The King of Pap died? I must have yawned and missed it.
June 27, 2009
You’re kidding me, right?
Grown men crying at the death of Michael Jackson?
Grown white men?
Grown straight men?
Again: You’re kidding me, right?
People, the guy hasn’t even used his own face for the past, what?, 35 years and his passing is plastered across the global media? Here in New Zealand, not one, but three commemoration services are planned. What can I say? It’s winter. Our brains have frozen.
I can hear my future grandchild now:
“Gramps, what did this Michael Jackson fellow do to become so popular and famous? Cure cancer?”
“Uh, no?”
“Bring peace to the Middle East?”
“Uh-uh.”
“End the recession and find you a job?”
“Actually . . .”
“So what was with all this wailing and weeping and general silliness when he died? Was he the second coming of Christ?”
“Well, Bitemymoko the Third, he might have liked to think of himself in those terms. In reality, he sang. And danced.”
“And?”
“And that’s it.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“My sentiments exactly.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
“People really are stupid, aren’t they, Gramps?”
“You have no idea.”
I had no use for Michael Jackson. King of Pop? More like the Joker.
He was Freakshow Incarnate and I’ve always liked my music gods to be a little more, oh I don’t know, normal. And by normal, I mean diddling teenage groupies not little boys.
Truth be told, I can’t think of a single song of his that I didn’t detest.
See these teeth? Cut on rock’n'roll. Sixties rock’n'roll. Singers who make high-pitched noises like their shorts just shifted and squeezed a testicle are not now, nor will ever be, on my iPod. I have standards. They’re low standards, mind you, but I have them nonetheless.
If you told me Bruce Springsteen or Tom Petty or John Fogarty died, I would shed a tear. Michael Jackson? Meh.
Oh, sure the guy had talent. I can admire someone for their skills without leaking bodily fluids at the sound of their name. His dance moves were exceptional (I once tried to moonwalk and fell on my asteroid) even if his voice scared horses.
A music god? A legend? An entertainment icon? Am I the only person in the entire world who didn’t drink the Kool-Aid? Or mainline the Demerol?
I remember where I was when man first walked on the moon. When JFK was assassinated. When Team Canada won the Summit Series. When I first heard that Elvis and, later, John Lennon had died.
Where was I when Michael Jackson died? That was only two days ago and I’ve forgotten already.
CIRCLE JERK: Group masturbation during which participants, usually males, sit or stand in a circle, pleasuring themselves or each other.
I’ve heard of circle jerks but, good Catholic boy that I am, I’ve never actually participated in one.
Until now.
Before you crinkle your face up like a cat’s arse while going “Ewwwwww,” let me explain that I am, of course, speaking metaphorically. Painting a word picture, as it were. That’s what I do, as opposed to say, having a real job and a savings account.
I recently signed up to a website, run by a major publishing company, where writers can parade their wares and have it commented on by their peers.
I’m not going to name the site or the publishing house because, while most of the writing is crap, every so often, a rep from the publisher rolls up his metaphorical sleeve, dips his hand into the toilet and pulls out a turd. Said offering is, supposedly, poked and prodded by an editor and, if properly digested and compacted, the creator may (I said “may”) be offered a publishing contract.
It’s a big enough carrot to cause thousands of writers to extrude millions of words, all in the hopes of being the one offered the Golden Teat. Ever seen a sow lying on her side while her brood snuffles and snorts and tramples each other in their hungry haste to grab a nipple and start suckling?
Welcome to my life.
It’s a big enough carrot that, should anyone from the publishing house be trolling blogsites, stumble across this one and form the impression that I am somehow criticizing their endeavor, my book might just be flushed in an act of vengeance.
I’d really like to avoid that trip down the gurgler, if it’s all the same to you.
Writing a book is easy. Publishing a book is easy — countless numbers of POD/vanity publishers will gladly take your money and replace it with several cardboard boxes filled with tomes bearing your name.
Selling a book is a bitch.
I once met a lady from Aldergrove who was pitching her book at the Chapters store in Langley. She’d been published by one of the Big Boys — St. Martin’s Press, if memory serves — and then shown the door and instructed to start flogging her own product if she wanted to earn any royalties.
I showed up at her reading with the intention of asking how she’d connected with one of the Big Boys, only to share in her embarrassment when the audience consisted solely of me. Because we’re all family in the writing world, I was polite and said yes when she asked if she could read from her book.
It was an historical romance of some kind, the sort that conjures but one thought: “How the **** did that get published?”
My point is, despite a contract with a major publishing house, she was left to market her own work, no different from the effort I am now putting in with my own novel, Brown Girls.
I have blogged the hell out of the fact my book is now available — in assorted ebook formats — on the Smashwords website (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937) and, for all that work, have, to date, sold the grand total of zero copies. In any format.
And so I posted the first 19,000 or so words of Brown Girls on the above-mentioned site and have been working my tail off ever since to raise its profile. There is some kind of logarithm used to power your book up the rankings (yes, there is a posted explanation of how this process works. No, I did not read it. Yes, I am a man. What’s your point?)
To elbow your way to the Golden Teat, you need to be placed on other members’ Watchlists or, ideally, their Bookshelves. You do that by offering book swaps, a sort of “I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours” idea where you read the posted samples and say really nice things about them. The unspoken agreement, of course, is that, in turn, they will say really nice things about you. And then the two of you will both move one ranking closer to the sow’s belly.
Are you understanding the circle jerk metaphor now? (I know, it took me 700 words to get to the point. Bite me.)
To date, I have received some very favorable comments. But then again, so have others, whose writing I consider to be — how can I put this delicately? — junk.
It’s a game. I know it. And I’m playing it. As hard as I can.
I’m writing polite, generalized critiques instead of the sequel to Brown Girls. It’s a terrible price to pay. But I promise, just as soon as I sign my three-book, multi-million dollar deal, I will get serious about my fiction again.
It’s going to happen — I’m sure of it.
Any. Day. Now.
There is a very good reason why I dread attending live theatre productions — somehow I always end up on the stage.
It’s my own fault, really, because, with a bladder the size of a grape, I prefer to sit on the aisle , in case nature should come calling. Unfortunately, that happens to be the prime position should a play involve audience participation. Because, let’s face it, when the actors wade into the aisles in search of hapless victims to embarrass, they are not going to choose the guy sitting against the wall who has to climb over eight people just to get out.
It happened during a performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) when I was assigned the temporary title of Ophelia’s Id, a role which required me to sprint back and forth across the stage whenever a certain line was uttered.
And, yes, I did feel — and look — like an Id-iot.
I made another unplanned cameo during a Christmas pantomine put on by the White Rock Players Club. This time I was plucked out of my seat by a woman who led me onstage and then whispered in my ear: “Dip me.”
“Excuse me?”
“Dip me.”
“Into what?”
By the time I figured out she wanted me to lean her backwards as if we were dancing, the entire show had ground to a halt, the other actors frozen in place as they waited for us to finish before they could carry on.
Needless to say, I was quickly escorted back to my seat and I wasn’t entirely surprised when no one asked me for an autograph afterwards. Audiences can be so fickle.
And so it was with a healthy dose of trepidation that I accompanied Viking Woman to a weekend performance of Miss Saigon at the Napier Municipal Theatre. Although I knew enough about the play — brilliant logo, Vietnam, fall of Saigon, helicopter on stage — to be confidant audience members would be left in peace to simply watch and applaud.
The performance on this night was commendable — the acting adequate, the sets innovative and the singing actually quite excellent.
So why did I find myself zoning out to the point where, at times, I wasn’t even paying attention?
The problem with Miss Saigon is the songs. I couldn’t have named a single one before I walked into the theatre. Three hours later and nothing had changed. None of the tunes set my toes to tapping or had me humming on the drive home.
I’m not sure how a musical with such forgettable music manages to become a success but I’m guessing international audiences were willing to cut the creators some slack after their Les Miserables was such a huge hit. No one is more deaf than the sycophant.
The storyline for Miss Saigon is not exactly groundbreaking either. Wikipedia tells me it’s based on Madame Butterfly, but there were definitely elements borrowed directly from Romeo and Juliet, with the Vietcong as the Capulets and all those pleasure-seeking GI Joes as the Montagues. Cue the misunderstandings and missed assignations.
Cue the first of my several yawns.
There’s a reason why the logistical magic of lowering a helicopter onto a stage, without lopping off several adjacent heads, doesn’t occur until well into the second half. The thundering whup-whup of the whirling rotors serves to re-focus those of us whose minds have drifted off to contemplate more involving stories of the Vietnam War, starting with Apocalypse Now and Platoon.
Why a helicopter, you ask. I’m guessing it’s because dropping napalm in a crowded theatre almost always turns out messy.
But, now that I think about it, the resultant screams would have served to drown out all those cheesy songs. Bring on the Valkyries!
I’ve spent the past week in a broom closet that passes for an office, filing resident information at the seniors’ residence where Viking Woman works.
The one saving grace of my cramped quarters was its window. It allowed me to take a quick mental break whenever my eyes grew weary and the forms all started to look the same.
The window looked out onto the playing field of the adjacent Catholic school. Fortunately for my time management, it’s an all-boys school. Had the gender been reversed, I may never have accomplished a thing and then volunteered to put in unpaid overtime hours to do more of the same.
Despite the sorrowful lack of estrogen, I still managed to squander a few minutes each afternoon when the PE classes wandered out to the field, if only because the activity took me back to my own high school days.
Granted, we never chased around a pink spongy rugby ball. Nor would my classmates and I have ventured out on a cold, blustery, late-fall day in our bare feet. I’m not sure if this was yet another indication of the famous Kiwi hardiness, or a subliminal way to introduce the lads to the vow of poverty.
But there were some similarities to my glory days at Langley Secondary. For instance, while the students were stripped down to T-shirts and shorts, their teacher braved the elements in long pants, winter coat and baseball cap.
And, unless the ball was within spitting distance, most of the kids either stood idly by or wandered around listlessly. They were either playing zone defence to perfection or bored silly.
I know which one would describe me. Despite playing hundreds of games of ice hockey as a twentysomething (including backstopping at least two teams to league championship trophies), I wasn’t much of an athlete in school. Unless the class was playing ball hockey, I had no real interest in participating.
In fact, I’m pretty sure I set an unofficial school record one day when the teacher decided to time how long each of us could dangle by our hands from a metal bar. The sequence went something like this:
Teacher: “Ready.”
“Set.”
* I dropped from the bar. *
“Go!”
Can you actually record a minus time in an event?
It wasn’t so much that I was lazy or unmotivated. I was once, much to my embarrassment, ordered to the locker room for bodychecking during a game of ball hockey, so I did make an effort when the game moved me.
Mostly, it was self-preservation that caused me to linger on the fringes, where I could stay out of harm’s way while giggling at the perspiration stains ringing the underarms of the jocks.
As evidence, I present a highlight reel of my sporting endeavours:
Boxing: The first and only punch thrown by my opponent hit me square in the eye. I immediately staggered off the mat and dropped my gloves. My vision was blurred for the rest of the day.
Basketball: While attempting a layup, I somehow became entangled in my own feet and crashed down heavily. With one hand attempting to control the ball, and the other hand flapping uselessly, I impacted the gym floor with my upper chest and lower face.
Indoor cricket: I was simply walking past another boy when he decided to spin around while holding the bat chest-high. I didn’t even see the blow coming before the bat hit me square in the back and dropped me to my knees, breathless and stunned.
Indoor lacrosse: Played with a small plastic scoop and a whiffle ball. I took up my usual position in goal, where the very first shot whizzed straight into my groin. (FYI: Bruised balls — not a pretty sight.)
Have you picked out the common thread in these stories? Yup — me, on the floor, breath whistling through my teeth, eyes screwed tight while willing myself not to cry.
For everyone else, PE stands for Physical Education. For me, it was always Pain Everlasting.
I spent five years in high school. I’ve got the scars to prove it.
Royal scribe seeks concubines for, um, wenchly duties.
June 12, 2009
Attention, ladies: I’m using this blog posting to conduct a poll.
Please tell me which of the following titles makes you go all weak in the knees and want to swoon in my presence:
a) Sir John
b) Baron John
c) Lord John
d) Your Grace
d) The Most Majestic Ruler of Many Fiefdoms
Personally, I’m going for e) King John. Because, let’s face it, we all know it’s good to be king. Plus there’s that whole concubine thing that’s always fascinated me.
What’s put the shine on my armor these days, you might well be asking.
It’s simple really, at least to me. I’m not so sure about you lowly peasants and dung-speckled country folk.
You see, I’ve recently enjoyed a close encounter of the royalty kind. Not that I like to drop names or anything, but let’s just say the fellow’s initials were Prince Edward and the brush with the blue of blood came during his visit to B.C. earlier this month.
Actually, I didn’t personally have the close encounter — it was one of my stories that was so honored.
In 2004, I met a First Nations carver named George Van Meer and proceeded to write about this very talented man for a magazine called Sounder Profiles.
Skip ahead five years and George was chosen to present one of his carvings to the prince. The carving was accompanied by a framed copy of my story.
And, yes, if you want to go all picky on me, that pesky frame will most likely prevent the royal fingers from actually caressing my words. But we don’t let trivial matters such as details poop the party here on Planet Man. Which would explain why I’m now pretty much famous and expect to be treated as befits my new station in life.
And before you turn your heads — thou foul knaves! Thou cottars and husbandmen! — and snicker into your poncy sleeves, ask yourself who among you coarse commonors has their words stored in the Royal Gift Closet, between the mummified kangaroo and the witch doctor’s amulet from Botswana.
No? Just as I surmised. Hah and double-hah!
I’m reasonably positive an accolade of this magnitude gives me permission to drive through town, honking the horn while waving at all the loyal subjects of the Commonwealth. Some of them actually wave back. Although, considering most of them are using but one finger, I’m not sure they understand the true grandness of my accomplishment.
The problem obviously stems from the fact New Zealand — thanks to a decree by the newly elected government — has reinstated the granting of knighthoods. In their haste to make up for the old government’s obvious narrow-mindedness, Kiwis are now creating Sirs and Dames out of practically everyone who makes the effort to put their hand up.
C’mon, I mean, really, being honored for playing cricket? Hell, everyone who manages to merely stay awake during a game should automatically be made a corgi.
If New Zealand is passing out the royal treatment like so many lollies on Halloween, then it only seems fair for me to step up, point out my byline to Eddie (as we who dwell in ivory towers like to call him) and then take my rightful place at the big persons’ table for afternoon tea. Pass the cucumber sammies, would you, old dear.
Having said that, I will admit adapting to my new status has produced its own set of challenges at home.
For instance, my demand of Viking Woman to drop to her knees whenever I enter the room brought, not instant obedience but, rather, the promise to punch me in the crown jewels when I’m least expecting it.
Which is why, upon reflection, I’ve decided to leave the whole being famous thing to the Windsor Family after all. Before it becomes, you know, too much of a royal pain.
There is no greater joy for a novelist — other than, say, a three-book advance or a movie deal — than knowing that someone “got” their book.
To know that a reader identified with the characters, that they felt they were actually in the setting, and appreciated the various plot points enough to keep turning pages at a feverish pace until the book was finished and the hour had grown surprisingly late.
Some day I will experience that joy and it will thrill me to the marrow. I know because I’ve just had a very close encounter with that special brand of ecstasy.
It came courtesy of a woman who calls herself “Willow” and is part of a trio of ladies who operate the blog Working Girl Reviews, which invites authors to submit their work to be, well, reviewed.
In her bio, Willow notes she is a multi-published author and a professional book reviewer. In other words, she knows books. Good ones and bad ones.
It somehow fell to her to read Brown Girls after I submitted it to Working Girl Reviews as part of my marketing strategy to spread the word far and wide that my book is out there, dear readers, now please buy it.
The review arrived this morning and, if I told you Brown Girls had scored five out of five, you might stop wondering why a grown man is dancing around his office, still clad in pajamas and housecoat, high-fiving his wife even as she is trying to leave for work.
Here is the review:
***
Jack Nolan had his moment of fame having a best selling novel published at twenty-five and later writing the screenplay for the movie made from it. But Jack wasn’t thrilled with his new lifestyle or the hypocrisy of the people in it. His writing dried up. His agent was robbing him and his wife left, taking most everything his agent hadn’t. Jack went to the Cook Islands to get away and began taking freelance photos for the local newspaper. He stayed because he loves the islands. He loves the people.
When a tourist is found dead in one of the hotel swimming pools, no one seems to think it anything more than an accident, including the police. Jack isn’t so certain and his peaceful existence is about to explode. While he investigates the man’s death, a young girl disappears and Jack believes the crimes are connected. When the clues begin to add up, he finds himself dealing with the most monstrous criminals.
His personal life is disrupted as well by the arrival of an abused island girl to his home. Maina Rima’s family owns the land and the house where Jack lives and according to island custom she has the right to stay there. Jack isn’t thrilled with sharing his home with a roommate, but morally has no choice. Maina becomes a blessing in disguise, as she acts as his muse and he’s finally able to begin writing again. But Maina is hiding something that puts both her life and Jack’s in danger.
I’d love to say a lot more about this amazing book, but I don’t want to spoil the suspense for other readers. The author’s writing grabbed me with the first sentence and held me captive all the way to the last. A phenomenal writer, Mr. Ireland uses a scarcity of words that keeps the suspense high. Every line is significant—every word has importance. But even with that, his vivid descriptions of the islands and their people have a beautiful poetic flair that brings the scenes to life and absorbs the reader into the story. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes the genres of suspense, crime drama, mystery, or just a darn amazing read by an extraordinarily gifted writer. Don’t miss this one.
***
Now you know why I’m dancing. Now you know why I’m sporting a smile that may never leave. Please copy and paste this review to every person you know. And, if that person is a literary agent or owns a publishing company, send it twice.
Keep me dancing, my friends. Keep me dancing.
***
For the actual blog page of this review, go to http://workinggirlreviews.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/book-review-brown-girls-by-john-wesley-ireland/
Working Girl Reviews is at http://workinggirlreviews.wordpress.com
Buy Brown Girls at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1937
They say you can tell everything about a man by his shoes. If that is indeed the case, then my footwear says, “This guy needs to find a job. And win Lotto.”
While Viking Woman was once caught on film licking a Manolo Blahnik shoe while standing directly under the lights in the store’s display window, I tend not to be moved to orgasm by anything I place on my body.
I’m sure I represent all of Planet Man when I say that I treat shoes like every other clothing item I own — kept to a bare minimum in number and replaced only when they wear out or disintegrate. Whichever comes first.
That would explain why I own the grand total of three pairs of footwear: hiking boots for wet/cold conditions; black dress shoes for job interviews/work/church/wedding/funerals; and athletic shoes for pretty much every other contingency.
As I’m constantly explaining to Viking Woman, humans possess but two feet. It is pretty much physically impossible to wear more than one pair of shoes at a time. She simply smiles and reminds me again about how she wants her ashes stored in a shoebox on a shelf in the Zappos store in Las Vegas. Next to the high heels. Size 9.
Unlike the female of the species, men do not feel the urge to change our shoes just because we’ve now blinked for the 170th time today. Or a butterfly happened to cross the yard. We do not need to buy new shoes simply because we wore the red ones to work three weeks ago and that means everyone has already seen them. The shame! The humiliation! The horror!
The utter crap!
On Planet Man, we believe in spending our money on the important things in life. And by important things, I mean chips, beer and widescreen TVs. The only reason we’d even bother to look at a woman’s shoes is if they were attached to her chest.
I’ve watched Viking Woman salivate in front of her computer as she stared, wide-eyed, at zappos.com. Admittedly, there are websites that have the same effect on me but I don’t get so excited I’m practically caressing the monitor. Well, hardly ever.
Zappos is a North American company, of course. I’m not sure how important shoes actually are here in New Zealand. When we lived in Gisborne, we’d pass a Maori primary school where most of the kids went barefoot. When the weather grew colder, they put on socks. Not shoes, mind you — just socks.
Actually, now that I think of it, I have owned more than three pairs of footwear at one time.
It was late fall when I was first hired as the sports editor for the Langley Times and, facing a long, chilly winter of reporting on outdoor soccer matches, I felt obliged to purchase a pair of snow boots that really should have come with their own sled dogs and directions to the Arctic Circle. By the time I managed to pull them off the first time, winter was over.
Viking Woman is now threatening to buy me Crocs. Over my dead body, I tell her.
Which means she will probably slip them on my cold, stiff corpse for the funeral.
And then spend my life insurance at the Manolo Blahnik store.
Apparently, there is some female rule that states, ‘You lick ‘em, you buy ‘em.’
Who knew?
