Kill Your Darlings

Clichés get a bad rap.  Especially in writing, though not without due cause.  You can only deal with so much wind howling on dark and stormy nights (he said, through clenched teeth).  When it comes to the human element, stereotypes face an additional obstacle to overcome, since we tend to compartmentalize for conveniency's sake.  It's not that everyone who lives in a trailer park is necessarily banging his sister; in fact, I've had several friends who have lived in trailer parks, some of which were quite upscale and better than many of the houses I have lived in, and as far as I know not a one was involved in carnal relations with a sibling (then again, it's not like I asked, either).  These "types" are just how we classify: the Asian student who is good at math; the buxom blonde who can't add.  In writing these are kisses of death, because more often than not they highlight a certain laziness on the part of the author.  Your first instinct is usually wrong, because writers, like most people, are inherently lazy.  You have to chew past the outside tough and bland layers to get to the really tasty, flavorful stuff.  Kinda like a dragonfruit.  I guess that applies to most fruits.  Except, you know, the ones with thin skins.

I am not averse to hard work.  OK.  That is a lie.  I am an extremely lazy mutherfucker in many regards.  I'd rob a bank before I'd spend another day digging ditches for the Man (and, no, that is not a cliché; I actually had a job digging ditches.  It was in Minnesota, working for Labor Ready, which is day labor, back when I was a hobo hitching it town to town.  Literally, I'd dig a seven-foot ditch, drop in cable, fill; repeat.  I also, technically, robbed a bank.  I mean, if you steal money from a bank, even if you are doing it with bad checks (or rather, lots and lots of bad checks), you still robbed it, no?).  Back when I was an ice cream man with my buddy, Rich, when we were kids, I remember the boss once saying to the new guy, "You work like Rich; you no work like Joe."  I guessing eating your salary and weight in Strawberry Shortcake bars makes one a bad worker.  But when it comes to my art, I work as hard as anyone.  In the words of Phil Marlowe, Get it through your lovely head.  I work at it, lady, I don't play at it.

"Kill your darlings" is a writing expression that refers to rewriting.  When you finish a draft, your inner editor must cast a cold, critical eye on the working product, slashing and cutting those selections and pretty phrases you love most, as a means to establish the requisite disconnect, employing the impersonal judgment that is necessary to get the job done right.  It's an essential component, since this writing shit is not done in a vacuum; there is audience to consider.  We're not writing a chapbook here about pumpkin cookie recipes.  We want truth.  We want heart and soul.  We want mass appeal and multi-book deals.  We want it all.

Goddamn, I love a good cliché.  Always have.  A well-timed cliché can resonate. Because sometimes a situation itself is so powerful, the best thing we can do is get out of our own way, and trying to add flair on top of that is overkill.  This happens a lot in rock 'n' roll, where frequently bad lyrics ruin a good song.  A cliché is a defense around this.  It is possible to write an entire song composed of nothing but.

I'm not saying a writer should litter his or her works with tired, oft-heard phrases. Obviously, you want your writing to be as fresh and original as possible.  Still, what makes it tougher for me is the fact that I am, myself, a cliché.

Let's take a look at the work that has influenced me most.

Favorite Book 

Catcher in the Rye.  If you've read this blog for more than a day, you know this is my favorite book.  I read it for the first time in front of Syd Barrett's house at 19, and I've read it every year since.  I named my son Holden.  The book has turned into a cliché for every troubled young man and would-be psychopath.  I carried this book in my right hand across America, riding in Greyhounds, with bags full of my laundry http://tinyurl.com/79qwqx4, as I searched the subways and alleyways and empty local bars looking for...the ghost of Dean Moriarty.

Favorite Author

No, it's not Salinger.  It's Jack Kerouac.  If we have another boy, I will not be naming him Jack, though, since Jack (or Jackson) is, like, the 2nd most popular name in this country, and we all know popular equates to stupid (i.e., fat tarts in New Jersey); I will be naming him Billy Pilgrim (pretty fucking cool, eh?).  And there are lots of other books that have helped define me and that I think are brilliant. If I made a Top Ten List, and I just might, I don't think a single Kerouac book would make the list (Subterraneans might sneak in).  The fact is, Kerouac is an author you have to read in your 20s, and then never again.  Not sure why that is.  I mean, you can go back and re-read On the Road, just like you can go back and re-watch The Breakfast Club, and they still might be good, but they'll never move you like they did when you were young.

Favorite Musician

Bruce Fucking Springsteen.  Which I believe gives me the trifecta of the All-American cliché.  I sat on the hood of a Dodge and drank beer by the lake (Swede's Pond), and fell in love with a girl (KatieAmySherriDarling), whose house, yes, I drove by the other day, as the sweet summer light began to fade.  How many broken heroes can you cram into one 8-minute long song?  About as many times as you can sing "Backstreets" (approx. 30).  The man is Americana.  Blue jeans, T-shirts, and broken hearts.

No, that's not the Boss.  That's Gaslight Anthem.  Meet the new Boss.  Same as the old Boss.

I wear blue jeans and white T-shirts.  I have a reformed criminal, addict past (and I write about it!).  I have my ex-wives names tattooed on my body, which as I sit now is naked from the waist up (yes, biceps bulging), with my new chain I got from my latest wife for Christmas, and when I look in the mirror, it reminds me of when I went back to live with my mother after my last stint in rehab, when I'd said goodbye to my 20s.

"I'm glad to have you back, Joey," my mom said.

"Don't call me 'Joey.'  Makes me feel like a big fat 30-year-old Italian guy who still lives with his mother."

My mother paused.  "Well, you have put on a little weight."

I like motorcycles.  Can't ride them anymore since "the accident."  I like curvy blondes (can still ride them, but we have to be careful because of the hardware the doc put in).  And I like a good fight.

Favorite Movie

Rocky.  Like my friend Jimmy says, that theme song could wake a corpse.  There is only 7 minutes worth of actual fighting in that entire film.  It's not really a movie about boxing.  But it is all about the fight.  On the surface, it's a film about a punch-drunk thuggo, in love with a dopey girl at a turtle shop, who gets one last chance to prove he's not a bum.  But the key is when Rocky realizes right before he steps in the ring with Apollo Creed (what a great fucking character name) that he cannot win.  Nothing he does in that ring will produce a victory; he is outmatched.  In terms of punching power, speed, skill. But by losing he can still win if he can only will himself to stay on his feet until the final bell.  Take the beating, keep moving forward.  An American aesthetic.  More like a religion.

This is who I am, this is what I do, and it has been shaped by the very art you'd expect from a man still angry at his father.  You don't get rich playing another man's game.  (I should've been around in the '50s.  Like Fonzie.)  You find what you do, and you try and do it well.  And you take inspiration wherever you can find it.  No one said it was going to be easy.

Occupation Street

"You know how we are always talking about being amazed by the fact that people aren't running down the street, screaming," Petersen says.

"Yeah."

"Well, they're doing it now.  Over 100 fucking countries," he says.

"I know."

He waits.  "That's a good thing, right?" Petersen asks.

I don't know.

"Maybe.  Maybe not," he says, answering his own question.  "But it's a start."

*

Believe it or not, I am tackling this whole Occupy Wall Street phenomena.  And since I am committed to not making this a political blog (and I think I succeed more often than I fail, given my obvious political leanings), I feel confident I can do so without going all politico.  Because, honestly, the parts of it that interest me really have little to do with partisan ideology.

I received a FB comment from my friend Bill in CT, in response to the Death Penalty post on Friday (http://tinyurl.com/4xl92vc ).  Bill, like many of my friends from CT, leans hard to the right.  His comment was, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Thanks for offering a thought-provoking post without proselytizing."  I took a lot of pride in that.  It's not easy discussing these kinds of topics, especially when it's a such a one-way forum, without injecting personal viewpoints ad nauseum.

Which is the reason I didn't want to touch this Occupy shit.  First and foremost, I don't even really understand what's going on or what exactly everyone is protesting. And apparently I'm not alone.  If the popular, mainstream media is to believed (and if you can't believe your popular, mainstream media [e.g., Yahoo News], who can you trust?).

I just know there are a lot of people pissed off.  Which always catches my attention. It's being billed as the 99% against the 1%, a consolidated organized effort to end...corporate power, the Rockys of the world against the nameless, faceless powers-that-be.  Seems like a pretty good cause, no?  What the protestors seem to be saying, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that having a 450 to 1 wage differential between CEOs and the average worker is unfair.  This, of course, broaches dangerously close to the whole "no big government" vs. "'no big government' is a euphemism for 'less regulations on big business'" argument.  I'll leave you to discuss that quietly amongst yourself.  I think one of the reasons I've been somewhat successful at not delving too deep into politics is that, really, in the end, I don't give a shit.  I look at it like this: Was my life any different under the last two presidents?  Right, left, how has my day-to-day life been affected?  It hasn't. Not in the fucking least.  But here's what does pique my...curiosity.  Dissatisfaction. Anger. People taking to the streets because they are fed up and not gonna take it anymore.  Call it the boxer in me, but I've always liked a good fight.

In my exchanges with Bill one thing comes across: we are each, on opposite sides of the political spectrum, pissed off about the way things are being run.  Now if Bill and I were to sit at a table and try to remedy how to fix the "problems," we'd probably differ radically in our proposed solutions.  But first you have to get to that table, ya dig?  I'm more a "let's storm the bastille and then we'll figure it out" kinda guy.  Or maybe I just like the thought of stirring up trouble.  Or do I any more?

You might remember this post from a little while back with my friend Duane "Lives In But Is Not From Texas" S. (http://tinyurl.com/43naal8).  We were talking about a proposed rehab going into his neighborhood.  He wanted my opinion.  And I admitted to being conflicted.  I think one way as an ex-junkie, but quite differently as a father with personal equity.  Which reminds me of a conversation I once had with a counselor in rehab.  I was bitching about the evils of capitalism (a favorite junkie rant), and he rolled he eyes, saying something to the effect of "Yeah, well, you won't hear too many private property owners bitching about the evils of capitalism." At the time, I was, like, "Fuck you, man."  But he was right.  All those social causes I cared so much about when I was piss poor and didn't have anything? Um.  What were they again?  Now that I have some money, own my own house, it changes. Does that make me a goddamn phony?  Maybe.  But whereas I used to be in favor of things like busing ("Why should the people in the hills get all the good schools?"), now that I have a kid of my own (and live in the hills), I don't want the city telling me my son has to go to an inferior school.  I want the best education for my boy.  So we bought a house in a region that will ensure that.  In short, Joe Version 1994 would want to kick Joe Version 2011's ass.  But if he tried, Joe 2011 could afford a goddamn good lawyer to sue the shit out of Joe 1994.

Because, like my buddy in England, Dave2, says, it all comes down to In Whose Interest... (http://tinyurl.com/3sjjnns).

I used to have a writing professor, Tom Hazuka, who told this great story about being in an acting class. One of his classmates was trying to play the part of a villain, and he was doing the whole twirling of the mustache and ol' stink eye, and the director stepped in and said, "No, no, no!  Even the villain doesn't think he's the villain..."  Who is the bad guy?  This invisible banker-type on Wall Street?  He's just a man with a family of his own (i.e., his own interests), and I promise you, in his mind, he believes he is doing the right thing.

It's easy to direct one's ire at at pie chart.

 or whatever the fuck one of these charts are called.

But pie charts aren't actually calling the shots, and as much as we can personify evil with the face of an old, wrinkled white man, who is cackling as he burns orphans, that is far too convenient.  Because even the villain doesn't think he's the villain...

My friend and fellow blogger Jenny Dreadful makes an interesting point over at her blog Popsicle Stand (scroll down, past the part about laughable fantasy covers) (http://tinyurl.com/4xkazvs), about feeling conflicted when it comes to what's going on over at Wall Street.  

She writes, "My income is in the lowest 10th percentile. I don't have health insurance. I do hold a full time and a part time job.  Have I "occupied"???  Fuck no. I can't take the time off of work. The day before payday all I had for dinner was a can of chickpeas. I sure as hell am not occupying nothing but a goddamn grocery store when I get paid. And that, my friends, is the sad truth about America. I support and cherish those struggling, those counting pennies and tightening belts to make it to the protests, those people for whom it is not easy to protest -- but I'd like to kick the middle-class brats who are mad because mommy and daddy won't pay for college, or because they have to stop shopping at Hollister and work a shit job."

Sadly, or maybe not so, I am no longer struggling like that.  And I feel a strange tinge of guilt.  Because there was a time not so long ago where I was.  The question is, do I owe more to those I suffered with in the past, or to my son and my family and the future?  I don't know what the right answer is, but I sure as fuck know what I am doing.  And my boy trumps all.

Still...

I am watching what is going on, if from a safe, comfortable distance.  And call me Robert Smith, but I find it...fascinating.

Jumping the Shark with Bad Trilogies

So I owe you all an apology for scraping the barrel last week.  After I wrote that first Burning Man entry (http://tinyurl.com/3bnunoy) and it proved such a hit, far and away the most successful post I've had (in no small thanks due to Dr. Sean's tireless promotion), garnering over a 1,000 hits on that one post alone, I went back to the well, wondering how I could manage to top such a critical boon, mined some genius, and came up with Burning Man Pt. II (http://tinyurl.com/3bekcl2), which while not quite on par with the original, in terms of readership, may be the superior post, at least in terms of its writing.  Sure, it has the turtle kid and the porta-potty flowchart, which is almost like cheating, they're so good, but Pt. II manages to improve upon the original, taking the story and characters in a new, exciting direction, and since it was a one-note joke to begin with (dirty, stinking hippies), I promise you, it was work.  Either way, whether you are a fan of the original or the sequel, let's just agree to agree: both are awesome. Problem is, I set the bar so fucking high, I was like Nigel, already on 11: couldn't go any higher.

But I'd set out to write a goddamn trilogy, so I had to write a part 3, and the conclusion was a huge letdown.  I knew it when I was writing it.  I didn't even write much of the damn thing myself, resorting to the ol' gimmicky "reader's letters" (which were actually the best written part of the post).  There are only so many variations on the words "dirty," "stinking" and "hippy," y'know?  I should have just stopped after 1 & 2, but I had a successful franchise left to milk, so like Joe McCarthy or Chubby Checker's seventeen follow-ups to "The Twist," one-note bands whose appetites for the big time had been whetted, desperate to have a hit again, I abused my own world (More on Revenge of the Jedi and Lucas's further tinkering later).

Pt. III was a critical and commercial flop (though we did quite well overseas in Micronesia).  It was pointed out by many, including Esther Martinez, that I had...jumped the shark.  Which is itself a tired phrase.  Except...

When was the last time you watched that Happy Days' episode?  Until Esther and Co. brought it up, I of course knew of the expression like everyone else.  You stick around too long, take a good idea and milk it to shit, etc.  But I really had erased the clip from my memory.  And with good cause.  It's fucking terrible.  Here it is, just so we are all on the same page:

I was a big Happy Days's fan growing up.  One of my more vivid recollections is talking to Ron Lamontagne after Religion Class about Ron Howard's guest spot return, having left the show years earlier (Ron and I were both very excited.  We lived in a small, shit farm town and, obviously, there wasn't much to be all that excited about). Seeing as how the infamous "Jump the Shark" episode signaled such a low point, I figured it had to have happened, like, in the last season, long after Richie was gone and Cousin Roger had moved in (I always wondered why they didn't just bring Chuck back), just as they were gearing up for the debacle that is Joanie Loves Chachi.  But as you can see in the above clip, Richie was still very much a part of the show, so this fucking thing went on for years after jumping the shark.  Actually, this episode (according to Wikipedia, 'cause I ain't doing any more research than that.  Which reminds me of a conversation I had recently with local writer Sean Craven [http://seancraven.blogspot.com/] outside a Peet's about writing historical non-fiction.  "I'd love to write historical non-fiction," Sean said.  "I just need an assistant.  'Cause there ain't no way I'm doing all that fucking research") was the season premier.  Of Season Five.  In 1977.  The show ran until 1984.  I guess when you look at it like that, my artistic transgression with Pt. III wasn't that bad.

Anyway, it got me thinking of the worst Part IIIs of all time.  Again, without doing research, here's what comes to mind.


Matrix Revolutions 


Part II of the Matrix trilogy is god-awful.  Part III is so bad, that it makes you think back to Part II and go, "Maybe Part II wasn't so bad after all."  I read somewhere that the only lasting cultural contribution of the two Matrix followups is that it officially got George Lucas off the hook for missing the easiest sure-fire, slam dunk in cinematic history (the Star Wars' prequels).  Matrix II is fucking dreadful, painfully awkward and clumsy, poorly paced (except for the freeway chase), and the Zen-tinged dialogue that was forgivable in the the original because the rest of it is so compelling is not so forgivable this time around.  The Waskowskis get lazy with the same "twist" at the end, this time with Trinity instead of Neo on the receiving end of the kiss-bringing-back-to-life Deus ex Machina moment, which serves to cheapen both sequel and original. Yet for as bad as Part II is--and, yes, Part II sucks, something awful--Part III manages to somehow lower the bar and suck worse.  I sure as shit am not going back to watch this movie to give a more detailed lists of the reasons why. Like Inception (http://tinyurl.com/3fovefr), I've already wasted all the time I will on it.  Best I can recall, they aren't even in the goddamn matrix for most of the movie, but underground and riding mechanical elephants or something, and Jada Pinkett talks way too much, and Keanu has his eyes burned out or something by one of the Lord of the Rings elves, and, really, who gives a shit? This clip pretty much sums the whole mess up.

Rocky III


This kills me to include.  For years, it was my favorite movie.  Of course, I was 12. When you watch this homoerotically tinged sequel, only two degrees removed from what I consider one of the finest American films ever made, as an adult, its flaws are glaring and painfully embarrassing to watch.

This is the exact point in the Rocky franchise where Stallone embraces (pun intended) the cartoonish over the gritty and real.  Cartoonish can work in Sin City. Rocky?  Not so much.  (It would be almost 20 more years before Sly achieves redemption with the underrated, solid Rocky Balboa, giving a fitting farewell to a beloved American icon.)


Spider-Man III


You ever want to know how fucking important writing is, look no further than this celluloid fuckbomb (which might rival that Wakowski indictment of sure-thing, fuck ups).  Part I was written by Stan Lee.  Part II, Michael Fucking Chabon.  Part III? Sam Rami and his brother, Ivan, the very definition of "precipitous drop-off," rendering one of the best superhero universes in dire need of a reboot in just over two hours.  The best criticism of this movie--I wish I could remember where I read it--went something like, "In the jazz scene in Part III, Tobey Maquire (as evil Peter Parker) looks like a 3rd-place contestant in a Hitler look alike contest."  Ouch.

Let me know which ones I missed.  Y'know, in case I ever need to fill space with some reader letters...