I’ve been working on my sexy guide to Montreal, Naked Montreal, off and on for the past while, and seeing as it’s the end of a decade, I figured I should finally be done with the damn thing. I’ve left Montreal, and it’s time to close this chapter of my life. With a book, that can be slammed shut in an overly dramatic manner.
Partially inspired by a great article by Steve Anderson that I read in this week’s WritersWeekly (which noted that Charles Dickens self-published what is arguably his most famous story, A Christmas Carol, AND managed to win a lawsuit against his evil publishers, who immediately tried to make a cheap, poorly-spelled knock-off to garner a share of his profits), and equally excited by the end of 2009 to act as an immediate, fast-approaching deadline, I decided to finally sit down in the chair and write.
Broke-Ass Stuart, rocking it old-skool (image via Broke-Ass Stuart's Goddamn Website)
I’ve been working on it for the past couple of days. Tonight, as I screwed around with potential layouts over at Lulu.com, wondering who will actually buy this damn thing once I self-publish it, I received a note from the fabulous Broke-Ass Stuart (of Broke-Ass Stuart’s Goddamn Website fame), in response to a note I’d sent him about his recent discovery of a bunch of thieving British wankers who were selling crappy knock-offs of his “Young, Broke & Fabulous” t-shirts. Catching up on my BAS, reading about the whole affair pissed me off, as it pisses me off whenever I hear about some assholes trying to pass off obviously stolen material as their own. (The greatest part? The idjits even admitted in the comments section of the post that they stole the idea from him! Isn’t plagiarism awesome?) Anyway, I had sent him a bit of a rant telling him not to let these fuckers take advantage of him, and to seriously try to press the issue with legal authorities. After all, you’ve got to protect your copyright.
He wrote back saying that the chumps in question are taking down the design, after many irate Broke-Ass Stuart fans firebombed them with hatred, and then popped me a question: would I be interested in helping him out with a new project, something involving Montreal?
Me + Broke-Ass Stuart + Montreal + irreverent guidebooking? HECK YES!
As you can imagine, I’m pretty excited. I’m not sure what the exact details of this project are just yet, but if Broke-Ass Stuart’s involved, I know it’s gotta be good. The guy is hilarious, motivated and clever, so if you’re not reading his blog or his books yet, what the eff are you waiting for? Scoot!
And then come back here for more details as events progress!
The holiday season is upon us, and like a lot of you out there, I don’t have a ton of money to spend on gifts this year. Maybe you’ve also been passing the bell-ringers and donation slips at the grocery stores, wishing you could help out those less fortunate, but feeling like that one-buck donation isn’t really going to do much?
Here’s your chance to do something good—for free!
It’s really simple, and will help give struggling families something they really need, all year ’round: FOOD. Just click on the gizmo below to help me support hungry families this holiday season. For each e-greeting you send to friends and family—along with a bunch of neat holiday recipes—Kraft will donate 10 meals. This is a great way to show you care, just by clicking a few buttons and sending out the Christmukkah cards you probably forgot to send anyway. Let your family and friends know you care by sharing the love, the recipes, and the seasonal donations to worthy charities… and get ‘em to pass it on to THEIR friends!
If you’re feeling particularly giving, sign up for an account at SocialVibe and keep doing the little quizzes and activities to contribute even more money to this cause, or any other you prefer. They’ve got everything from HIV/AIDS charities to animal protection societies to causes that help prevent hunger and homelessness. It’s a cool social media site where everything you do gives a little bit back. It’s way better than a stupid Facebook quiz that’ll sell your info (and your friends’ info!) to a bunch of evil corporations, dudes, so check it out!
Oh, and if I don’t post before then: MERRY CHRISTMUKKAH! HAPPY HOLIDAYS! SEASONS GREETINGS! And all that jazz. Also, if you live in the U.S., definitely go download this free MP3 of Lady Gaga’s Xmas song, “Christmas Tree,” over at Amazon.com while you still can. Hilarity (and dancing) shall ensue. Consider it my Christmukkah gift to you for donating your precious time to my little charity cause. {{{LOVE!}}}
So, here’s the thing: I’m new to Austin, and I’m looking for a job. Given that it’s a week before Xmas, however, it’s a bit of a challenge. People are going on vacation, not responding to emails, or flat-our phishing for personal info so as to scam you (thanks a lot, Craigslist!). It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, people, and I’m bringing this question to you in all sincerity:
"Don't Disturb! Writer At Work" (photo by Flickr user amypalko)
Where do you look for work?
I’m a freelance writer and editor by trade, so I tend to go after jobs posted on Craigslist, a slew of writing and editing job boards, and I also regularly turn to a few weekly newsletters to get the 411. Today I happened to discover a little invention by the name of Jobfox, which I’d never heard of. I spent at least an hour setting the thing up, answering all its in-depth questions, getting my résumé tweaked to perfection… and it had only one measly job offer for me. In pharmeceuticals, where I have zero experience. Which wouldn’t have even been such a problem, except for the fact that they wanted someone with at least 5 years of experience. Um, thanks for nothing?
So I’m begging you, people, if you’ve got job-hunting skills, know a headhunter, run a business, or have seen a help-wanted sign recently and think I may just be a match, do get in touch. I’m pretty open-minded, although I’m not really keen on slinging fast food at this stage in the game. Just a personal preference, though, and by no means any slight against the fabulous people who keep Popeye’s and Mickey-D’s rollin’. (Honestly, you’re fabulous. And I will write you all some amazing résumés if you’re looking to get out. Cheap!)
If you really want to know what it is I do for a living, or what kind of wild and crazy experience I’ve got, you can check out my LinkedIn profile. I’ve got 8 years of work experience, starting in New York City in 2001, so it’s not like I’m a stranger to the world of work. I’ve done everything from reception (phones, filing and faxing) to audio transcription to web design and maintenance to editing semantics textbooks. I’ve got the skills to pay the bills, and the bills are rolling in, so if you’ve got any thoughts, sing out!
Thank you in advance, and happy holidays! I hope you’re taking a much-needed vacation, rather than struggling to find a job like me, but for those in the same boat, remember this: TAKE NO PRISONERS! YOU ROCK THE CASBAH!
P.S. I just sent in my submission to Broken Pencil’s Indie Writers Deathmatch III. Cross your fingers and wish me luck, for my short story will give ‘em all an ass-whuppin’ they’ll not soon forget! If you’ve got a short story (1,000-3,000 words) and $20 (CAN), feel free to gimme a run for my money. If all else fails, you’ll get a free subscription to Broken Pencil, the magazine of zine culture and the independent arts. HOT!
I just saw Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans, and somebody’s got to say it: Werner Herzog doesn’t know diddly-jack about New Orleans. After reading a particularly complimentary review from the peeps at the Alamo Drafthouse (calling it “the best and most unique film of the year”), I went to check it out, but I found myself hugely disappointed.
First, some disclosure: I have never seen the original Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel and directed by Abel Ferrara, but according to my husband, it’s both brilliant and disturbing—the kind of film that will “scare straight” anyone who’s not on the right side of the law, and will make you realize just how depraved people can be.
Secondly, I have never seen any other Herzog flicks, so I cannot compare and contrast his entire oeuvre. This review is solely based on what I saw in Bad Lieutenant (POCNO).
Enough with the disclaimers: on to the review!
As stated above, I found Bad Lieutenant (POCNO) to be a majorly flawed flick. There are plenty of reasons for this, but perhaps the most egregious was the simple fact that the “bad guys” just weren’t bad enough. I mean, you’ve got Xzibit as the main baddie, a drug dealer by the name of Big Fate. All I could think, throughout the film, was “Why don’t you go ‘Pimp My Ride,’ fool?” Sorry, Xzibit, but you just can’t convince me you’re a bad-ass when I’ve seen you making snide remarks about peoples’ jalopies.
But even if Xzibit was just hugely miscast, the real problem here was Nicholas Cage, who couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag on a good day, and certainly isn’t “bad lieutenant” material in my book. For one thing, I didn’t believe that his jumping into a pool of water somehow screwed up his back enough to require vicodin for life, nor that he went from vicodin to coke in 6 short months. Maybe I’m naïve, or maybe I’ve seen too many episodes of House, but it seems to me that it takes a little more trauma and a little bit longer to become a full-on dope fiend, to the extent of stealing rocks from the evidence room and scoring off junkies that you’re arresting.
Even leaving that plot quibble aside (which is really more a script issue than the fault of Cage himself), the things this “bad lieutenant” does aren’t terribly shocking. I mean, yes, he does cut the air supply off of an elderly woman for long enough to make her gasp for breath, and yes, he does a boatload of coke, but this is all just junkie behavior, not “bad lieutenant,” seriously crooked cop stuff. He’s trying to score at any cost; we get it. But the dude doesn’t even kill a single person, and more importantly, the hammer never really comes down on him. He doesn’t ever get caught. And [MAJOR PLOT SPOILER AHOY!] he’s even promoted to the rank of captain; how ironic! Or, it would be if we couldn’t see it coming a mile away. How is it that all the stars continue to line up for this schmuck, no matter how outrageous his behavior, and even though his gun and badge are taken away? Pure luck, mostly. Where’s the moral in that?
While I don’t believe that all films must have morals, I kind of thought that was the point of this one. I mean, he’s a BAD LIEUTENANT! Isn’t he supposed to get his come-uppance? Isn’t that the idea of the film? Or, if not, shouldn’t all of the police force be crooked, to demonstrate just how out of whack New Orleans really is, post-Katrina? Furthermore, why is this movie even set in post-Katrina New Orleans? What makes it any different than anywhere else in the world? There isn’t a single reason to believe this movie couldn’t have taken place anywhere else in the U.S., and to me, that’s a huge failing. There is plenty to be said about post-Katrina New Orleans, and Herzog gives us nothing.
Unless you count that bullshit Cage gives his girlfriend about digging up a silver spoon as some kind of a commentary, which I don’t.
Werner Herzog doesn't know diddly-jack about New Orleans
As mentioned in the beginning, Werner Herzog clearly doesn’t know diddly-jack about New Orleans. He has obviously never lived there, hasn’t dealt with the aftermath of Katrina personally, and doesn’t seem to have any clue about what it may have been like either before or after that fateful storm. What local flavor do we really get, aside from a dying croc in the middle of the road? A friend of mine was particularly angered by this film, having lived in the city both before and after, and having witnessed the devastation, the poverty, and the crime first-hand. He says it’s a great place to set a film about a bad lieutenant, and there are plenty of points to be made, but Herzog passed them all by.
If you’re going to make a movie about New Orleans, then go to the city and live there for six months. Talk to people who were there. Get witnesses to tell you about the looting, the flooding, the rapes and murders and full-on KKK-style racism. That kind of thing is real, and sadly enough, a lot of it has nothing to do with the devastation Katrina caused; it’s simply endemic. Herzog’s film is a Disney story about a guy who gets away with everything but murder. And to what end? What’s the take-away message? That everything’s fine and dandy in New Orleans unless, god forbid, you’re a foreigner who has to sell drugs to get by? Nonsense. New Orleans is far more screwed up than that, and the fact that Herzog didn’t even scratch the surface is more than disappointing, it’s embarrassing for a filmmaker who has never backed away from showing audiences gritty realities and uncomfortable truths.
Show us the hard truth, Werner, or don’t even bother making movies at all.
I’ve been trying to write the last installment of my “V for Vixen” column for the Hour. Basically, the deal is that they want to put two shorter columns in the space my column currently occupies. I’m not being laid off, exactly, as I was offered the opportunity to pitch another shorter version of the column (or an entirely different column) for one of those spaces, but I felt it was time to move on. I’ve been writing Vixen since October of 2007, and while I am still definitely interested in continuing to write about sex, love and relationships, I think I do need a different venue for those explorations.
I also need a break. I’m burnt out, and I feel like the things I’ve been writing lately haven’t been connecting with audiences very well. That’s probably because they’re not quite the things I’ve been wanting to write. How do you write about sex without being purely titillating? How do you write about sex in an intellectual way, without alienating over 90% of your readers? How do you share personal stories without over-sharing? What’s the point of sharing personal stories, anyway, if the only comment you receive is from some asshole who just wants to tear you down and make you feel bad about having written anything to begin with?
These are all challenges, not just for sex columnists, but for writers of all kinds. But I do think that sex writers are more easily pigeonholed than others, and that’s another source of frustration. Just because I write about sex does not mean I’m horny, easy, cheap, or morally bankrupt. It doesn’t mean I am a bad person, or that I was abused as a child. It doesn’t mean that I’m a sex worker, or that I want to fuck you. It doesn’t mean anything, really, except that it’s a subject I like to write about. Sometimes it’s fictional, sometimes it’s factual, but regardless, it’s me.
I can’t really escape the fact that I write about sex, that I’ve written about sex, that I will in all likelihood continue to write about sex. If that means people don’t want to hire me, so be it. I’ll go work somewhere else. And maybe that’s a good idea anyway, because writing about nothing but sex gets pretty old pretty quickly. It’s interesting, but I am also easily bored by routine; I like learning new things and finding new topics of interest.
So right now I am applying to get into graduate school, because I’d really like to write a novel. I have been starting and stopping novels for years, ever since I did my first NaNoWriMo, and I’m really bummed that I missed this year’s monthly writing marathon. I would like to write a novel, to edit a novel, to really and truly finish a novel, and see it go to print. If I get into this MFA program, that’s the goal. So I’ve got to finish up my writing samples and have those in by December 15.
I am still trying to find the right words for my last Vixen piece, because even though it’s kind of an ending, it’s also just the beginning. I don’t know where I will be writing, professionally, for the next little while, but I’ve still got Black Heart for all my filth and perversions. Check it out, if you haven’t already, and let me know what you think.
In the meantime, my last Vixen column is slated to run on December 17. Farewell, Vixen. It’s been swell.
First, some disclosure: I have never seen the original Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Keitel and directed by Abel Ferrara, but according to my husband, it’s both brilliant and disturbing—the kind of film that will “scare straight” anyone who’s not on the right side of the law, and will make you realize just how depraved people can be.
