Vigorously Lazy

The winner of The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest has been announced (terrible website btw, check the wiki for better info). This particular contest (named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, author of the infamous line, “It was a dark and stormy night…”) is a test of not how good you are at writing, but at how good you are at writing bad. The person who comes up with the best (worst) opening sentence of an imagined (bad) novel wins. David McKenzie took home this year’s prize with the following hum-dinger:

Folks say that if you listen real close at the height of the full moon, when the wind is blowin’ off Nantucket Sound from the nor’ east and the dogs are howlin’ for no earthly reason, you can hear the awful screams of the crew of the “Ellie May,” a sturdy whaler Captained by John McTavish; for it was on just such a night when the rum was flowin’ and, Davey Jones be damned, big John brought his men on deck for the first of several screaming contests.

I chuckled a bit when I read that one, then I read the wiki page for some of the past entrants and I didn’t find it so funny anymore. Observational humor (funny cause it’s true) reaches a breaking point where too much honesty is no longer funny and it’s just depressing. That’s kind of the way I felt reading these. Whoever wrote them was spot-on in their attempts at bad writing. I should know. 90% of story submissions I get start out like this. Pretentious, disengenuous, and, worst of all, dishonest. People desparately pretending to be something that they aren’t, which almost always makes me want to punch things and vomit simultaniously.

Kudos, Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest winners. You’re bringing laughter through the tears.

Got this email from Bryan “Bear” Soderlind this morning:

So I just wanted to inform you guys about the amazing new camera that will be available to rent to only my closest of friends.  It’s called the BLUE cam and it is packed with lots of high tech features starting but not ending with the fact it shoots on Hi8 tapes.  I’ve rented it a few times to action sports cinematographer Jeff Raley and he has gotten some great results. Let me know as you get projects and need to put the BLUE on reserve. Thanks and great shooting.
-Bear

Check out the stunning resolution here as Bear’s video interview with Josh Letchworth goes horribly awry.

I don’t know if I’m just really uninspired this week or if there’s an exceptional amount of bland shit being churned out lately, but the covers of this weeks new releases are neither rocking me or bumming me out. As if I’m standing in a hot driveway, sweating, after just having jogged three miles and I’m waiting for the publishing world to come bring me a nitrogen-cold strawberry daiquiri they promised, but instead they show up and offer me a tepid glass of milk. Here’s a round-up of this weeks book covers that are totally devoid of harm, risk and fun. Wallow in the mediocrity! Wallow, I say!

For the amature mortician and/or zombie enthusiast there’s Larry King’s new memoir. Might want to think twice about putting that mug on a book cover in order to sell books instead of inducing panic trips to the botox clinic.

Photographer: Larry, give us a big warm smile.

Larry King: I am smiling.

Photographer: No, that’s more of a Dick-Cheney-evil-genius-predator sneer you’ve got happening there. Think more “I’d like to share my life story with you” and less “I’d like to lure you to my dungeon and feast on your innards.”

Larry King: …

Photographer: Larry?

Larry King: …

Photographer: Jesus. Will somebody poke him with a stick or something?

More like The Forgotten Use of Restraint Concerning Vine Embellishments and Sepia Filters.

Sure, Allen was a living legend in the skin moisturizer advertising comunity, but designing a book cover would be a new challenge entirely.

The man who owns this book…

a. leaves his television on the History Channel at all times.

b. owns an impressive collection of guns and cleans them regularly. While watching the History Channel.

c. prays for provocation.

d. secretly wears a sports bra he stole from The Finish Line in the mall.

e. All of the above.

I mentioned Stephen Elliot’s newest book last week for BBCDW and also touched upon the cool project surrounding it’s marketing, but just to recap:

Stephen is circulating copies of his new true-crime memoir to anyone who would care to read it. All you do is email him, prove that you’re a real person, he sends you the book, you get a week to read it and when that week is up you send it to the next person on the list. Pretty cool buzz-generating idea that I will most likely steal in the forthcoming months. So I signed up and just finished it last night and I’m glad that I did.

Not only is this a great book, but it’s a cool thing to be involved with. It’s not too often that the general public not only gets to read advance copies of books but also gets to be given the chance to by the author himself. Which, I think, is the way it should be. You should be able to reach out to these people and have them reach back to you. That’s what creative writing is all about, for me at least. To connect with people. And it really bugs me when authors are reclusive, don’t do interviews, don’t do readings, don’t really make any sort of effort to engage their audience outside of publishing. So it really pumps me up when you see a talented author getting in the mix and reaching out to people.

Anyway. I think this thing is still going on and you should sign up for it so you can be a part of it too.

I just recently met Alix Soubiran and she’s not only a delightful person but she’s also a fantastic artist. Go check out all her patron saints and animal circus’s.

I was going to wait about a week to get to this, but I couldn’t wait.

Stephen Elliott’s been circulating pre-release copies of his new book, a true-crime memoir, as sort of a DIY marketing buzz generator. The gist is you email Stephen, ask him if you can read his book, convince him that you’re a real person, he mails you the book and you have a week to finish it, then you mail it to someone else. Sounds like a really cool idea, no? I thought so too, so I emailed him. He sent me the book and I’m reading it right now and I’m pretty blown away by it so far. But this isn’t a review of the contents inside the book.

(Disclaimer: This is kind of a soft edge image that’s supposed to be used for wheat pasting I think. It was the highest res image I could find. You get the idea. I’ll post a sharper one next week.)

The cover graphic for The Adderall Diaries has all the elements that make a stop-you-in-your-tracks image. Loss, abandonment and confusion are conveyed with a few colors, a few layers and a healthy dose of taste. What else do you need to know? Simple, beautiful, creative. Well done.

P.S. The project is still going on if you want to read the book. Click the link above or right here if you’re lazy. Highly recommended.

Mexico City recording artist Natalia Lafourcade just release her latest album entitled Hu Hu Hu. Dear friend Cara made the masks and the dress Lafourcade wears on the cover. Cara worked really hard on these and I’m very proud of her!

The masks are also featured in the video Azul (dudes won’t let me embed). The video is kinda whack (why are these twentysomethings acting like seven-year-olds?), but I think the masks are cool, they show up at the end. Congrats Cara!