From the Desk of Jeffrey Scott Holland

My Twitter FAQ

2012-01-06T11:24:00.009-05:00

It seems downright wankatory to spend so many words writing about something that denotes brevity as much as Twitter does, but I think it's time. In no particular order, here's some stuff you should know:

Social Media. I am philosophically opposed to "social media" (and not even really a fan of the Internet itself anymore) for reasons already elaborated elsewhere. Because of this, some tweeps can't resist the perceived irony of pointing out that I'm on Twitter. However, I view Twitter as microblogging - no different than this blog you are reading now - not "social media". 99.9% of my friends are not on Twitter and, God bless 'em, have no desire to be. Like a radio tower, I'm just broadcasting in mostly one-way communication, and whether you tune in to that transmission or not is entirely up to you. Though I do enjoy the occasional banter with strangers and fans on there, I prefer serious real-world friendships/alliances to idle digital chumminess, and if we've never shared a meal or a drink together, we aren't really friends. But that's easily remedied, which brings me to...

Eating. Whenever I tweet that I'm eating or drinking somewhere, you're always welcome to join in. If it was an occasion where company was unwanted, I wouldn't be tweeting my location in the first place :)

Following. In general, I don't follow anyone who doesn't follow me, and I don't follow anyone who I consider, at my whims, unnecessarily negative, spammy, or incoherent. I don't feel obligated to follow anyone, truth be told, and have often toyed with being one of those people who follows no one. (If you notice that some tweeps seem to have immunity to my rules, well, yes, there are some lucky souls who I consider to be above the chessboard, "of both lands and both seas".)

Manual of Style. I publicly thank anyone who follows me, regardless. I don't bother to take the time to assess whether they're bots or what. Thanking for RTs seems a bit crufty to me, so I don't do that. And #FF (Follow Friday) is the ONLY time I do mass shoutouts. I tend to do manual RTs more than the traditional kind, especially if I think it's important enough that I need to circumvent anyone who's disabled seeing my RTs. If that bugs you, the unfollow button's right over there. You'll eat what we're cookin'.

I'm interested in everything. Unlike a lot of tweeps who seemingly exist only to talk about one narrow topic, there's very little out there in the human experience that doesn't get scrutinized by my all-seeing eye. Thus, some have expressed bewilderment and even irritation that I sometimes tweet, in rapid succession, about all manner of subjects under the sun that interest me, from quantum physics to winemaking. I have all sorts of acquaintances from all walks of life. Tea partiers. Nudists. Ministers. Stockbrokers. Drag queens. NASA scientists. Parrot-heads. People from Ohio.

Politics. Because I am highly critical of Obama, tweeps tend to automatically assume I'm a Republican. I am not. In fact, I worked for the Obama campaign in the 2008 election, although politically I don't fit into either the liberal or conservative boxes. I have bigger fish to fry than mere terrestrial politicking. But in the next election, I will probably vote for anyone but Obama - a 9-year-old boy from Montreal, a flatulent basset hound, a potted plant, or even Mitt Romney. (Yes, I consider the line Obama has crossed to be that ethically unforgivable.)

Twitter is not my personal diary. It may seem like it sometimes, but it isn't. The vast majority of what goes on in my day-to-day life isn't even mentioned on Twitter.

Smartphones. I'm apparently the last man standing in the solar system who has no interest in smartphones. Half my tweets come from a laptop running mobile.twitter.com (which I vastly prefer to the unwieldy and over-coded "New Twitter") and the other half are sent as text messages via a conventional old-school cellphone. I bring all this up to remind you that unlike most of your other tweeps, I often am not looking at Twitter even as I'm posting to it.

It's all crap anyway. Twitter, like most Internet amusements, is trivial junk. Have some fun with it. Muck around with it. Poke it and see what it does for you. Don't take it seriously. I don't. (Despite having just written this lengthy FAQ about it!)

Secrets of Our Soil

2011-07-30T14:14:00.006-04:00

"There's a world going on underground," as Tom Waits once said.

And what goes on beneath Kentucky's "dark and bloody ground" is stranger than you might imagine: Mammoth Cave mummies, interstellar impact craters, a lost city under Lexington, and more!

Pick up this month's "Back to School" issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine and re-school yourself on Kentucky weirdness with my column Commonwealth Curiosities!

Forward Motion

2011-05-27T17:02:00.003-04:00

I'm happy to announce I'm on board with the new KyForward website as a columnist and reporter! Their focus is on stories that are useful, educational, and positive - no lurid sensationalism, no crime-porn, no snarky attacks or character assassination, and no mean-spirited celebrity gossip.

In other words, the total opposite direction of where post-Gawker-style internet media seems to be headed.

My hat's in their ring.

The Invisible Barrier

2011-05-01T10:24:00.002-04:00

There seems to be a weird psychological barrier that keeps Kentuckians from exploring the vast majority of their state - especially between Louisvillians and Lexingtonians. In this month's issue of Kentucky Monthly, I address this mental block and exhort you and yours to get off the internet and acquaint yourself with the 120 counties of Kentucky, most of which I bet dollars to donuts you ain't been in.

Kentucky Monthly is available at fine and discerning bookstores and newsstands everywhere!

RIP Typewriters?

2011-04-26T10:53:00.003-04:00

The phrase "RIP Typewriters" is, uh, "trending" (Dear Lord, I loathe that concept) on Twitter today, apparently because the last manufacturer of them, Godrej & Boyce in Mumbai, India, has ceased operations.

However, don't go waving goodbye to the typewriter in the sky just yet. You can still get one if you really want one. And whoever started this meme about the death of the typewriter evidently overlooked the new USB Typewriters.

I use all means available to me, and typewriters will always have a place in my household and my offices. Then again, I still write in longhand - you know, with pen and paper like they did in antediluvian times? - which I realize is so unhip in this modern age which encourages citizens to become dull-witted insensate food tubes hunched over video games, eating toxic Frankenfoods, and getting into Splenda-fueled internet-rage flamewars on Facebook with some 13-year-old kid in Tierra Del Fuego over important issues like "reality" TV shows and pop stars.

Zager and Evans, right again.

The Browning Boys

2011-03-14T20:52:00.002-04:00

This month's installment of Commonwealth Curiosities: did you know that the original "Louisville Slugger" Pete Browning and the pioneering Hollywood director Tod Browning (the man who brought us Freaks and the original Bela Lugosi Dracula) were related? And did you know that both these Kentuckians led extremely eccentric lives? Just how eccentric? Pick up the latest copy of Kentucky Monthly and find out!

DeQuincey on Memory

2011-03-02T20:50:00.003-05:00

When I'm not writing, I'm reading. There are a handful of books which, like the Bible, never get old and I can leaf through their secrets again and again and again and never get bored.

One such book is Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas DeQuincey. It's written in a frenzied, disjointed, stream-of-consciousness style that screams wisdom and madness at the same time. Sometimes a run-on sentence will go run the length an entire page without taking a breath. The book was written after Mr. DeQuincey straighted his life out from opium addiction, supposedly. He doesn't sound opiated, that's for sure - just the opposite, he seems downright manic.

But tonight I was struck by this passage from the book, like a bolt of lightning hit me on my head when I read it - because it just happens to echo my own philosophical position based on my own firsthand personal experiences (with memory recall, I mean, not with opium!):

I was once told by a near relative of mine that having in her childhood fallen into a river, and being on the very verge of death but for the assistance which reached her at the last critical moment, she saw in a moment her whole life, clothed in its forgotten incidents, arrayed before her as in a mirror, not successively, but simultaneously; and she had a faculty developed as suddenly for comprehending the whole and every part.

This, from some opium experiences, I can believe; I have, indeed, seen the same thing asserted twice in modern books, and accompanied by a remark which is probably true - viz., that the dread book of account which the Scriptures speak of is, in fact, the mind itself of each individual. Of this, at least, I feel assured, that there is no such thing as ultimate forgetting; traces once impressed upon the memory are indestructible; a thousand accidents may and will interpose a veil between our present consciousness and the secret inscriptions on the mind. Accidents of the same sort will also rend away this veil.

But alike, whether veiled or unveiled, the inscription remains forever; just as the stars seem to withdraw before the common light of day, whereas, in fact, we all know that it is the light which is drawn over them as a veil, and that they are waiting to be revealed whether the obscuring daylight itself shall have withdrawn.

East Filches West

2011-02-22T22:55:00.004-05:00

This morning I was examining the statistics report that Blogger provides for each of my blogs, and I was surprised to see I was getting a considerable number of hits from a Chinese news site called Dong Xi.

I was even more surprised to find out why. It seems someone over there slapped together an article about Henrietta Lacks that leans so heavily on a post on my Steampunk blog - they even ripped off my graphic - someone felt obligated to put a tiny link at the bottom of the page listing me as a source. I suppose I should be thankful for that much.

Here's the translation.

I don't really take any of my blogs seriously, however, so I'm more bemused and amused than anything else. But hey, Dong Xi, are you hiring? I'll be happy to write for you legit and above-board.

The Moleskin Checklist

2011-02-01T16:26:00.004-05:00

A rough, first-drafty teaser sample from my forthcoming pulp-noir novel that may or may not be titled Body of Work, The Tract of Blood, the rather Harry Stephen Keeler-scented The Moleskin Checklist, or none of the above.

The mailboxes in my office building are in the lobby, ensconced in a little kiosk. Each of them was about the size of a box of buttermints, and if you got a package that didn't fit, then you got a little cantaloupe-colored slip from the post office notifying you that you have to trudge down there to get it.

On this day, something slightly larger than the size of a box of buttermints must have arrived, because I got the aforementioned slip. Great. Now I have to drive across town to pick up something that's most likely junk mail anyway. Every time this happens, it turns out to be nothing worth the trek. Especially now that I no longer have a subscription to Hustler.

It was already hot out. Going to be another scorcher today, I can tell. I got into my beat-up 1981 Cadillac Eldorado and rolled down the windows. I have decent air conditioning, but the engine often cuts out at stop signs when I have it running.

When I got to Sappy's apartment complex, he was standing out front with a middle-aged barefoot woman in daisy dukes and, strangely, a woollen turtleneck sweater. She was furious and screaming at him in such a shrill and loud voice I could hear her before I could see her, driving into the parking lot. Sappy was comically feigning aloofness, staring resolutely into the distance and acting as if she wasn't there. If I hadn't rolled up when I did, she might have started getting violent in order to get his attention.

She was still screaming as I backed out. Sappy and I exchanged nods. "Sappy."

"Jack."

"Who the hell is she?"

"Nobody."

"Uh huh. She doesn't look like a nobody."

"Trust me, she is."

Traffic near campus was constipated as usual, so I took a right on Linden and headed down Maxwell. Sappy reached down and helped himself to one of my cigarettes, as he always did.

"Would you like an Old Gold, Mr. Sappy?" I said mockingly.

"Yassss", he groused in an imitation of William Burroughs. "Let no man say you are parsimonious with your favors."

We pulled into Bicentennial Liquors. I told Sappy I'd stay in the car while he went after his usual bottle of Wild Turkey. Sometimes Sappy gets distracted by all the booze, though, and you have to go in and tug at his sleeve to hurry to fuck up. Problem is, sometimes I get distracted too and we both end up strolling around the liquor store for the better part of an hour, picking up every other bottle and speculating on all the different products. Even though I've never known Sappy to drink anything besides beer and bourbon. And sure enough, as I sat there starting to sweat in the hot car, I started to get a little hypnotized by the displays in the window, I started to get a hankering myself for a little something. I got out and went in and stood around staring at obscure brands of Cognac. I say obscure, but I don't know a thing about Cognac. What is it, anyway? It's in the Brandy section of the store, but you know, now that I stop to think about it, I don't know what Brandy is, really. All I know is, I had some Cognac at my sister's wedding and it was some mighty fine stuff.

What the hell. I deserve a treat. I took the fancy Cognac to the counter, where Sappy had already bagged his bottled bird.

Twenty minutes later, having retrieved some padded manila envelope with no return address from my P.O. Box, we pulled out of the post office parking lot. I heard the sound of Sappy's bottle being opened. "Aw, man, here we go again," I said. "You never learn, do you? You lost your license and now you want to take away mine." Sappy said nothing, but raised his open bottle and smiled a wide grin exposing his tobacco-stained teeth. Then he turned the radio to an oldies station playing Led Zeppelin and made exagerrated mock "rock and roll" thrashing gestures. God, I hate Led Zeppelin.

People often wonder why I hold such a disdain for so-called "classic rock". My answer is always that old music is old and it's played out.

"But isn't most of the music you listen to even older?", some ask, confused. Well, yeah, but the difference is that it's old music that I've never heard before, or at least haven't heard often, such as "Ghost of the Mayor" by the Edison Symphony Orchestra. I grew up with "classic rock" before it was classic, and was as thoroughly immersed in it as anyone else at the time, of course.

Therefore, I can have long detailed conversations about Yes, Styx, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin, Krokus, Cinderella, Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Wings, Rush, Cheap Trick, April Wine, Nazareth, REO Speedwagon, .38 Special, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Billy Joel, Van Halen, Angel, ZZ Top, Head East, Average White Band, Foghat, Blue Oyster Cult, Quiet Riot, America, Earth, Wind & Fire, Chicago, Atlanta Rhythm Section, KC & the Sunshine Band, Allman Brothers, Linda Rondstadt, Black Sabbath, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jimi Hendrix, Bad Company, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Thin Lizzy, Mountain, The Eagles, The Grateful Dead, Steve Miller Band, Kansas, Prince, Carly Simon, Hot Tuna, Eric Clapton, The Doobie Brothers, Rod Stewart, Abba, Grand Funk Railroad, Jefferson Starship, Air Supply, Bee Gees, Aerosmith, Grass Roots, Badfinger, James Taylor, The Guess Who, John Cougar Mellencamp, Poco, Jimmy Buffett, Queen, Boz Scaggs, Aldo Nova, The Carpenters, Foreigner, Traffic, Mahogany Rush, Carole King, Hall & Oates, Olivia Newton-John, Anne Murray, Motley Crue, Joe Walsh, Captain & Tennille, Genesis, Toto, Pink Floyd, Kenny Rogers, Seals & Crofts, Journey, Jethro Tull, Steely Dan, King Crimson, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Bob Seger, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Phil Collins, Madonna, The Police, Heart, Pat Benatar, Robert Palmer, Firefall, Supertramp, Boston, etc. and sound very knowledgeable and even enthusiastic about them - and yet at the same time, I don't really have a desire to hear most of the songs by most of these bands in my life again. Ever. This is a cause of considerable confusion for some.

Do the math: Led Zeppelin IV came out in 1971. By the mid-seventies, its songs had already been overplayed, run into the ground by radio. By decade's end, the horse was pretty well fully flogged to death. And yet throughout the 1980s we were still bombarded by these songs at every turn. And throughout the 1990s, it continued. And then again through the oughts. It's now the teens of the 21st century, folks. I have been subjected to the likes of Led Zeppelin for four decades now. Enough is enough.

I didn't rant about this to Sappy, however; he's heard it all before and doesn't give a damn. He seems happier in life than I am, so who am I to bitch at him for having the same taste in music as he did when he was in elementary school? Right now I just wanted something to eat. I knew some heavy drinking lay ahead of me in the hours to come, and I should probably bulk up now if I plan on getting any nutrition in me. I steered the Caddy into the closest drive-thru and fumbled with making the sharp turn even as I tried to open the envelope that came in the mail.

"Get me some fries", Sappy said. "I'll pay you back."

"You still owe me for that bucket of chicken."

"Uh, dude, I paid you back for that."

"When?"

"You know, awhile back. We were drinking at Nelson's and I gave you twenty. Then you bought us all a round."

"I don't believe you. But even if I did, you shouldn't pay me money you owe me when I'm too drunk to remember it. And we haven't been to Nelson's in 3 months!"

The loudspeaker crackled. "May I take your order please?"

I was caught off guard while opening the envelope. "Hang on. Ah, I'd like a.... Pally Burger... and..."

"And an order of large fries," Sappy chimed in loudly.

"One Pally Burger, One large fry", said the loudspeaker. "Anything to drink today, sir?" I turned and glared at Sappy. He shot me a stained grin again.

And that's when the severed ear fell out of the envelope into my lap.

Edgar Cayce and Hopkinsville

2011-01-30T17:47:00.003-05:00

In my latest installment of Commonwealth Curiosities, I'm layin' down the lowdown on "sleeping prophet" Edgar Cayce, whose birthday is celebrated every February at the Pennyroyal Area Museum in Hopkinsville, KY. Check out the new issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine at your local bookseller, or even better yet - subscribe!

LouisvilleKY.com

2011-01-18T13:26:00.004-05:00

Well, I've tentatively agreed to a new gig writing for louisvilleKY.com, a new blogging collective effort spearheaded by Rick Redding, my former editor at Louisville Mojo. I'm entering the fray cautiously, though, because I'm not sure that the tone of the site is compatible with my philosophy regarding media news reporting, nor my general disdain for online social networking which blogging comes perilously close to if strict comment moderation is not enabled. Not to mention my new year's resolution to avoid unnecessary negativity as I see it.

My first piece for LouisvilleKY.com is primarily a reassemblage of comments I've already made elsewhere about Ken Ham, Answers in Genesis, and the upcoming Ark Encounter theme park in Kentucky. Though I give Ham some deserved nudging, I also decry those who make it a knee-jerk reaction to go on a prolonged internet hate campaign against the man and his beliefs - however peculiar they may be - and I also provide some useful hard data rather than just my own useless opinion, such as how to contact Ham directly and go straight to the horse's mouth, and how to support Ham's efforts via their toll-free donation line if you are so inclined.

Cemetery Preservation Bills

2010-12-17T11:13:00.003-05:00

I'm currently outlining a new writing project, one of a sort I've never done before: legislation.

I'm trying to put together a bill that will mandate cemetery security and maintenance in Kentucky, and one has only to look at the declining state of historic graves in our fair Commonwealth to see why this is necessary. I'm also working on a similar bill aimed at the national level.

Thousands of bills die before they ever get anywhere, and many more die as soon as they get their foot in the door. I have no illusions about the chances of success in this venture, but someone has to try. And as Han Solo said, "never tell me the odds."

Kangaroos in Kentucky?

2010-12-07T12:34:00.005-05:00

Readers of my Unusual Kentucky blog and my Weird Kentucky book already know the lowdown on anomalous Kangaroo sightings in the Commonwealth, but now I've hipped the Kentucky Monthly crowd to the concept in the latest installment of my Commonwealth Curiosities column! Check it out at your local newsstand or bookstore!

The Ghost of Paramount Joe

2010-11-05T19:27:00.004-04:00

Ashland, Kentucky - especially the legendary spirit said to haunt its Paramount Arts Center - is the topic this time in my monthly column Commonwealth Curiosities. Pick up your copy of Kentucky Monthly magazine at reputable newsstands and bookstores everywhere!

Acer is Aces!

2010-11-01T20:07:00.003-04:00

After running into insurmountable technical difficulties with my favorite laptop, I rushed out and grabbed the first and cheapest netbook I could find, which turned out to be the Acer Aspire One D260. It's a mouthful to say and to type, but it's a mere trifle to pack around. I love this planet.

A month into using it, I just wanted to note that I am still every bit as pleased with my purchase as the day I laid down the lucre. There have been no major surprises or snafus, although I have to say: I thought I could stand having no CD/DVD drive on it, but it's really starting to chafe me now. I keep reaching for a disc tray that doesn't exist, and I never realized just how much I depend on one. Would it be stupid to buy an auxillary USB CD drive now to go with it? It would, wouldn't it?

I'm also a bit puzzled that this version of MSPaint has no "invert" function, and that this version of Windows Photo Viewer has no "fix" functions. And I suppose there's no point complaining that the thing came loaded with all kinds of software and games that I don't want, and had to take considerable time to uninstall - that is just the way of things nowadays.

But these are mere trifles, my friends - if you haven't tried the new generation of netbooks because of bad experiences with older ones, or with laptops, give this one a spin. It's fast, it's powerful, it has a battery that lasts long yet charges fast, and if all you really want to do is surf the web and write (like me), you're all set. And in an increasingly wi-fi-saturated world, it's nice to be able to pack this lightweight doohickey around and start writing whenever and wherever the muse mocks me (like Ernesto's Mexican Restaurant!).

The Mystery of Irma Vep

2010-10-08T17:36:00.004-04:00

I'm not a fan of writing theatre reviews. I hesitate to give a negative review of any production just because it didn't speak to me, because I know from my own personal experience how hard it is to mount a serious production and my hat's off to anyone who pulls it off, regardless of the end result. But when Theatre Louisville (who I occasionally write a column, Suspension of Disbelief, for) asked me to report on an Actors Theatre of Louisville production of Charles Ludlam's The Mystery of Irma Vep, well, it made me even more of a hypocrite than I already was. (I worship Charles Ludlam.)

Read all about it by clicking here.

For the Love of Beer Cheese

2010-10-02T20:38:00.002-04:00

Brillat-Savarin once wrote, "A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye." And that's doubly so when it comes to my favorite Kentucky delicacy, Beer Cheese. My regular readers already know what lengths of fanaticism my love for Beer Cheese can reach, and now I'm droppin' that knowledge for the Kentucky Monthly crowd in this month's installment of Commonwealth Curiosities! Scope out the October issue at your favorite bookstore or newsstand.

Local Monster Legends

2010-09-24T21:36:00.003-04:00

I did a piece in the new October issue of Louisville Magazine about some of Louisville's legendary monsters, crypto-critters, and things that go boomp in the night.

This article acts as a sort of a teaser for one of my current book projects in progress - one which ties together several different mythical beasts, including the Pope Lick Monster. Check it out!

Find Me!

2010-08-31T22:13:00.000-04:00

"Well, if she wants to see me, you can tell her that I'm easily found..."

- Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town

The other day I had to send a cease-and-desist letter to someone who put a bootleg video of one of my bands up on YouTube without asking my permission. I know it's hip to pretend that the internet means we now live in some sort of magical bizarro world where copyright no longer exists, but guess what? It does. And I most certainly am not hip.

His excuse for not asking permission was this: "I lost all your contact info."

Now - never mind that losing my contact info doesn't explain why one would go ahead and post the video anyway - how can you be computer-savvy enough to know how to use YouTube and yet not be intelligent enough to know about this here space-age thing called "Google"? I hear tell, if you type stuff into it, it tells you about that stuff. Ain't that somethin'?

A Google search for "Jeffrey Scott Holland" brings up, in the first page of results, at least three different sites on which my contact info is clearly provided. The very first hit in the results is jeffreyscottholland.com, which has my contact info on a link cleverly labeled "Contact".

The Catclaw Theatre Company site even lists my personal cellphone number. If I'm hard to find, I'm hidden in plain sight.

(Of course, I suppose shouldn't be surprised. Hundreds of thousands of people use "answers" sites like Yahoo Answers and WikiAnswers, even though the answers to almost all questions asked there could have been obtained in seconds by simply typing them into a search engine instead.)

For the record, I receive mail at all of my branch offices listed on the web - Los Angeles, Washington DC, NYC, etc. - and I can always be reached anytime by anyone anywhere on the planet, via e-mail at jshpaint@gmail.com. I am always happy to hear from my readers!

Mystery Bottle

2010-08-30T15:11:00.000-04:00

Readers of my column Commonwealth Curiosities in the September issue of Kentucky Monthly will get an early report about a very special and very mysterious bottle in my possession; one that I plan to open at a special event soon. More details to be announced.

Check it out!

"Son of Grimaldi" Bits and Pieces

2010-08-21T11:37:00.000-04:00

I rarely write a linear story in drafts, preferring to arrange it piecemeal as potential fragments I assemble slowly begin to come together and form the story. Two of my heroes, William S. Burroughs and F. Scott Fitzgerald, worked in this manner. (Some of Fitzgerald's collected random pieces, unused ideas, and notes were published verbatim in the book The Crack-Up, and I actually think it's his best work.)

What follows are just a couple of random fragments from the play "Son of Grimaldi", a work in progress. The story concerns the aging clown Joey Grimaldi desperately trying to mold his son into following in his footsteps.

*****

JOEY
(exasperated)

No, no, NO!!! You don't start pulling the sausages out of the baby carriage until after you've juggled the grapefruits and sung the "Skippity Sunshine" song!! What kind of imbecile are you?

JOEY, JR.
Butterscotch.

(a beat)

JOEY
What??

JOEY, JR.
You asked me what kind of imbecile I am and I said "butterscotch". (widens eyes, waves hand along as if to say, "And...? Get it?")

(silence. JOEY stares, confused.)

JOEY JR.
(losing his temper)
I'm being sarcastic. It's a JOKE!!!

(JOEY's eyes narrow, he trembles with rage, then slaps JOEY JR. hard across the face)

JOEY
Clown rehearsal is serious business!!! This is NO PLACE FOR JOKES!!!

*****

JOEY, JR.
(reciting)
"And O mother dearest, though a silly and persnickety short-pantalooned lad I be, let no man judge my follies without that especial soupçon of salt. Let the forest come alive with the sounds of a thousand flatulent owls, perched among the...."

(JOEY JR. has pronounced "soupçon" as "soop-kon". JOEY, who has begun to doze off, snaps out of it, rouses himself and consults the script)

JOEY
WAIT a minute! WAIT a minute! Did you just say "soop-kon"?

JOEY, JR.
That's what it says in the script, papa. "let no man judge my follies without that especial soupçon of salt...." (mispronounces it again)

JOEY
It's pronounced "soupçon". (correctly pronounces it "soop-sun".) Soupçon. Say it with me. Soupçon.

JOEY, JR.
What kind of word is that? It's no kind of word.

JOEY
It's French.

JOEY, JR.
Ugghhhh, I hate the French. (to audience) Why do they have to use a different word for everything? I like my way better: soupcon! (continues mispronouncing it)

(JOEY JR. begins grinning idiotically, making sweeping gesture with his hands, delivery almost like Jason Alexander on "Seinfeld")

Yessir, I just like the sound of it. SOUPCON! ha ha ha! SOUPCON!!!

(JOEY momentarily puts head in hands, then reaches for decanter of wine)

JOEY
Let's take a ten minute break.

*****

Commonwealth Curiosities

2010-08-14T18:53:00.000-04:00

My new column, Commonwealth Curiosities, debuts in the current August issue of Kentucky Monthly magazine! More of my musings on what's weird, wild, wondrous and worthy in our fair state; you know the drill.

In this issue, the "back to school" special, I examine points of interest to be found on college campuses and universities around Kentucky.

Look for Kentucky Monthly magazine at your local bookstore or newsstand, and if they don't have it, ask!

The USB Typewriter

2010-07-22T06:54:00.000-04:00

It's almost like this gizmo was created with me in mind: an antique typewriter transformed into a fully functioning keyboard, compatible with PC, Mac, and iPad. The $700 price tag gives me pause, but I have to admit it is a thing of beauty and I do deserve nice things, don't I?

Jack Zylkin, the brain behind this bionic typewriter, says on his website:

The USBTypewriter™ is a new and groundbreaking innovation in the field of obsolescence. Lovers of the look, feel, and quality of old fashioned manual typewriters can now use them as keyboards for any USB-capable computer, such as a PC, Mac, or even iPad! The modification is easy to install, it involves no messy wiring, and does not change the outward appearance of the typewriter (except for the usb adapter itself, which is mounted in the rear of the machine). So the end result is a retro-style USB keyboard that not only looks great, but feels great to use.

I have to wonder, though - does it really have the feel of old-school typing? Using a typewriter is a lot like a piano - you can touch the keys softly or you can pound them, reveling in the staccato slamming of the typebars against the paper, sometimes so hard that the interior of the letter "o" gets cut out and your finished product is perforated with little holes. There's a real Zen to the highs and lows of key-slamming intensity of manual typewriter usage, and those of us raised on them know it does make a difference in one's writing. Much was gained in the move to word processors and laptops, to be sure - but something was also distinctly lost.

I have a feeling that, lovely a device though the USB Typewriter is, it cannot withstand the abuse that an old Remington jockey such as myself would surely inflict upon it. If a typewriter is indeed like a piano, then I am its Cecil Taylor.

I suppose I'm just going to hold out till someone invents a true Clark-Nova, William S. Burroughs' sentient typewriter that dispenses two different types of intoxicating fluids when it likes what you've written.

714

2010-07-14T22:08:00.000-04:00

July 14th (7-14) has inadvertently become something of an official "714 Day", as people never fail to point out the date to me. In the late 1980s I wrote a novel called 714, which I then revised and expanded upon in the early 1990s. It was not a very good novel, but it did provide, in a Bukowski/Kerouac sort of semi-autobiographic manner, a look at what I was up to in the "grand productive days" of the early 1980s followed by my prolonged period of hoboing around the country.

Will it ever be republished? Oh, probably. All in time. But for now, to commemorate 714 Day, here's a brief excerpt:

"Dipsy Donut", the sign said. Well, employment is employment.

I'd hoped for a real old-school manly kind of bakery, you know, dusty with the powdered sugar of ten thousand mornings, and some Popeye-armed fellow pounding enormous globs of dough into shape while his wife delicately troweled still-hot iced cookies onto long sheets of wax paper. But it wasn't to be. The place was clean as a whistle and decorated in a nauseating soccer-mom-pet-project kind of way.

I smiled at the church-lady looking woman at the cash register. "Might you be hiring?"

She gave just a momentary pause and a dead stare to let me know that I was wasting my time, then sighed and handed me an application. She tapped a cup full of pens with her skeletal finger, but in that same instant I'd already pulled my own pen out of my pocket. That seemed to annoy her greatly and she walked away.

I hate filling out applications. This one asked for my five most recent previous employers. Do I list my own self-employment? Do I list odd jobs, part time help, and jobs where I was paid in cash? They wanted to know the addresses and phone numbers of these places. Hell, I don't remember. Why would I memorize the phone numbers and addresses of anyplace I used to work? I don't even remember the names of the employers.

They wanted references. I listed some good friends but I don't even know the street addresses of some of them and had to leave the address field blank. Will they think that's weird? Probably. They wanted to know how long I'd known each reference. I don't know. Do normal people carry around all this information in their head and have it ready at a moment's notice? Is there something wrong with me? Should I just make up something? I could spend hours trying to figure all this crap out. If I fill out the application too quick, will they think I just made it up anyway? Are they really going to contact these references and employers? It's just a fucking donut shop. Someone says, "give me two crullers" and I say "here's your change", end of transaction. Why should I even have to fill out an application for such a job?

There was an annoying high pitched grating sound in the store that seemed to grow louder in the silence. It was the way the whine of the fluorescent lights merged with the hum of the milk fridge. I saw speakers mounted in the corners of the room, so why wasn't there any music playing? My body began to feel heavy, and my head began to feel light. And I'd been here scarcely fifteen minutes. I can't work here. I folded up the paper and stuffed it in my back pocket.

Polly was looking bored and impatient when I came out. "Any luck?"

"Well," I said, "I filled out an application. We'll see."

Writing About Writing

2010-05-05T00:33:00.000-04:00

Of my numerous blogs, I've decided to set this one aside to strictly focus on my writing career. It remains to be seen whether "writing about writing" turns out to be an exercise in redundancy, but let's give a shot, shall we? I promise to keep the B.S. to a bare minimum here.