Jack the Pumpkin 2010 - 2010

Warning: the following images are pretty messed up!

It was only a matter of time. Two days, to be exact. Yesterday morning I went to the store to pick up some Very Vanilla soy milk to complement my Lucky Charms (marshmallows only). Having just done the dishes, I'd forgotten to lock the kitchen cabinets.

Jack was already gone when I returned. The damage was done. I followed the trail of empty Windex bottles and cracked whippits from the living room to my bedroom. The debris ended in front of my open laptop. Two windows were open on the screen: One showing Sasha Grey doing something unmentionable to Bree Olson, and the other showing my most recent blog post: The Twisted Tale of Jack the Crackhead Pumpkin.

My breath caught in my chest and the panic and fear set in, the same way I imagine it does at the end of a date with Chris Brown. The mentally unstable pumpkin had read my unauthorized biography. He'd seen how many hits the post had gotten, knew that his sordid exploits had been broadcast across the world. And the world was laughing at him.

I quickly started thinking about which local PCP den Jack might have wandered off to, when a sound from the back patio silenced my thoughts. The sound was brief, but LOUD. What could best be described as a cross between a cherry bomb and a weak Oprah fart. The sound of a life ending too soon.

It was then I knew that Jack must have made his way to the roof of my building. That the escape he needed couldn't be achieved by any amount of sweet, sweet embalming fluid. He needed a permanent solution. I ran out the back door of my basement apartment and saw what was left of poor Jack. As you can tell from the above picture, it wasn't pretty. The next few minutes were a blur -- paramedics, sirens, police tape, old ladies tearing their hair out, children weeping -- but luckily (or unfortunately) a local Manhattan Valley slimeball named Brad had been trying to videotape his neighbor in the shower and accidentally captured Jack's fall in its entirety. The following video is extremely upsetting.



Reports of a suicide note are unconfirmed. If one surfaces, I'll be the first to report it. Until then, though, Jack really is gone forever. A cold lesson for pumpkins and pumpkin enablers everywhere.

***

A few hours later, E! News heard about the tragedy and sent Ryan Seacrest to interview Paris and Lindsay. The two were hanging out at their friend Khloé the Gator's house, slurping down White Russians by the pool. 

"It's like, totally sad," Paris squeaked. "Jack was super cute, I guess, but now he's almost as irrelevant as my career."

Lindsay lifted her head out of her drink, gave Seacrest her best Botox pout. "Who the heck is Jack?" she asked, clearly confused. "And why don't you look like my usual dealer? Where's Julio?"

What Seacrest didn't realize was that he shouldn't have done the interview at all. Because Khloé the Gator hadn't had anything to eat in almost an hour, and her trainer Lamar was too busy playing basketball to feed her. So while Seacrest was busy with Lindsay, Khloé slid her massive, Jabba-like body out of the pool, snuck up behind him and screamed "Garghghghghahhh!!!!" in the creepiest baby voice imaginable. She swallowed his head in one gulp, then spit out the plastic pieces. 

RIP Ryan Seacrest. He never saw it coming. Sort of like Jack. But not really. 

The End (maybe)

The Twisted Tale of Jack the Crackhead Pumpkin

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

This Is A Cry For Help (and Tweets)

                                                      from http://twitter.com/#!/MikeFrancesaNY

You should be my friend on Twitter (@ChrisVola). Or follower, whatever. We may not know each other. Maybe you hate me. Maybe we sucked face and I never talked to you again. Maybe you're a 14-year-old Russian hacker trying to access my personal information through the blog (good luck, won't find much there you commie bastard!). I will embrace you all. Even Mexicans. Especially Mexicans.

What do you have to look forward to as my follower? Oh I don't know, a couple to several tweets a day, ranging from links to useless crap I find interesting, links to assorted junk that other people think is worth putting on other Web sites, links to blog posts like this one! Pretty much a lot of links. Also, an array of provocative, authoritative nuggets of truth about my favorite sports teams and any media object (book/movie/CD/concert/foxnews article/porn movie) with which I may have interacted that has been momentarily worthwhile in the glorious scheme of my life. And some weird conversations with my boys Willie aka Primetime Slimetime and the Party King. Things that make me no different than any other pale sucker wasting his time on Twitter.

Actually, I thought Twitter was pretty damn dumb until recently. But it's actually cool for news updates, following comedians and fake celebrities, sending direct messages, keeping up with your favorite band/writer/politician, finding interesting people, wasting time in cubicle-land, what you do already. Also, a bunch of other reasons that sound lame until you try them out. ALSO, publishing companies and presses are starting to ask for how many Twitter buddies you have when you submit a manuscript. I have 25 friends. Which sucks. It's kind of like the kid who brings cream of corn soup or steamed brussel sprouts to lunch and expects to trade them for my chocolate AND vanilla Handi-Snacks. And he has a cleft lip. And he smells like rabbit pee. Fuck that kid. Stay away from him! Some of my friends aren't even real people, they're just advertisements for porn sites disguised as sweethearts with big boobs.

So, in the end, this is all about ME.

If you're not convinced, here are some more reasons why you should join Twitter/follow me:

- If you follow me, I will follow you (sounds like a gay 80s jam), giving you one more friend follower, and thus increasing your popularity!

- If you're new to Twitter, you can follow me (thus giving you one automatic follower). Some porn advertisers will probably take notice and follow you, too. You'll have more friends! You'll be on the road to success! In Twitter!

- You can get a book/movie/TV/music/stripping deal!

- MikeFrancesaNY, GaryJBusey, SarahKSilverman

Oh yeah, I carved this pumpkin. This is what it looked like before it started to rot and resemble a toothless Corky from Life Goes On:

And I tweeted it.

Poetry the poison, poetry the lie, poetry the venom shot through rattler fangs

The Essential Numbers 1991 - 2008 by Gordon Massman

Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2009

182 pages


There's a lot of hyperbole on the Internet: Lindsay Lohan is the MOST fucked up stupid coke-whore EVER! OMG I have the coolest friends EVER for writing more birthday shout-outs on my wall than ANYONE, EVER!! This Jimmy Johnson-endorsed penis enlargement pill will transform you into a FUCKING SEX GOD and allow you to conquer third-world countries!!!!! 

Clearly there's enough of this kind of stuff going around on a daily basis, which is why I'm not going to review Gordon Massman's quasi-recent collection of poetry, The Essential Numbers 1991 - 2008. Because if I did, I'd be tempted to write that the book is the MOST viscerally disturbing, psyche-jarring jumble of words my young, impressionable eyes have EVER analyzed. That this is possibly the MOST IMPORTANT work of genre-bending literature to come out in the last five years, and if you read it, your blood might congeal and give you the BIGGEST, MOST HARDCORE brain aneurysm anyone's EVER documented. That your eyes might dislodge and your legs turn into rat shit as you crumple before its SHEER AWESOMENESS like a slug drowning in salt rain. But I don't want to sound like a bigger tool than I already have. And I have a hunch that Massman really detests assholes like me who get off on the worthless task of writing about writing. 

So I'll let him tell you about the poems himself, in the form of an interview he did a year ago that appeared on Trickhouse's Web site. It's some really interesting stuff. Sort of like taking the line between genius and insanity and shoving it up god's ass until it bursts into a pinata laden with candy. But what do I know. If you feel prepared to be enlightened, you can check out the whole thing here. Or here. Or maybe here. Choose wisely.

However, if you lack the attention span or the give-a-shit to read the entire interview, here are some of my favorite chunks:

- I throw as best I can, as believably as I can, the billion colors of human existence through the prism of myself. Over long and intense personal interior struggles I have unearthed my otherwise unspeakable capabilities and visceral dark emotions: rage’s boiling mud, shame’s hot cauldron, the alligators of self-loathing. Not only am I a beautiful child, I am a hideous monster.

Like us all. 

- I want to insist that my sometimes disturbing visions are more or less within everyone, with slight variations. Hasn’t every father fantasized infanticide? Doesn’t every husband want to binge on lovers. Doesn’t murder and suicide lurk in every man?

- This kind of clinical monster does not back down or mutate into something else. My clinical obsessions have numbered over thirty at any given moment, which I had to perform in a specific order at threat of having to repeat them beginning with number one, ad infinitum, through the night without sleep or rest. These involve locks, clocks, ovens, toilet seats, numbers, body lotions, dental floss, defecation, urination, noises, bottom sheets, light switches, hunger, toilet paper, and edges of desks.

- Surely “form” solidifies subject, is in fact subject, as subject is in fact form. My “form” is the brick of terror, guilt, shame, pain, horror, hope, rage, love, and innocence jammed into my head, square, compositionally shifting, and lodged like a bloody bludgeon I can only exorcize it by duplicating it on the page, repeatedly and, perhaps, eternally.


- The confusion is this: I am my poetry.


I discovered Massman's opus while perusing Tarpaulin Sky's Web site, because they tend to put out rad books. I was rewarded for my absentminded mouse-clicking when I stumbled upon The Essential Numbers' back cover:

  
 Not giving a fuck is all in good fun, as long as you can back it up. And Massman does, in a big way. 


And finally, some favorite lines from the book:


Dear God, I wish to register my unhappiness about a few things: mortality is a crock of shit, I could pop you in the mouth for that; genocide sucks, you deserve a penitentiary gang raping


I exacto-knife toadstool tip of penis, lift it off, the pee-slit forms a lovely salt-shaker

I masturbate to fashion photos of anorexics, Auschwitz ladies hips crooked outward slathered in blue cotton panties, elbow pelvises, furrows and funnels, cheeks like eaten stone, imagine fucking grasshopper bodies so close it rubs bone, wire sculpture of horror harboring a wet pussy

I petrify through the regal and towering land, the mesmerizing eyes, the vitality strands, the royal cataracting blood gorges of the beautiful and sad, once a breathing gaping hole, I grey among the statuesque


Hi, I'm Gordon, I'm a sex addict

Have a nice day.

Mitchell Heisman: A Review of an Obituary

Suicide Note by Mitchell Heisman

Self-published, 2010

1,905 pages

I don’t know how this stuff finds its way to me, but such is the Internet. For those who haven’t read the story, a week or so ago this 35-year-old bookstore worker with a psychology degree named Mitchell Heisman shot himself on the steps of Harvard’s Memorial Church. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. Which meant it was crowded – lots of students, lots of old people. But it wasn’t so much what he did that makes Heisman unique, or even interesting – it’s what he left behind.

Five hours after his death, 400 people – Mitchell’s friends, family, coworkers – received an email containing a link to http://www.suicidenote.info/. The site contains a PDF file titled, you guessed it, Suicide Note, Mitchell Heisman’s 1,900-page treatise on his own self-imposed extinction.

Yes, this crazy asshole really wrote a 1,900-page suicide note.

As a student of literature (morbid nerd), I was actually fascinated when I first read about this epic work. Many writers have been driven to suicide, but I’d never heard of one who’d completed something of this magnitude with the end goal being suicide. Heisman didn’t work very often because he had been living off an inheritance from his father, I thought to myself, which must have meant that this clearly well-read guy had had plenty of time to create an attention-grabbing and thought-provoking, if seriously delusional book.

I was wrong. 

Skimming through the nine-page table of contents initially gave me hope. In it, Heisman promises to tackle a vast array of complex, far-reaching and (for me) prescient topics – transhumanism, nihilism, the relationship between the rise of Nazism and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, “The seditious genius of the spiritual penis of Jesus” – en route to some kind of radical, pause-worthy justification for his suicide. However, after having floundered through the prologue and the first section, (An Experiment in Nihilism), and having barely reached the halfway point of the second section (God is Technology), I was well into skim-mode. 

It’s not that the ideas aren’t interesting, it’s the way he presents them. The prose, at best, is a vaguely coherent slush-pile of academic jargon and references. At its worst, it is the incomprehensible psycho-babble of a pseudo scholar with a penchant for big words that signify nothing. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed plowing my way through some heavy academic texts, but having to deal with gems like – “If the hereditary or genetic inclinations of humans are looked upon the bases of a political-sociobiological ‘system’, then God represents the ability to ‘joots’ or ‘jump’ out of the ‘system’, i.e. the Egyptian political-sociobiological pyramid-hierarchy system” – on a sentence-by-sentence basis is way too much for me to deal with, no matter how fascinated I am by the author’s death.

Sorry Mitchell. 

Even the note’s conclusion, the place where I thought I’d finally get that “Ah ha! So that’s why he did it!” moment, was vague, unsatisfying, what amounts to a sort of cop out. In the most direct portion of this segment, Heisman gives his real reason for blowing his brain-matter on the steps of a church in front of children:

“But wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Ah, yes, now I remember the punchline: I’ll try anything once!”

Obviously this statement is meant to be sardonic. It’s a tone that pops up periodically throughout “Suicide Note” – “What good suicide note would be complete without a bibliography?” – a dry humor that, instead of providing a degree of levity, only serves to remind us of just how mentally twisted and lonely this guy must have been.

Naturally, “Suicide Note” has attracted a good deal of chatter on Internet comment boards. As expected, the responses range from the sympathetic: “We all bear our own crosses. May he find love and healing in Paradise” to the angry: “Can’t [you] kill yourself in the woods or something so people are not traumatized by your moronic behavior and thank all for him just killing himself” to the mocking: “At least he went out with a bang!!!”. One particular comment of the funny-because-it’s-true variety caught my eye:

DOUBLE_CHINNED_PUPPETEER (09/25/2010 8:29 PM): Heisman was very foolish as no one will read his long note. He should have posted a video on YouTube instead!

The book may be the longest suicide note ever written, but it’s far from the best. In our visual-crazy, ADD digital world, Hesiman would have reached, I’d guess, a whole lot more people if he had condensed his manifesto into a Youtube video, or a series of them. No one is going to read 1,900 pages of anything today, let alone a garbled plea for death written by someone whose greatest accomplishment was apparently not leaving his room for inordinate periods of time. In his prologue, Heisman predicts that, for whatever reason, his manifesto will be “repressed,” perhaps by the coalition of evil, scaly old men who control the Internet. More likely, it will be forgotten. Mitchell Heisman will be a moderately popular Google search for a couple weeks until he, and the brain-matter stains he left on the church steps quickly fade into digital and actual obscurity. 

(I poured my existential guts out for 1,900 pages, shot myself, and all I got was this lousy Wikipedia page???)

I guess the reason I’m spending this much time on Suicide Note is that even as a writer, I still possess enough empathy to believe that someone who’s spent years of his sad life spewing his deepest, most honest analysis of himself and the world as he knew it should at least be acknowledged. And, as a writer, I can relate to Heisman in that I understand self-imposed isolation, of spending hours and days locked in your room, hell-bent on discovering something less than tangible. But I also know that books, philosophy, and the lonesome (and ultimately impossible) search for truth and self-actualization aren’t what make life worth living – It’s the smell of woodsmoke and the flutter of yellow leaves on the first crisp day of fall. It’s a shitty bottle of bourbon shared among friends who know all the words to the Phish song playing in the background, a song that conjures its own memories of past glory. It’s the tiny soft fingers of a beautiful girl at 8am, rubbing away the hangover gremlins coaxing you toward another skin-filled embrace. The hushed magnitude of a moonlit snowscape. Porn. Whatever.

The saddest part of this whole story is that had Mitchell Heisman taken a couple minutes to escape his books and the nightmare visions that swarmed his head, he might have found joy in one of the things I just mentioned, or five billion others like it. He might have understood (through experience, and not some arbitrary human creation like nihilism) the basic principle of existence, not just for humans but for every organism trying to eke its way along on the planet: That life is good.

Do Not Read Before Bedtime

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Most DISTURBING book of the year! (Probably)

Just wanted to let y'all know that John Reed's long awaited Tales of Woe (MTV Books, 2010) is now available for purchase!

Already being described as one of the most disturbing books to appear in recent memory, Tales of Woe, in simple, stark language, recounts several true stories united by a feeling of absolute misery without any prospect of redemption. Cannibalism, rape and incest are the norm here, along with a sense of unrelenting terror and disgust. Each story is accompanied by an often-gruesome, anime-like illustration. Sounds like a great Labor Day beach read!

John is an indispensable chronicler of postmodernity (Snowball's Chance, The Whole, All The World's A Grave), as well as an invaluable professor and mentor. I was able to get a brief glimpse at some early proofs of the book, and can't wait to check out Tales of Woe in its entirety. More to come soon!

Less Than Negative One

Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis

June 15, 2010

Knopf

169 pages

The harrowing and sublime sequel to 1985’s Less Than Zero, Imperial Bedrooms fast-forwards 25 years to a movie-industry-obsessed Los Angeles that, because of its author’s maturity, outshines its previous incarnation as a grim and deeply effecting dystopia, one void of compassion and saturated with a sense of distrust that seems frighteningly universal. This smoothly rendered thriller may lack the scope and wit of previous works like Glamorama, but Ellis’s portrayal of Clay, now a successful screenwriter, and his increasingly despicable circle of friends, cuts satisfyingly to the core of a bleak tunnel with no existential light at its end. In an era where blond bangs and Ray-Bans have been replaced by Botox and botched eyebrow lifts, Clay must ask himself what it looks like to be aging in a city that exists only for the young. The answer: not pretty. Ellis reaches his usual quota of (real or imagined?) squirm-inducing torture scenes and ultra-depraved, drug-fueled sex trysts. But the book’s quietest moments – the vibration of an iPhone, the digital billboards beaming images into the desert night, the condo lights left on when no one’s supposed to be home – are often its scariest, perfectly capturing an odor of uneasiness and of time being frozen, of a middle-aged man’s struggle with, and eventual acceptance of the darkest moments that have come to define his sad, plastic life. Equal parts Raymond Chandler L.A. über-noir and spot-on postmodern satire, Imperial Bedrooms is Ellis’s most polished, succinct novel to date, and his most disturbing since 1991’s American Psycho.

Philip Roth Is A Dirty (Awesome) Old Man

The Humbling by Philip Roth

November 2, 2009

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

140 pages

Although it lacks the scope and detail of Roth’s masterworks like The Human Stain and American Pastoral, The Humbling presents a convincingly haunting – albeit too brief – glimpse into the complex darkness of a decaying star at his lowest and most vulnerable. The prose is disturbing, the characters more so, and the brusque plot is generally riveting. For his thirtieth book, Roth departs from Newark, his longtime muse, to impart the novella-length tragedy of Simon Axler, an aging stage actor who, at 65, finds himself unable to act, and engaged in an invigorating yet confounding affair with an ex-lesbian 25 years his junior. In much of Roth’s most recent work (Everyman, Exit Ghost), the dialogue appears unrealistic to the point of being distracting. However, in The Humbling, this self-aware (in true Roth fashion) “soap opera” speak, far from seeming stilted, embellishes the suffocating sense of the primary characters only being able to exist and function in scripted roles that are either ill-chosen or unknowingly thrust upon them, roles that can only be renounced by carefully conceived deception or spontaneous violence. Also featuring some of Roth’s raunchiest (and best) sex scenes since Portnoy’s Complaint, The Humbling is a late-career bright spot that deserves a larger canvas.

Page 39

I’M RIDING SHOTGUN, breeze-happy in the Automatic Climate Control. Billy’s chiefing on a joint in the back, bobbing along to Big L’s “The Heist”.

The plan is to spend the night in Southwest Harlem – four blocks from Columbia – at the apartment of one of Davis’ friends. A pit stop on the nostalgia train for me, and, more importantly for Billy, a sweet squirt of debauchery in the Lecherous Apple. It just feels good to get out, to be moving again, like running downhill. No more vibrations in my pocket.

I-95 South is an asphalt hell-hole, suffocating, fume-laden at the tail-end of rush hour. A twenty-foot black-and-white Derek Jeter eye-fucks his new Movado timepiece. McDonald’s crucifixes coax their congregations with promises of the holy trinity– High Trans-fat! High Sodium! Free Happy Meal Toys!

Billy tosses the roach out amidst a thick cloud. An elderly couple in a Lincoln glare. “At least we’re not going to die soon!” he screams at them, clown-smiling. They pull off the highway. Davis’s CDs cycle endlessly through his unique brand of nineties minutiae – Mobb Deep, Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Nas, variations of alternative, jangle-pop, post-hardcore punk, trip-hop. The Ghosts of Genres Past. I drift in the familiar guitar chords, the middle-school-dance mystique. A breath of old-fresh air.

Traffic crawls.

Davis keeps checking his iPhone. Just after we pass Exit 18 in Southport we see the cause of the congestion, across the median in the oncoming lanes. A truck has skidded perpendicular to the road, four huge tracks of burnt rubber streak the asphalt. The cab is facing us, windshield smashed. Gobs of blood, gray and brown pieces of clothing are splattered across the white hood, a messy abstract canvas. A compacted heap – what might have been a yellow Nissan Altima – rests against the median. Pieces of glass litter the road like parade confetti. People are talking on two-ways, drinking Dunkin Donuts iced lattes. Two paramedics rush past, wheeling a man in a stretcher toward a nearby ambulance. A third paramedic, his sleeves and latex gloves soaked, tries to hold in the strings of glistening hamburger meat seeping out of a gash below the man’s ribcage. Billy rolls up his window, lights another joint, keeps saying Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ between hits. I rifle through my backpack, open a few of the orange bottles, swallow what I hope are a Zoloft, a Percocet, and a Prozac. Davis gives me this look in the rear-view mirror and I know what he’s thinking. In front of us, an old beige Chevy truck with a navy blue bumper sticker that says, I’m Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone…


…and I’m walking past the baggage claim at JFK two-and-a-half years ago, talking on my cell phone to Lauren who’s at school, trying to avoid the young couple that had been sitting in front of me on the flight, making out the entire time, exchanging handjobs under the complimentary blanket. Lauren’s trying to hold it together, but she’s sobbing, telling me she loves me and I’m not crying and I can tell she’s really drunk.

Maybe it’s because, given what’s happened, she feels extra bad about fucking Archer Hamilton on the back seat of a charter bus headed to a Young Democrats formal the night before, something I won’t find out about until I get back to school two weeks later.

Lauren’s saying that everything is going to be fine in between sobs and swallows of what I’m assuming is a mixed drink involving watermelon vodka or something equally sinister. Aunt Susan’s on the other line. She’s calm, sticking to facts, mapping out the next couple of days, the lawyers, the medical examiner’s office, the funeral director in East Fairport, which of my cousins are staying with me for the service and I’m not really listening to any of it and the couple in front of me is sweaty, gleaming, making out roughly on the escalator.

Davis is waiting outside the automated doors in a dark gray suit, leaning against his father’s Maserati. He tucks away his cell phone, smiles sadly, takes my bag.

“Thanks,” I say, “I really appreciate you coming to –”

“It’s the least I could do,” he says. “Your parents, you know how much they meant to Dad, to the whole
company. It’s…” he trails off, looks at the ground.

“I know, it’s been –” I stop and realize everything. I’m starting to fall, not faint, but toppling against the weight of my own legs. Davis is pulling me up and saying I’m here, I’m here, don’t worry before I feel the taste of tears running down my cheek and neck, staining my tee shirt and Davis is taking three Lexapros out of a bottle he’d had in his pocket and is feeding them to me and I’m swallowing and the ride back to East Fairport takes no time at all.

Rockin' the Suburbs (Is a Good Idea for Even the Biggest Asphalt-Addicted, Tight-Jeaned Burnout City Freak)

A recent trip to upstate Connecticut, the land of Huskies, steamed cheeseburgers, and most importantly, my birth, has given me a much needed breath of filth-free air, a reminder of why the first twenty-odd years of my life were zenlike when compared to the gonzofied sensory-explosion monkeybomb world I currently inhabit -- and more than a few reasons why I will ultimately return to live out the rest of my days in a kingdom of soccer milfs and weed whackers. I'll list a few of these until the "pizza" delivery guy shows up with a fat bag of "pizza", or until the technology-induced ADHD kicks in, whichever comes first.

• Trees. Yes, Central Park and Riverside Park offer the occasional unspoiled leafy glen, and all the biking, tennis, cross-country skiing, frisbee, and sunbathing options that any urban treehugger could possibly desire. But they also offer more than the occasional glimpse of foaming junkies getting their tweak on, and Puerto Rican hookers having their asses eaten out next to busy playgrounds. Not to mention the major highway that runs alongside Riverside, or the European tourists make the Great Lawn seem like a Great Place to swallow a bucket of lighter fluid. In CT, I went on a 15-mile bike ride through a quaint town center, a primeval forest that has been unchanged since we gave smallpox to the Pequots, a nature preserve, a river that doesn't have a highway next to it, rows of endless tobacco fields, a cemetary with stones from the 1600's, the pristine campus of my prep school, and a dirt road next to a turf farm where my buddies and I used to "study" after school. Not once during this entire ride was I accosted by a crackhead or subjected to the constant ruckus of taxi horns, packs of creepy obese children, garbage-day stink-smells, and crosswalk stagnation. Besides the occasional car and dog walker, this was Nature on my own quiet, bird-call-filled terms. Wide open (if manicured) spaces, the pump of the bike, the empty blue of the sky and my peace-starved head. Transcendence ahoy!

• NO HIPSTERS!!!

• Real dogs. People actually have real, outdoorsy, L.L. Bean Catalogue-worthy labs and retrievers, not the pathetic, yappy punt-worthy rat-creatures I have to avoid stepping on all the time. And the dog in the 'burbs are much happier, free to roam, to chase rabbits, to be actual dogs, instead of crying blankets for miserable 30-year-old single women who get stood up by their match.com dates. 

•  Pickup trucks with the occasional racing sticker. 

• Golf. It's crack for white people (except for the white people who actually smoke crack). I didn't realize how badly I missed it until I played a round. The attraction is simple: Take the Nature idea and add open boozing and swearing and hitting things with a metal stick. There is nothing finer on God's earth. Besides porn. And "pizza". 

•  Did I mention no hipsters?

• In the suburbs, there's much less room for dissatisfaction. When the choices of what to do on a Friday night are limited to a dozen restaurants and a handful of decent bars, there are two options: either stay inside or make whatever you're doing fun.[Not to forget house parties. Not sweaty, forty-assholes-cramped-into-a-tiny-apartment parties, HOUSE PARTIES. Like "let's go out back to the barn or skinny dip in the pool or be able to have a conversation where I don't have to smell your breath or count the open pores in your face!"] New Yorkers will spend an entire night working their way through 15-20 bars/clubs in one neighborhood looking for the perfect vibe, only to realize that it doesn't exist, and that the search has depleted most of the week's paycheck. Sure, people and places in the 'burbs may be simpler, but that simplicity generally makes happiness a much easier state to attain. I'd rather hang out at the same local, familiar pub with my best buddies night after night than have my brain explode while trying to figure out which of the 85 Thai places to go to within a three-block radius of my apartment. 

• There's also something to be said for being able to drive for hours on open stretches of road and highway, letting your arm catch the breeze outside the window, blasting your tunage with the unshakable confidence of knowing that you will never be a slave to the hell-colored stoplights of the All-Mighty Grid. 

Not to say that the suburban life is total nirvana. There's plenty of reasons why I stay in Manhattan. Career progression, 4 am last calls, exotic polychromatic women, getting a bacon-egg-and-cheese and a 40 oz whenever I damn well want. And most importantly, there aren't any pizza guys in the suburbs. And like clockwork, as I write this sentence, the buzzer is ringing. I wonder what delicious toppings he'll have today. The suburbs, for now, are only a distant Disneyland dreamworld. And one day I will sleep there in the carefully crafted fantasy that is Connecticut. But until then, I have more pressing business. Lunch is served!

To MFA or...uh, Not (A Brief, Rushed, and Not At All Authoratitve or Even Informative Take on Graduate Writing Programs)

A writer who’s just graduated from a writing program is supposed to write about it, right?

I can remember when, three years ago, as a young, impressionable undergrad who thought (wrongly) that he could write a good story or two, I began to research MFA programs. Why an MFA, you ask? Doesn’t it make more sense to get something useful, perhaps a JD, an MBA, any other M[pick a letter]? Something with a future? Those are great questions. After all, as my parents have pointed out several times – I did get into law school. I guess there were two primary reasons for the MFA. (1) Writing fiction was (and is) the only thing besides playing music that I ever truly enjoyed putting a huge amount of effort into, and I had this grand scheme to write a horrific Easton Ellis-esque novel, a collection of short stories, and a volume of poetry, and to be wallowing in royalties from their respective sales by age 24. And (2), I wanted to attain the more realistic goal of avoiding getting a “real job” (one where I have to get up before 11 am and shave more than once a week) for as long as possible. Happily, (2) has worked out pretty nicely, and I have written the aforementioned novel, although my fame, riches, and 70 Natalie Portman virgin body doubles have yet to materialize.

I’ll try to avoid making this about the pros and cons of my own program (Columbia) and instead focus on the pros and cons of the “MFA experience” in general, though inevitably most of what I’ll be drawing from will be based on my time at one institution, one that may be infinitely different than most places, like, say University of New Hampshire.I don't know. I only applied to programs where you didn't need to take the GRE.

I didn’t enter a graduate a writing program to “find myself” or “perfect my craft” or make new friends who weren’t my cat, or any of the other stupid cliché reasons I’d read on artsy-fartsy blogs I perused while researching programs. I wanted to publish something big, get paid, bang Natalie Portman, and live the dream (also a cliché, I guess). I suppose that’s completely counterintuitive to the very idea of an MFA program, and although (obviously) my goals haven’t been accomplished, I can honestly say that I would be NOWHERE (relatively) near as close to achieving them as I am now. Plain and simple: Getting an MFA taught me everything I now know about writing. Granted, it’s not like that for everyone. Some lucky bastards are born with a freakish amount of literary genius. But for those of us not named Philip Roth or Bret Easton Ellis, an MFA is vital, if only because of what I call the Immersion Factor.

As an undergrad journalism major, I hadn’t read as much as the English majors but because of my program’s requirement of three seminars a semester, I was soon reading the equivalent of three-and-a-half books a week, and, more importantly, learning how to read as a writer. I cannot stress enough the importance of reading on the writer’s learning curve. If you don’t read – YOU WILL FAIL (or just suck at writing forever). What would Lady Gaga sound like if she decided never to listen to Madonna? After all, the greatest artists are the greatest plagiarists and one of the best bi-products of learning how to read is learning how to steal – and steal successfully. The only other comparable non-academic option would be to lock yourself in your room for a year and do nothing besides read (and write once in a while). The obvious drawbacks to this lifestyle are that vampires aren't as popular as they were last year, and that once in a while, you need to supplement your life with (surprise) life experience, as well as a few people who you can bounce your work off of. Which brings me to my next point.

Another unique aspect of the MFA experience is the sheer amount of criticism one receives, and the luxury of being able to learn how to deal with, and benefit from that criticism. Workshops are horrifying. Having to submit your work (aka your soul – or the sinister void that used to be a soul) a handful of times a semester and have it thoroughly dissected and desecrated by people who probably aren’t your closest friends is sort of like being chained, face up, at the bottom of an outhouse while the entire Oakland Raiders starting lineup takes turns relieving themselves on you after an all-night free buffet at Waffle House. Not fun. But like any academic experience, you (hopefully) learn something once in a while. And after a couple discouraging weeks spent thinking you’re the shittiest person ever to put your fingers to a keyboard, you realize that the critiques – though occasionally harsh – are meant to be CONSTRUCTIVE, that your professors and (some of your) classmates actually want you to get better, and that “good job” or “this is perfect” are probably the worst comments you can get on a submission. Sure, there may be an asshole in your workshop who’s pissed you’ve been hooking up with the only non-lesbian/non-fat-chick-who-isn’t-married in your class and will tear up your submission purely out of spite. But again, that’s the beauty of college. You will learn to separate the helpful from the worthless, the inept from the well-thought-out. You will also learn about the most valuable mental tool a writer can possess – the ability to edit your own work. This may not sound like much, but believe me, cutting large chunks of something you’ve been working on creating for years can be harder than aborting a fetus. One of my workshop professors singlehandedly taught me everything I know about line-editing and paragraph structure, and I will forever be grateful to her.

I guess the third and final (positive) aspect of the MFA experience could be called Networking, or, equally as uncreative, The People You’ll Meet and What To Do With Them. A good MFA program is a great place to meet distinguished writers (i.e. faculty members). The level of interest they show in you as a budding wordsmith will vary, and depend on how much you nag them, but chances are you will form at least a moderately strong bond with at least one or two of them. These connections are vital, more so in writing than in most other fields. Any strides I’ve made in the literary community (or sphere, or whatever) have been a direct result of getting advice from / getting introductions from my professors. Nowhere besides an MFA program will you be able to make friends with such a high concentration of established writers. Or maybe not, but you will meet a lot. In terms of getting an agent and getting published (both of which should be important to you or why the hell would you bother getting an MFA?) I will say that the New York City programs do offer a bunch of easy ways to get yourself on the radar, considering how much of the publishing industry is situated within a couple square miles of Manhattan. However, if you get into a great, but more geographically remote program (Iowa, Johns Hopkins, Houston, UMASS-Amherst), GO THERE. The Internet has made location obsolete; the only important factor on whether or not you get published is the strength of your manuscript. You either got it or you don’t (unless you’re a fashionable, overachieving celeb who for some reason decides that millions of movie dollars aren’t enough of an accomplishment. Then you can write garbage).

Your classmates are another matter. Typically, and especially in a larger writing program, you’ll find a vast spectrum of humanity – all ages, shapes, colors, sexual orientations, political views (mmm maybe not). Don’t feel pressured to make friends with everybody. You should try to be outgoing, especially in a larger program. Most writers aren’t the most socially adept creatures, but some are really fascinating, caring people, believe it or not. It is important, also, to invest in a couple close writing colleagues with whom you feel comfortable swapping your work. Remember what I said about having a couple pairs of eyes that aren’t yours. They will see things that you don’t. Just make sure they’re eyes you trust.

--- Now I need to stop ---- and be brutally honest, in a way that will most likely alienate four out of the six people who probably read this blog. WARNING: The vast majority of young “writers” (especially in NYC) are HIPSTERS. These are not the badass Kerouac and Ginsberg-esque beatniks of the fifties, or the Warhol Factory luminaries of the seventies, or even the cool, “different”, and edgy kids today who one might consider hip. No, these are the worst breed of hipster, the antithesis of cool. The hipsters who shop at Salvation Army but whose hedge-fund-managing parents pay their entire rent and tuition in the hopes that their wayward, possibly bi-curious 30-year-old daughter will finally make something out of herself and stop creeping out the rest of the family. These are the almost comically pretentious, negative-Nancy hipsters who think that because they’ve spent the last ten years sitting in a dark basement listening to depressing indie music and cutting themselves because ‘Wah! Wah! No one understands me!’ that their crummy lives are worth writing about. Get a (real) life. I’m sorry, but if I wanted to wear ball-strangling jeans and stupid-rimmed glasses, and not take showers or be optimistic about anything, I’d do the world a favor and never leave the wretched outer-borough hovel Daddy bought me for my last birthday.

A little bombastic, yes, and spiteful; let me clarify. There are lots of great, interesting, and hilarious hipsters in every writing program, and I’d like to think that there’s at least some good or redeeming qualities in even the scruffiest wookie. But still, generally speaking, most hipsters should be treated the same as mosquitoes.  Unfortunately, it is these very hipsters who run the publishing industry. I even had one professor go so far as to tell me that I should remove my jobs as a bouncer and a water polo coach from my résumé because they would make me look like a “stupid jock”. Wow. I’m sorry I’m not an effeminate pussy. I’m sorry that I like watching (and playing) sports possibly more than any other activity besides sex (and writing, sometimes), that I prefer the company of I-bankers and accountants because they actually pay their own rent, that I enjoy hunting critters and gutting fish, that I’m a registered Republican. All of which brings me to my last major point – BE YOURSELF! Don’t allow going to an MFA program to change who you are, because as corny as it sounds, the truer you are to yourself, the better your writing will be. If you become fake, your work will look that way. You won’t fool anybody. And if any punk steps to you, you can tell him/her/he-she to go screw a Katy Perry blow-up doll, or whatever hipsters are doing these days.

Some other writing program drawbacks include the two or three years of tuition, which can range from the affordable to the frighteningly absurd (i.e. Columbia University), and the fact that many employers will laugh in your face when you include an MFA in your list of credentials. But if you’re serious about becoming a great writer and don’t have the natural talent of, say, a David Foster Wallace, then I really believe that getting an MFA is by far the best, if not the only option. And actually, David Foster Wallace got an MFA, too. Then he killed himself.  

A New Yorker in....uh, New York (part 1)

After reading Pete Hamill's "Downtown," a badass memoir-slash-history of living and working in Lower Manhattan during the last 300 years, and after living here for almost three years (and never even having seen the Statue of Liberty from a distance), I figure it's about time to strap on a fanny pack and capri pants and check out the places that obese families from Arkansas wearing all-white New Balances and faux-hawked Euros ask me how to get to while I try to mind my own business on the subway. Also, I have a lot of free time and the eye candy is getting splendid (thank Buddha that Ugg season is over!), and besides, it never hurts to get a lil art & culture up in yo life (in addition to the fact that my Columbia ID that gets me in to every museum for free expires when I graduate in May).

First stop on the tour - the Metropolitan Museum of Art - which I checked out last Wednesday, was the shortest, because it's the only place on the list that I've already been to several times, and one with which most people are familiar. I'll dispense with the descriptions of the massive columned exterior, the huge glass pyramid looking out into Central Park, the guilded, turn-of-the-century mansions across the street, and the Asian man in the Scooby Doo tee shirt who asked me to take a picture of him next to a hot dog cart with his 100000000-megapixel Asian camera. Although he was pretty cool. Instead, some random thoughts:


- Greek bodies drawn on urns and vases look remarkably similar to today's cartoons, except there are many more penises on them. Greeks love penis, I guess.

- Has the act of creation become undervalued? In antiquity, even the most simple items like hairbrushes were painstakingly handcrafted to become works of art, to say nothing of the ornate statues, paintings, tunics, and wall hangings that are ubiquitous in their intricacy. What has mass production and a consumer ethos done to our conception of beauty and what should be beautiful? Does anyone care?

- Has our easy access to cheap, plastic, throw-away goods destroyed a part of the skill set that defines us as human? Is digital art just as beautiful, the next logical cultural step, or is it just a product of postmodern laziness, pressing a button to let a machine do the real creative work?

- I need to learn all the romance languages in order to spit game to the FOOOIINNNE ass European girls giggling at the African fertility sculpture. Need to find what country they're from and move there ASAP.

- Symbolism and myth have been been so integral to every culture for at least 50,000 years, from the French cave paintings to English Romanticism. What are our symbols? Has our scientific, realist-centric society destroyed the validity of myth in the overall human conscious? What has this done/will this do to our collective psyche?

- There was definitely a huge bong masquerading as a vase in the modern furniture exhibit, designed by Dale Chihuly. I would like to chill with him.

- 50% of all government funding should go to time travel research, as that would be the coolest technology EVER. I want to see how creepy the Greeks really were. Not to mention dinosaurs.