For some reason, I thought all those boys I'd known then would still be boys, trapped in the amber of the moment, as it were, but of course they'd all become like me: they were married, had children, jobs, lives and they also had many of the same regrets. We'd been so young. We'd been so dumb. We'd let two of our friends kill themselves. We'd had such a good time. We made terrible mistakes. We laughed so much. And here we were, celebrating, because it's a life and that's what you do. I believe you have to honor the mistakes sometimes because it makes the successes so much sweeter.
I had a great time that night, but it was also filled with a kind of melancholy that I'm feeling again, today, after obsessively reading all the obits of Adam Yauch and then watching the Hall of Fame induction of the Beasties this evening, too. When a smart, gifted young man dies it's always a tragedy. But when you realize that you're only a few years younger than that smart, gifted young man...and that you're not that young anymore, are in fact somewhere right in the middle...you begin to recognize that the sadness you feel isn't just about the loss of that person's life, but also the recognition that who you were when you met that person is long gone, too.
So maybe tomorrow I'll find my records and I'll dig up that 12" and I'll buy a record player and I'll listen to the sound the needle makes in the grooves and I'll be 14 again for a few minutes. But, god, who wants to be 14 again? No, I think the better thing to do is to turn the music up loud and dance around the house like a fool, pretending I'm in the Beastie Boys like I always do when their songs come on, chanting you can't, you won't, you don't stop over and over again, because it's impossible not to feel good when you're singing along to the Beastie Boys.
The LA Times Festival of Books kicks off this weekend, which is like Coachella for book nerds (not to say book nerds don't go to Coachella, too, though judging from the kids that were out in the desert last weekend for Coachella 1.0, I can only conclude that the books they are reading must somehow be filling their brains with the untrue information that listening to a set by Bon Iver does not completely emasculate you [and then whatever the equivalent to emasculation is for women]) except that instead of a hologram of 2Pac dropping mad rhymes, there will be a hologram of Christopher Hitchens in the Green Room drinking from a flask and sweating through his suit, glaring at Reza Aslan and muttering about radical Islam and post-Colonial paradigm shifts in [all the esoteric stuff we pretended to understand when he was alive], while James Ellroy looks on in veiled horror.
For the second year, the Festival of Books is at USC, which means that my wife Wendy won't be attending because, well, she went to UCLA and refuses to step foot anywhere near anyone wearing Trojan garb. Having gone to Cal State Northridge, I'm just impressed by the fact that the campus seems to have a library that hasn't doubled as a Starfleet Federation office building nor was destroyed by the Cylons in the OG Battlestar Galactica. Plus, well, as an author, I get to hang out in the Green Room with Christopher Hitchens hologram and the all-you-can-eat-deli meats-and-mini-pies-and-pizzas-and-also-hopefully-see-John-Cusack-and-tell-him-that-I-love-him-and-want-to-have-his-man-babies.
On top of all that, of course, is the actual festival itself, which is awesome. I've attended each and every incarnation of the festival over the course of the last 17 years and each year I come back feeling energized about writing, reading and literature. (I also come back with horror stories about people shoving manuscripts at me encased in strange velobound contraptions, and with people who just won't believe me when I say I'm not my brother, and about people who believe I should help them let the world know about the upcoming sun storms that will eventually kill all of us!) I'll be taking part in three panels -- one on Saturday and two on Sunday. They are:
Saturday, 2pm
Fiction: To The Point, moderated by the excellent Matthew Specktor and with yours truly, Dan Chaon, Adam Levin and Elissa Schappell
*I have no idea what we'll be talking about based on the title of our panel -- and really, never take the title of the panel as an indication of what the people will be talking about -- but I hope at some point we get to the point on Dan Chaon's new full red beard, which makes him look like a cross between the young Santa in that claymation classic and the great writer Dan Chaon. Also: I expect that I'll discuss, at some length, some of Adam's choices for his team on the Voice.
Sunday, 11am
Crime Fiction: Buried Secrets, moderated by yours truly and featuring Gregg Hurwitz, Denise Hamilton, Thomas Perry and Daniel Pyne
*I have been on approximately 10,000 panels with Gregg, Thomas and Denise...which will probably make Daniel feel totally out of place when we all start doing inside jokes and then Denise takes off her shirt (that always happens, it's so weird) and then Gregg and I start speaking Yiddish and then Thomas starts, like, doing that thing he does with his double jointed thumbs...anyway, it's gonna be great, I'm sure.
2:30pm
Does This Book Make Me Look Fat?: Laughter on the Page. I'll be moderating this, too, and trying to figure out how the fuck not to call Merrill Markoe, Jill Soloway or Dani Klein Modisett fat accidentally. Fucking christ. I imagine the process by which I was selected to moderate this went like this:
LA Times Employee 1: Who do we have who might say something truly objectionable to some nice women with funny memoirs?
LA Times Employee 2: Uh, let's see...oh, Goldberg. The younger one. Tod. He'll say something stupid. It will be fun!
LA Times Employee 3: Let's see if we can get him to accidentally call a woman fat! You think we can make that happen?
All: Yes! Yes, let's do that! Great plan!
Fucking christ. Anyway. There's a ton of great panels going on. Here are a few you either don't want to miss because they will be awesome, or because they will be awful, or because no one realizes the moderator fucked one of the panelists or one of the panelists' spouses, all after the jump.
I've neglected this space for a bit, but fear not, it's because I've been busy. No, really. I promise. I'm nearly done with my new book (which is based on my short story "Mitzvah"...so more rabbis, more hitmen...) and I've also been hard at work on a few other projects along the way. Here's some links to some new stuff, and coming up I'll have news about some spring time appearances, including several events at the LA Times Festival of Books. (And, as ever, you can always find me quickly on Twitter and Facebook.)
I'm now co-hosting, with the excellent Julia Pistell and Rider Strong, a new literary podcast, Literary Disco, that will tackle the tough literature questions of the day...like: Was Sweet Valley High good for young girls...or was it the most fucked up, rape-filled clusterfuck of a book ever? I may have shown my hand there, but, well, you'll have to hear the show when it airs to know my complete feelings on the topic. We promise the show will be a little different every time -- part book review, author interview, therapy session and scatalogical descration of your favorite books. Our first episode is up now with more to come!
A new essay of mine is in the latest issue of Hobart. "When They Let Them Bleed" looks at the Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini vs. Duk Koo Kim fight and how we remember the things that form us. You can look at a bit of bonus material here. And here's a brief excerpt:
"I was eleven the first time I saw someone killed. A real someone, that is. Prior to that point, I’m certain I’d seen hundreds, probably thousands, maybe tens of thousands of fake people die on television or in the movies and usually in fairly grotesque fashion. This was the autumn of 1982, what I thought of for many years as the worst time of my life, though later on I’d change that assessment. What happens is that you stop making absolutes about such things as the best and worst days, weeks, months or years of your life and you’re able to view things a bit more dispassionately, once you understand that most things that seem horrible in the moment can morph into something like experience or blind chance.This is particularly true now that I think about how the person I saw killed wasn’t even someone I knew, that I was one of millions who saw him killed, that what haunts me still about his death is probably more about my own fears, about how the ultimate good fortune about that year is that I am still here, still remembering, still trying to make things right in my mind."
A new essay-type-thing is in The New Guard. And by "essay-type-thing" I mean: A letter to the Wonder Twins. It's one of the most fucked up things I've ever committed to paper, which says a lot since I once wrote a column about selling my used socks online and now, years later, still get emails from people who desire my genetic material in a sock. So. Yeah. Unintended consequences abound. This one is, at least, less likely to get me emails from people who want my old underwear, so that's nice. Here's a brief sample:
"I remember when you joined the Super Friends as impetuous shape shifting alien teenagers, as if you’d ever fit in. Yes, yes, they called themselves the Super Friends, but these heroes were grown men and women with lives of their own, with anger and sadness and bitterness in their past: Superman with his father issues and the sure knowledge that he wasn’t half the journalist Lois Lane was; Aquaman, with his webbed hands a persistent reminder that no woman would ever be able to hold him, his gross deformity no more heroic than a bleeding cyst; Batman and Robin, mere men in capes, nothing special about them at all, except for those nights in the Bat Cave when Alfred would quietly masturbate them both, the millionaire and his boy companion play things for their butler...a man who knew their darkest secrets and preyed on them; and dear, sweet, Wonder Woman, the sadist, with her golden whip and false jingoism, claiming to love America and yet flying an invisible plane. Who was she hiding from? What was her secret?"
Yesterday, I posted a little something about how I started my life of crime by stealing Brach's candy and that got me thinking about what else I've stolen over my four decades of life...or at least those things from, oh, the first two decades. The answers are pretty standard, I suspect. Any time I had to sell candy bars for some team or school activity, I managed to eat a lot of the merchandise and thus had to tell my mom that neighborhood toughs had stolen both the candy and the money I should have earned from legit sales (turns out eating a lot of candy makes you thirsty, so I had to, you know, ride my bike to McFarland's, the local ice cream and sweet shoppe, and get a root beer slushy or seven...and then I'd get hot from, you know, drinking all that slush, so I'd have to ride my bike to Thrifty and get three scoops of ice cream for 35 cents...and then I'd get hungry for something with a little protein, so back on my bike I'd go to Evie's, which sold terrible cheeseburgers, and I'd get one of those, and then, well, all the money was gone). This was no easy task considering I grew up in Walnut Creek, a town so bucolic no one seemed to notice that there was an entire series of streets and roads named for slaughtered Native Americans (I grew up on Cochise Court, for instance, just down the road from Natchez), though of course there were bullies about, though they all had the same job to sell candy bars so they were mercifully kind in not fucking with you.
I also remember a period of time where it was important for me to have more pens and pencils than other kids, so I admit now to stealing pencils out of Jennie Bartlolero's desk in 4th grade. What else? Oh, when I worked at the Wherehouse and the entire managerial team was shooting heroin in the break room (true story) I admit that I occasionally took some liberties involving cassingles (I couldn't see spending money on MC Breed's entire album just for "Ain't No Future In Yo Frontin'" for instance) and may have housed some CDs, too, which was harder to do back then because they were in footlong jewel cases. And I may have looked the other way when a cute girl from my anthro class at Pierce College asked me if it would be cool if her brother stole a Nintendo system. Of course it was okay, particularly since the entire managerial team regularly traded Nintendo machines for heroin. (The managers used to like me because I was the only person who worked at the store who wasn't a junkie, so they even gave me a raise, all the way up to $4.75 per hour, which also felt like stealing. $4.75 per hour! To sell music! A steal!)
But the one thing that I've always wondered about, in terms of thievery, is something I was deeply involved in...along with every other kid I knew: The great Columbia House bamboozle. You remember Columbia House: for a penny you'd get 11 cassettes or albums and then every month they'd send you another album (usually Aldo Nova and Boz Scaggs, for some reason) and then one day you'd get a bill in the mail for $76 for the nine Aldo Nova and Boz Scaggs records that you hid under your bed and that's when the panic would set in. Because when you're 11, $76 may as well be $10 million. Then the letters would start coming, demanding payment. And the phone calls. And eventually you'd have to explain to your mother that, uhm, you may have defrauded a record company. The weird thing, however, is that we did this scam about three times a year. I remember, vividly, waiting for our next door neighbors, the Hayworths, to go out of town for their annual three month summer vacation so that I could order 12 records in the name of their son and then collect them from the front steps of their house immediately upon delivery. Woe be the family that asked me or my sister Linda to water their plants for the summer, because when they got back there would be a bill waiting for them in the name of Bud Lurvey and a nice new copy of Foreigner 4.
At some point, I remember realizing that no matter what happened, I wasn't legally liable for these bills because I was, you know, 11 and couldn't enter into a contract. I suspect my sister Karen or my brother Lee informed us of this after learning about my existential fear that one day I'd come home and the Columbia House cops would be waiting for me, my vast collection of Mac Davis, Journey and Quarterflash albums confiscated as evidence. I was no criminal genius and yet I managed to scam this company out of 100-some-odd albums, as did all of my friends, which makes me wonder who the fuck actually paid Columbia House. Presumably good, kind, moral people...sadly, I didn't know any of these growing up, but I'm sure they lived somewhere.
I'm usually pretty dubious about free things -- well, other than music I rip into MP3s from YouTube and the mountains of Brach's candy I "borrowed" over the years from grocery stores back when grocery stores still had those huge displays of Brach's candy just sitting out in the middle of their stores, essentially daring me to take a few pieces...and by "daring" I mean "begging"...I mean, let's be clear here, Brach's wasn't in the profit business, they were in the "teaching kids how to steal" business -- however, I can report that I'm offering something for free from now until Friday that will fundamentally alter your life and the lives of those you love and cherish, provided you and those you cherish like to read, or, at least, want to make your Kindles heavier in case you need to use it as a weapon: My mini-collection of stories, Where You Lived. This sale will only last until Friday and then, after that, the book is gonna be, like, totally expensive again.
Conversation I overheard/moderately took part in while in line at Starbucks the day after Christmas:
The scene: 4 women, three with Kindles, one just holding her coffee. All with shopping bags at their feet that they keep kicking up the line while they play with their Kindles.
Woman 1: Does anyone know how to make the font bigger?
(All four women attempt to make the font bigger, nothing works.)
Me: You need to hit that button there and scroll down until you see the thing that says "font".
Woman 1: Ah, okay, thanks.
Woman 2: I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. I don't even really read.
Woman 3: It's great for being on a plane.
Woman 2: I usually sleep on a plane.
Woman 4: I wanted a Kindle, but instead my sister got me a stun gun.
Woman 1: A stun gun?
Woman 4: Yeah, like one of those things you use if someone is trying to rape you.
Woman 2: I used to keep one on my keychain, but I nearly killed myself with it.
Woman 3: Why did your sister get you a stun gun if you asked for a Kindle?
Woman 4: Because Bob and I broke up.
Women 1-3: Oh, right, ah, yes, okay, makes sense, hmm, okay...
Woman 4: I would have preferred a Kindle, but I guess my sister thinks men are just lining up to rape me.
Woman 2: If you want to borrow my Kindle, I can't see a time I'm going to use it. No one wants to rape someone when they're reading, anyway.
People frequently ask me: Just what is a fucktard, Tod? And the answer is: Gigi, of Los Angeles, who asked the following question in Parade Magazine today:
Q: In the new Planet of the Apes movie, was Caesar played by a real animal? —Gigi, Los Angeles
I wonder what Gigi's daily life is like. I wonder if, at night, she believes all of the stuffed animals in her cell come to life and go to a cocktail party together. I wonder if sometimes she looks at the tuna fish sandwich that comes slipped in through the slot in the door and wonders if her sandwich knows Nemo. I wonder if she thinks Mr. Ed was the first reality TV series. I wonder how it is that she has the mental acuity to get onto her computer, type "Parade Magazine" into her, you know, Alta Vista web searching machine, pile through all of the salient information concerning whatever fucking existential mystery Marilyn Vos Savant is solving ("Why is the sky blue?" "Why doesn't my shit taste like chocolate when it's the same color?" "Why doesn't my urine smell like lemonade?" etc.) in order to find the appropriate place to submit a question to Walter Scott (who, like the apes in Planet of the Apes, doesn't fucking exist, either). Mostly, I wonder what her friends will think when she's allowed to visit them on her one day a month out of the asylum and shows them her appearance in Parade and how Hollywood put the bamboozle on the people and that ape who BEGINS TO SPEAK ENGLISH IN THE FUCKING MOVIE was actually not a real ape. Just wait until she finds out the truth about the Death Star.
I turned 40 in 2011, which means, at least optimistically speaking, I reached the middle of my life during these last twelve months...which means I should probably stop using "like" as a rejoinder in most of my sentences, but, alas, like, there's still a 16 year old boy alive and well in this skin. This was a fairly epic year, all things considering. It was the first year of my life where I didn't have a living parent. It was the first year of my life that included a visit from a Knievel (Robbie, alas...though I'm gonna try to contact Evel on the Ouija tonight, just to see if my luck can strike twice). It was the first year of my life that included less than 30 digested Pop Tarts. These are not good things or bad things, just things, as it happens. Here, however, are a few of my favorite things from 2011:
Favorite Book Released in 2011: The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar. I reviewed it here if you want to see me getting all fan boy on it.
Favorite Book Someone Gave Me In The Last Few Weeks: One of my students, upon her graduation, gave me a signed copy of Reading & Writing by Robertson Davies (who doesn't sign many books anymore, on account of his death) and I have been reading little bits and pieces of it over and over again ever since.
Favorite Book I Should Have Read Last Year But Read This Year Instead And Then Lugged Around With Me All Over The LA Times Festival Of Book In Hopes Of Getting It Signed By The Author, Except I Didn't Know What He Looked Like, So, Yeah, It Didn't Get Signed, Which Is Probably Good Because I Would Have Made An Ass Out Of Myself During The Process Because I Loved The Book Like, Totally, A Lot: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes. There it is.
Favorite Song of 2011: The song I listened to the most in 2011 wasn't a new song...it was actually a song released in 1984 and has been one of my favorites since about, well, 1984: "Unsatisfied" by The Replacements
It was actually a pretty satisfying year, but for some reason this song was on repeat for most of it.
Favorite Movies 2011: I saw a lot of movies in 2011. A lot of them sucked. That said, I really liked Moneyball -- I'm a huge A's fan, so I knew I was going to love that, so I probably enjoyed that one the most, because, well, there was a lot of green and gold in it and I like sparkly colors -- but the movie that moved me the most was, by far, The Descendants. I also really liked The Artist, Midnight in Paris, Bridesmaids, The Ides of March and, if I'd seen it, I probably would have really liked Drive. But, yeah, I didn't see it. If it makes up for it, I saw The Town about 20 times this year, so I'll probably see Drive 20 times next year. :
Favorite Movie I Saw In 2011 That Didn't Come Out In 2011: For some reason, I didn't see The Lives of Others when it was originally released in 2006, but I absolutely loved it. One of the most compelling films I've ever seen.
Favorite Documentary of 2011: It actually came out in 2010, but I watched Restrepo this year, in January, actually...and then re-watched it three or four more times.
Favorite TV Show I Should Really Hate But, For Reasons Unexplained, And Probably Related To Some Deep Emotional Problems, Absolutely Can Not Stop Watching: The first time I saw "Storage Wars" was during a prolonged head cold that nearly killed me this summer -- this is not an exaggeration: I passed out inside of a hotel and someone caught me before I tumbled to me death down into a marble fountain -- and I have now seen every single episode about nine times. I follow the "stars" of the show on Twitter and somehow find myself reading their sub-literate tweets (this is not an exaggeration, either, these dudes can not spell) and buying into the made-for-TV feuds. I also had the following conversation with my wife Wendy:
Me: If these dumb fucks can make all this money bidding on storage units, imagine how much I could make. They have all these auctions listed online. Imagine the money we could make! I mean, I feel like I could really make some cheddar here.
Wendy: You couldn't make anything, because you're not ever going to go to an auction.
Me: It's possible I could go. There's one coming up in Palm Springs. Retirement communities are basically filled with hidden treasures at these auctions. Like, remember that episode where they all, like, made a shit load of money in Laguna?
Wendy: No.
Me: Yeah, you remember [I then explain the entire episode to Wendy...] and then that one dude was, like, all "Yuuup!" and then, like, they all made a ton of money.
Wendy:
Me:
Wendy:
Me: You don't remember that episode?
Wendy: You're not ever going to a storage auction because I'm not going to let you go.
Me: I'll go with Rob. Rob Roberge will go with me.
Wendy: That's a fantastic idea. You should go with Rob. And then you and Rob should get a little place together with all of your winnings.
Me:
Wendy:
Me: I'm just saying, there's gold in these auctions. I could totally make, like, a million dollars. And maybe I could, like, write an essay for Salon or something, so that way if I came up empty, I could still, you know, make a little money on the deal.
Wendy:
Me:
Wendy: Why don't you try out for Chopped instead?
Me: Oh, I could dominate on Chopped.
Wendy: You're an idiot.
Favorite Things I Heard Robbie Knievel Say: Speaking of Rob Roberge, the two of us did end up doing something frightfully stupid together: we went and saw Robbie Knievel jump 25 cars...except that, really, he jumped over two Pepsi trucks that were ringed by 23 cars. So, he basically jumped about 50 feet, which was not as death defying as I hoped. It was mostly death-completely-evading. Nevertheless, it was a good time since I was able to hear the Wisdom of Knievel, which I now share with you:
"I'm not a hero. I. Am. Not. A. Hero. You want to know who the real heroes are? The troops." (At no point did anyone state prior to this announcement -- which came before he jumped -- that they believed Robbie Knievel was a hero.)
"I am not the greatest daredevil in the world. I am the SON of the greatest daredevil in the world." (Again, this didn't seem to be a bone of contention to anyone in the audience.)
"I've jumped in every state in the United States, except for seven."
Favorite Piece Of Hate Mail Accusing Me Of Furthering The Liberal Agenda In My Burn Notice Books: This one.
Favorite Conversation I Had With A Crazy Person: I end up talking to a disproportionate amount of insane people by virtue of leaving my house periodically to sell my fictional wares on the streets of America. What I've found is that if you happen to be selling said wares at any kind of festival held in a community space, the number of complete fucking maniacs triples. At this year's West Hollywood Book Festival, however, it was as if someone opened the doors to an asylum and told the patients to find me and report back. Which lead to this absolute clusterfuck of a day.
Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Turns out, I'm a pretty huge Pink fan. I didn't know this. And then I saw this concert she did and I was, like, all, whoa, I like that song. And then, like, I spent an afternoon on Spotify listening to her greatest hits and it turns out I love pretty much all of her top 10 hits and, like, some of her obscure b-side shit, too.
Favorite New Addiction: The salted caramel mocha frappacino. I'm chasing the dragon on that one, people.
Favorite Weird Fucked Up Thing I Saw In Person That I'd Never Seen Before And Never Wish To See Again: A black widow spider eating a snake, followed closely by Robbie Knievel's daughter singing the national anthem.
Favorite Arbitrary Facts About Alexandrea Weis, One Of My 1513 Facebook Friends Who I Don't Know In The Least, Have Never Interacted With And Could Very Well Be Friends With Me On Facebook In Order To Sell My Personal Data To Nigerian Terrorists: 1. Her profile photo is of a raccoon. 2. She apparently wrote something titled To My Senses that her friend Wenona Hulsey was "sooo loving" the day after Christmas. 3. Most of her activity on facebook seems to consist of becoming friends with people with self-published books that these new friends then tell her all about on her page. She's also very diligent about wishing people happy birthday. I will be expecting a message from her on January 10th...or she shall be defriended at once!
Favorite Arbitrary Tweet From Someone Who Follows Me On Twitter: @pollardmkting is an "Internet Marketer, Freight Consultant, Actor, Property Wiz, Life Coach, Fitness Guru, Motorcyclist, World Traveller, Prankster, Fun Seeker, Aussie Rock Fan" -- and I can't tell you how many freight consultants I know who also dabble as life coaches, but it's a lot -- hasn't tweeted since November, but in October he dropped this life bomb on the world: "(ten 2 letter words to live by) If it is to be it is up to me"
Favorite Book I Didn't Actually Read: The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach. I loved all the stuff about, uh, life, and, uh, baseball, but also about how, uhm, in a lot of ways, life is a constant struggle to keep the count even. Sometimes, love (and life) is also just an infield fly rule, if you know what I'm saying. [It should be noted that my favorite book I didn't read last year was Matterhorn, so there's a good chance next year at this time I'll be talking about how great this book actually is and will actually have an informed opinion on the matter.]
Favorite Thing That Almost Happened: I got an email one afternoon from the BBC asking me if I'd be a guest on a show to talk about Jews who eat pork...but then Gaddafi got killed and, well, I got bumped.
Favorite Thing I'm Looking Forward To In 2012: Finishing my new book. I think I'll be done by February. And by February, I mean March.
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