Novel idea: the sacraficial lambs of Presbyterian College

From time to time I point out that since reporters these days are not unattuned to the irony of our world, any aspiring novelist can, by reading the newspaper carefully, get plenty of ideas for novels out of the daily news. Behold this story: Have Team, Will Travel, Losing Badly.

You don't have to care about basketball to get the gist. Tiny colleges, like the one that is the focus of the story, have declared themselves members of "Division I" of the NCAA, and thus eligible to play top-ranked university teams. Of course they get clobbered every time, so what's the point? Money. Visiting teams share in ticket revenues, so when the Presbyterian College Blue Hose appear at Duke, Clemson, North Carolina or other powerhouses, they get some of the ticket revenue. And it doesn't matter if they draw or not, since those big college have lots of season ticket holders.

So! How'd you like to play for the Blue Hose? I wonder what the recruiter tells prospective players: "You'll play with the best... the guys on the opposing teams!" I wonder what the coach's angle is. Does he get a cut of the $650,000 the team -- whose schedule has 5 home games and 25 road games!! -- takes home from those bashings?

One day, Coach Gregg Nibert said, he hopes the Blue Hose will be able to go punch for punch on the court, at least with teams in the smaller Division I conferences like the Big South, which Presbyterian will join next year.

But for now, he is content to barnstorm, collecting $25,000 to $60,000 per appearance at Madison Square Garden-sized college arenas. After a season of predictable poundings, he will come home with about $650,000 for Presbyterian's coffers.

And yet this is not a scandal. This is regarded as great for the school! Incroyable!

technorati: novel writing, writing ideas

Snowy Chicago

I'm in Chicago, staying in this enormous hotel, working on my latest book and probably eating too much. Home late on Jan. 1.

Hey hey, I saved the world today

Presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton "will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content." The first-term governor of Alaska, Republican Sarah Palin, raised taxes on oil companies. Jon Bon Jovi is New Jersey's answer to Bono and popular with politicians.

But my favorite thing today is this: Look at the very bottom of this Maureen Dowd column on the NY Times' site. Speaking of the regular columnist who publishes on Wednesday, it says: "Thomas L. Friedman is on book leave."

Book leave! What a terrific idea. I'll have to request that to be added to the list of allowable leaves at my job.

Economics of publishing, part CXDVIII

First, the good news: "There are more agents than writers."

Now, the bad news: "And there are more writers than readers. I'm convinced of that."

That's from an interview with big-time New Yawk Litarerry Agent Lynn Nesbit, whose clients have included Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Donald Barthelme, whose short story "The Big Broadcast of 1938" got him representation by newly-minted agent Nesbit and occasioned the above reflection on the economics of publishing.

She goes on:

I tell Tina [Bennett] and Eric [Simonoff], "You missed the good days." When I worked for Sterling Lord, I had a loft, a sort of duplex loft apartment on Barrow Street. And Michael Sissons, who's now the head of Fraser & Dunlop, and Peter Matson, who's also an agent, used to give these parties at my house. They would make these drinks of half brandy and half champagne, and people got so drunk. One night Rosalyn Drexler, the lady wrestler and the novelist, picked up Walter Minton and just threw him against the wall. I'll never forget that. There was just more of a sense of fun.... It's the corporate thing. People are too scared. It doesn't attract eccentrics anymore.

technorati: publishing, literary agents

Something short of sock puppeting

Is it sock puppeting or sock puppeteering? Sock-puppet mastering?

Anyway. A writer who self-published the first in a series of fantasy books invented a publicist and sent out releases about himself. The ruse worked to attract the attention of a major publisher, which signed him to a six-figure contract.

There is an interesting distinction there between the practice of sock puppeting, or whatever you'd call it -- that is, writing glowing reviews about yourself on websites and writing comments to your own blog postings, using alter egos -- and pretending to be a publicist for yourself. A publicist is paid, while a sock puppet, or the persons purporting to write those glowing reviews and appreciative comments, are not. For some reason it is regarded as an embarrassing act of vanity to write a glowing review of your own book on Amazon, but not to act as your own publicist under a pseudonym.

The way around this problem, of course, is to make an arrangement with another writer to act as each other's publicist. Pay each other one dollar per year, and then flog the other person's book with such enthusiasm that he'd look like an asshole if he didn't pump yours with equal fervor.

Or you could, you know, just spend money and hire a publicist. I did this for my very first book with free money I'd gotten off stock options, thus keeping the strange little book from disappearing without a trace. The publicist's efforts even garnered a few reviews.

technorati: publishing, publicity, book publicity

It's Bad Behavior Monday™! -- Xmas edition

To protest commercialism, a Washington man nailed Santa Claus to a 15-foot cross in front of his house, and put images of it on his Xmas cards with the message "Santa died for your MasterCard."

Priceless.

A woman in Wyoming stabbed her husband in the chest for opening a present early. The lovebirds, who have been married three months, are both 34. And in New Zealand, a "gang of fifty drunken Santas" went on a mild rampage at a cineplex, knocking over cardboard cutout figures and a Christmas tree.

"Shopdropping" -- the opposite of shoplifting -- means placing things in stores for people to purchase. The items might be anti-consumer objects d'art, or simply some independent producer's music CDs he's trying to unload. One Oakland artist makes "anarchist action figures ... with tiny accessories including a gas mask, bolt cutter, and two Molotov cocktails;" when he took a t-shirt depicting 20th century revolutionary figures to the cash register at a Target, the manager looked askance:

"I don't think this is a product that we sell," the manager said as Mr. Jennings pretended to be a customer trying to buy it. "It's definitely antifamily, which is not what Target is about."

Other shopdroppers are simply people who don't want gifts and just dump them on store shelves rather than go through the hassle of standing in line to return them.

A southern California man claiming to be in the CIA talked two men out of $20,000 in various cons, including a theatrical phone call when he pretended to be under fire and demanded $10,000 to get a helicopter and a pilot.

In October 2005, he began telling employees and others who frequent the gun shop -- some of them Oxnard police officers -- that he'd been hired by the CIA. He disappeared for about three weeks. When he came back he talked about having been at "The Farm," the CIA's training facility. He wore what looked like a federal agent's badge on his belt. He had CIA credentials as well, he said, but those were strictly confidential. Risser told one regular customer at the shooting range that he'd like to be more specific about what he did for the CIA, but "If I told you, I'd have to kill you."

Yes, he met his marks at a shooting range.

Worker-owned Thai brothel

In Chaing Mai there is a worker-owned bar/brothel where the women are not subject to the depredations of all the other bar girls in Thailand. Toward the end of the story there is a bit about how workers from local NGOs patronize the place to "study" how it works -- a no-win situation, as they must prove themselves either hypocrites or cheapskates.

A message from one of the latter is said to be written in a message posted on the wall: "I love you more than I can pay." That says it all about the supposedly enlightened and gone-native Western tourist who winds up being more of a drag on the locals than the classic camera-and-Panama-hat type. I once read an article about backpackers in Nepal and Tibet who, under the delusion that they are somehow like penniless monks, wind up imposing on the hospitality of natives and are looked on not as enlightened travelers but as parasites.

technorati: sex work, prostitution,

The purpose of literature

From the "unofficial" website of French author Frédéric Beigbeder:

Dans les années 1980, une nouvelle drogue fit son apparition dans les milieux noctambules : le MDMA dit "ecstasy". Cette "pilule de l'amour" provoquait d'étranges effets : bouffées de chaleur, envie de danser toute la nuit sur de la techno, besoin de caresser les gens, grincements de dents, déshydratation accélérée, angoisse existentielle, tentatives de suicide, demandes en mariage. ... Et puis, avons-nous besoin d'une pilule pour raconter notre vie à des inconnus? Alors qu'il y a la littérature pour ça?

My translation of the italicized portion: And do we really need a pill just to tell strangers about our lives? Isn't that what we have literature for?

technorati: Frédéric Beigbeder, ecstasy, literature

'The modern world is absolutely fascist'

From the point of view of mass propaganda and advertising, I think there's been nothing new since the time of Goebbels. Women must look like this, this and this. All who are not within these bounds must strive for them, or be losers. That's a completely fascist doctrine. I'm surprised there aren't people standing with rulers outside nightclubs and measuring the distance between people's ears. Probably they will be soon, and that will be right in this situation.

All of modern consumer society, without a doubt, is profoundly fascist. You can see this by Africa. People have problems finding drinking water. But you can always find Coca-Cola. How is this possible?

I studied the history of the Third Reich. I found incredible facts. It's clear that the Soviet Union of those years and Fascist Germany were twins. It's no secret for anyone. But the fact that in the contemporary situation, all of these speeches, all of these propaganda approaches, in one way or another serve as the template for the speeches of many politicians. The direct speech of Goebbels is incredibly modern, just change radio to television and no problem.

That's Russian novelist Sergei Minaev, profiled in the NYT today. The article is good, and there's also a Q and A sidebar, from which I drew the extended quote above.

In addition, I was struck by this quote:

I had a period when I was 24-28 years old. I was part of a heavy scene that began Friday evening and as a rule ended on Monday morning. This was about age 24-27. Now, I don't go out except for exceptional cases... Now, we get together at home and talk, the same format as in kitchens in the 1980s. That's much more pleasant because you're surrounded only by those people whom you like. There's none of that showing off. It's completely peaceful.

I was struck by the similarity of this depiction of life with the description of the life of a member of the Chinese intelligentsia of the 17th century in the latest New York Review of Books. From the article (not yet online) 'Ravished by Oranges' by Simon Leys, a review of "Return to Dragon Mountain: Memories of a Late Ming Man":

A great number of scholars gave up the idea of entering public life and opted instead for an existence devoted to the exclusive cultivation of art and letters in the privacy of their homes... Zhang Dai... designed exquisite pavilions and gardens; he gathered a huge library, collected antiques, and was a connoisseur of calligraphy and painting...

Here you have two men, separated by 450 years, who respond to the bankruptcy of public and political life in the same way -- by retreating to the domain of the home and forming a world built around friends, art and talk. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but an understandable one in the face of a morally and politically bankrupt society, one becoming increasingly fascist -- which is to compare Ming Dynasty China and modern Russia.

technorati: writers, novelists, Russian, advertising, marketing

It's Bad Behavior Friday™! -- because I love you

Seven people who worked at a Massachusetts group home were fired after administering electrical "skin shocks" to teenage residents of the home. The problem was not that they did it at all -- reportedly the practice is in common use at the facility -- but that they did it on orders of a prank caller who was a former resident.

In other words, a kid who knew all about the shock "treatments" -- which are described as a method of punishment for "destructive behavior" -- pretended to be a supervisor and ordered the overworked staff to lay into a couple of other kids. And since the story says the electrical shocks are administered "only with parental, medical, psychiatric and court approval," what you've got is kids who were apparently approved for this punishment by parents, the courts, etc. Probably they had been zapped before. WTF!!!

Another amazing bit: The staff was described as skeptical about the orders, but carried them out anyway -- 77 times on one kid and 29 on the other. They were so skeptical they zapped the kid 77 times. I wonder how many times they zap them when the orders are legit!

A man who claims he had a seizure before ramming his car into a strip mall building also says he doesn't have any memory of the crash -- so no wonder he didn't remember his 72-year-old mother was in the car. She died in the crash and was not discovered for 24 hours, by which time the car had been sitting overnight in the police impound lot.

Of course, it wasn't entirely his fault. Firefighters were on the scene of the crash for more than an hour and never noticed the passenger, who was partially hidden by a deployed air bag.

A man who lives near the Clintons in Westchester Co., New York, was arrested for murdering his wife, whom he claimed was nabbed in a carjacking. Nice detail: a former lawyer, he "had been disbarred three months earlier for refusing to return unearned funds to clients. Jurors accused him of incompetence in defending a murder suspect."

Work in high tech? Then it's vacation time. Most companies, including the one I work for, close down the week between Xmas and New Year's, either officially or practically. In this case, because New Year's falls on a Tuesday, the break definitely extends from lunch tomorrow until Jan. 2.

If you work in retail -- sorry about that. I'll see you in the stores. Because all the geeks like me never do their Xmas shopping until the weekend before.

"Religious conservatives" are so busy condemning the sex enjoyed by 16-year-old Britney's-Little-Sister that they almost can't bring themselves to praise her reluctance to abort her pregnancy.

I don't know what they're upset about. It's like their ideal world, isn't it? A pregnant 16-year-old who bears the child. It makes it less likely for her to ever get an education or a decent job -- just like some out-of-control Third World child-bride country, which is what they'd love the U.S. to become. Oh, she hasn't said she's getting married, I see. There's still a chance she'll remain independent... perhaps even become what they fear most -- a welfare mother! So, jury's still out on that one.

Lest real teenagers be misled by this incident, the Nickelodeon Channel is considering a special on teen pregnancy. In that story, by the way, is the detail that Little Sis Whose Name I Can't Be Troubled To Learn met her baby-daddy at a church youth group. And: "In interviews, she has stressed her faith in family, God and traditional virtues -- much as Britney did years ago, before the wheels came off."

technorati: celebrities, Spears

RFID to track your magazine reading in waiting rooms

I take it back -- this is even more depressing:

The next time you visit your doctor for your appointment and flip through the pages of the magazines kept in the reception room unknowingly to kill time you might not be aware of the fact that a watch is being kept on your reading habits using RFID. Mediamark Research & Intelligence and DJG Marketing have come together to use RFID for measuring magazine readership in public waiting rooms.

More here.

technorati: surveillance

'Highly directional sound' = the end of solitude?

This is one of the more depressing things I've read lately: Advertising through "highly directional sound." Advertisers will be able to focus advertising pitches to very small areas -- so, for example, when you walk past the Preparation H, you'll hear a spiel for that, and when you walk past the cold medicine, you'll hear a pitch for that. Supposedly "it doesn't contribute to ambient noise pollution," but how are you going to avoid it in, say, a subway car? How far away is the day when there's a tiny speaker over your airline seat, where you're a captive audience for hours on end, broadcasting advertisements that are picked for you personally, based on your gender, age, and everything else the airline and the credit card company knows about you?

Fucking AAACK.

technorati: marketing, advertising

Jesus is coming again, this time as an 'action figure'

Talking Jesus action figures are a big seller this Christmas, according to a Mlps Star Tribune story. "The new-and-improved version tells stories about David and Goliath or feeding 'the five thousand' with loaves and fishes, in addition to speaking Bible verses such as John 3:16 and Mark 12:30-31."

The last day

I meant to finish the first draft of my current novel project last weekend, but I stopped a couple of pages short. I didn't want to rush into it, and -- typical -- I had to be somewhere in the early evening, so I cut my writing day short.

Then I thought I would be able to grab a few hours during the week, ideally on Monday, and finish. It was only a few pages. But instead I got utterly hammered at work. In my 12 years in the high tech industry, I don't think I've ever been as snowed under as I was this week. In fact, I'm seriously considering going in to work on Sunday just to get a head start on the next week.

I rarely write about my day job as a technical writer at a large software company. It's something I've been doing for several years one way or another, but I've only been a true technical writer since the fall of 2004 -- three years and then some. I have been able to handle pretty much everything that's been thrown at me, but this week my relative inexperience meant that I had too much to do at the very end of the project -- a project which I've thought was done about six times now. It's not all my fault, but there's more I could have done to alleviate the crush that happened this month.

Another motherfucking learning experience.

Meanwhile, I read a little piece of this book I'm working on for the first time last night to a few people at a dinner. It was a very interesting experience. When you're reading out loud you can instantly tell which sentences are well constructed and which sound awkward -- which is why they tell you to always, always read your stuff out loud before considering it finished. It made me remember how, in my past experiences at LitCrawl (2006, 2005) I closely edited the piece I was about to read with a mind to how it would sound read out loud. I didn't have the opportunity to do that last night, and it was good to be reminded of how important it is.

So on to the last few pages of this book, which I will subsequently spend as much time as I can rewriting. (Rewriting the whole book, not only the last few pages, important as they are.)

Update, 3:45 pm: I finished! The total word count of the first draft was 85,293. That's an average of 2031 words per session, with the book finished in 42 work sessions from July 28 to today.

Previous first-draft-finishing milestones:

Make Nice on January 1, 2003. That one took about five years.

Bangalored (which used to be called "Dear Prudence") on December 28, 2006. That one took a little more than two years.

technorati: writing, novel writing

Jodie Foster comes out, pretty much

This clip on cnn.com has Jodie Foster thanking "my beautiful Cydney," her partner for 14 years, followed by a discussion of what it means for her to come out as queer and what the temperature in Hollywood is for such admissions.

Also: calls self "a gentleman." Of course, at the same event, John Travolta was quoted as saying "I'm a woman who believes in the power of women," so maybe there was a sort of gender-bending thing going on generally.

Coppola enters his sage period

From an interview with filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola in the December-January Bookforum:

One of the most wonderful things about being a filmmaker is doing the research. When I made The Godfather I got a number of books about the Five Families and how they came about and about the families before that. Knowledge is a string that keeps going back and back. ... I've always felt that when you're making a movie, you're essentially asking a question. And when you're done, the film you have is the answer.

technorati: narrative, Francis Ford Coppola, filmmaking

The short version of length

Here's a hilarious summary of Neil Strauss' book The Game from a writer at the Guardian in the U.K., where it was published as The Rules of the Game.

Don't worry about being a total loser. If women only went to bed with successful, attractive men, most of them would never get laid. Women want to be fooled into thinking you're not a jerk, every bit as much as you need them to believe it.

This is the book my orthopedic surgeon was discussing with the OR nurses as he probed my spine with a large needle a couple years ago. I'm sure the advice is just as current then as now.

technorati: THIS, THAT, TOTHER

BREAKING: 4 shot at Haggard's former church

The church's 11 a.m. service had recently ended, and hundreds of people were milling about when the gunman opened fire. Nearby were parents picking up their children from the nursery. The gunman was killed by a member of the church's armed security staff, the source said. Four people were shot...

One of the only times I've ever read that an armed security guard actually came in handy. Recent updates from local paper, including this wisdom (emphasis mine) from a teenager:

"Why would somebody walk into a church and do something like that?" asked New Life member Kim Ho-Fing-Loy, 16. "Especially with what just happened with Pastor Ted, this church just doesn't need this any more."

Of course, "what happened with Pastor Ted" happened over a year ago, but with precious little happening in that dead parcel of flyover land, it probably seems like yesterday.

technorati: New Life Church

Another obscure figure of the 60s

I was researching yet another obscure point for my current novel project today when I ran across this fun fact. Eva Green, a 27-year-old actress who appears in the new film "The Golden Compass," is the daughter of a French actress whose name will not ring a bell with many Americans -- Marlène Jobert. But perhaps this picture from the film I was researching, Godard's Masculin Feminin, will ring a bell:

(She is in the center in this picture, the only one I could find from the film. Note: The picture I put up earlier today was of the wrong actress. Oops.)

Here, by the way, is the bit of monologue I wanted from the Godard film:

We often went to the movies. The screen lit up, and we trembled... but more often than not, Madeline and I were disappointed. The pictures were dated, they flickered. And Marilyn Monroe had aged terribly. It made us sad.

This wasn't the film we'd dreamed of. This wasn't the total film that each of us had carried within himself... The film that we wanted to make -- or more secretly, no doubt -- that we wanted to live.

technorati: Godard, Eva Green, cinema

Almost at the end

I had a productive day writing today, reaching -- but not finishing -- the last scene of the book. Even when I do finish it, I still have to go back and write a good three or four thousand word chapter outlining a crucial part of the narrator's backstory.

So tomorrow I will do my best to write the ending, and then make some notes and get started on that last piece. Gettin' there!

The Ghost Writers

Think Tom Brokaw and other celebrities actually write those books that appear with their names on the cover? As Forbes says: "Surely you jest."

Why this is described as "ghost writing" and not as a hoax is beyond me. (Courtesy MediaBistro.)

technorati: writers, hoaxes

'Line Up' piece gets typical reaction

Some politically oriented pictures of Bush, Cheney and other administration figures in an exhibition of prints in the New York Public Library are creating controversy. The NYT's comments are spot-on, saying the mug-shot like images of Bush and his cronies would hardly be unusual on "The Daily Show," for instance, but in the context of a staid show at the library, they're electric.

See a video version of the show here.

Predictably, the right wing is saying stuff like:

At first I wondered who put al-Qaida (sic) in charge of the New York public library, but then of course remembered the American left is doing their bidding for them.

God, that shit is tired. I mean, images of Bush et al as criminals are almost as tired as that, but surely people who listen to right wing radio are getting tired of it, aren't they?

No, I guess they're immune to that. The left will get tired of anything and say "enough already" but rage junkies never get tired of their rage. Who could have imagined they'd still be demonizing Jane Fonda, for example?

technorati: Bush, Cheney, Republicans, art, political art

The Mark Pritchard I'm definitely not

In my bio page I've long had a section on "the Mark Pritchards I'm not," highlighting some of the other colorful people around the globe with my same name -- a Welsh footballer, an Australian cult leader, a British trance/ambient musician (he's probably the most famous), and so on.

There's also a fellow who was elected to the British Parliament a few years ago. This last worthy has never done anything significant, but today he's in the news because he's decided to carry water for far-right conservatives and yap about the "war on Christmas."

The shame of it.

Strange bio of the day

DAYVID FIGLER, whose humor commentaries have been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and whose work has appeared in McSweeney's (online), Uber, Exquisite Corpse, Time Out and in the Las Vegas anthology, "In the Shadow of the Strip" (University of Nevada Press). A judge and former capital murder defense attorney, he has been a featured reader at many national festivals including Bumbershoot, South by Southwest and
Lollapalooza; and has provided crime commentary on the Nancy Grace and Star Jones shows. Dayvid's most recent book is Grope (Future Tense Press). He is the creator of the one-man show Hello, I Love You, Where You Folks From?, and was recently awarded a grant from Cirque du Soliel to create a follow-up.

Now that's one scattershot bio. A former lawyer who defended people up for murder who has become a writer and performance artist, and "was recently awarded a grant from Cirque du Soleil." He changed his name to be all Hollywoody and noticeable, but he lives in, hmm, Las Vegas. Thus the Cirque du Soleil connection, I suppose. It would be interesting to go see this guy just to see his affect and better imagine him hanging out with the little bitty acrobats.

Getting closer

Aside from a long scene I still need to rewrite, I came a lot closer today to being finished with the first draft of my current novel project. I basically wrote the scenes that provide the climax of the plot. I need one more chapter, and then I need to go back and basically write chapter 10 again. Maybe next weekend.

Book deal of the day

Seen on the Publisher's Marketplace book deals list:

McSweeney's contributor G. Xavier Robillard's CAPTAIN FREEDOM: A Superhero's Quest for Truth, Justice, and The Celebrity He So Richly Deserves, to Carl Lennertz at Harper, for publication in Jan 2009.

Yet another in the series of superhero-themed literature that started a few years ago with "The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay."

Read my own contribution to the genre, a short story called Cleaning Up After the Champion (PDF file).