Two Half-Drunken Years

This past Sunday was the 75th birthday of the world's greatest fictional character. Two days later, I mark a somewhat less momentous occasion for a somewhat less momentous creation: the second anniversary of this here blog-space.

My second year was not as fruitful as my first (a snap presidential election would help me out, if anyone knows how to get one of those off the ground), but there were a few good posts, I think. Right? No? Well, here are some highlights, anyway:

• That time Time told millennials, "nyeh-nyeh, I'm not touching you!" 
• The Student Loans Grotesque, a piece that was at least as disheartening to write as it is to read.
• When I unfairly tried to apply the D&D alignment chart to The Wire.
• Nine Billion Copies!, in which I brooded over the slow burn of self-publishing. I posted a spiritual follow-up on that theme a few weeks ago.
• On Anglophilia, a self-reflection. 
• My semi-insidery coverage of last year's asinine government shutdown (remember that?) and the follow-up about Washington receiving shit for the things the people's representatives do with their 90% reelection rates. 
• Bat-Affleck, my much-too-rushed appraisal of the Batman casting, which, as far as we know, might actually be the best part of that movie. 
• And my unrealistically optimistic attempt to reason with the get-off-my-lawnism plaguing a generation of child athletes. That one also got a follow-up.

What a strange, meandering year it's been. Let us never speak of it again. 

One last thing: aois21 publications--my new marketing guys--have themselves a Kickstarter campaign to expand their business helping self-published authors and launch a couple of journals. Go help them out, it'll be fun.

Read This And Get a Free Thing

A few quick items, while they're on my brain.

• I reviewed Doorman's pilot a while back. I said at the time that I hoped you could watch it one day. Well, now you can. It's here and it's good and it's ten minutes long. Come on, you don't have ten minutes? You have ten minutes. 
• In my bookmarks tab, I have a subfolder marked "Blog material." I've touched that subfolder probably twice since last April. On my more recent visit, I rediscovered the (increasingly popular) webcomic Strong Female Protagonist. It's one of the more interesting takes on superherodom going anywhere in fiction right now. The dialogue gets a little heavy-handed and moralizing, but I'm not in a position to criticize someone else on that point, am I? 
• Oh right, this is where I tell you to get your copy of Nos Populus. And then you can like it on Facebook. You know, if you want. No pressure.
• Back in September, I predicted a Denver-Seattle Super Bowl. I probably shouldn't get to brag about that, but this is the first time to my memory that I've successfully predicted both Super Bowl teams. Basically, I'm now qualified to be a sportsball expert guy. I should learn how to get paid for this. Anyway, most would stick with their guns, but I have no faith in my guns. Adjusting my previous pick, I'm calling: Seattle over Denver, 28-20.

So, that's it for now. Your free thing? I just gave you several. Were you expecting a car? That was never realistic. Part of you knew that, didn't it? But you had stuck with your fanciful dream. And now we're both unhappy.

So... Something Happened

Wow, it's been a while. I'd like to say that school is sapping all of my time and energy but that's not totally accurate. I should probably explain. You deserve that much.

I woke up in the hospital a couple of days ago. And I had no memory of the previous few weeks. Well, not no memory. Just a very... fuzzy one. I recall some faces and places, filtered through the dense fog of a particularly intense bender. Doctors said I had been in a coma after battling a particularly intense "fugue state," in which I was totally out of my own head. That explained the empty memory bank. They wouldn't go into details, of course. That's doctors for you: they'll go on in excruciating detail about your brain aneurysm or your clogged aorta or your unhealthy-looking genitals. But when you want to know what the hell happened, then it's all patient-confidentiality this and the-police-will-explain-further that.

That's about when the police showed up.

Turns out that, in my fugue state, I had... done some things. To storefronts, peoples' homes, city property. I maimed more than a few people; broken bones, mangled limbs, one poor guy's rectum will never work right again. Plus the emotional trauma. Witnesses described a miniature tornado. Cars tossed into buildings, police and firefighters swatted away like so many mosquitoes. It required a t-shirt cannon loaded with two-liter bottles of Dr. Pepper to take me down, apparently (they weren't sure why that ammunition was more effective than the t-shirts and rubber balls they had been using before; something about the sugary explosion, perhaps).

I'm being sued by at least a dozen different people and organizations. Best case scenario: they consolidate it into a single class action so I can save time and only end up out a few tens of thousands of dollars.

The officers asked if I had any memory of why I had done this. What might have initiated my fugue state (I wasn't aware that cops were in the habit of encouraging an insanity defense, but they were very nice gentlemen, given what I had done to some of their colleagues). And, truthfully, I didn't. One moment I was searching the Internet for some blog material, the next I was in one of those beds that jackasses like to move up and down, up and down (I only did it eight or nine times).

The last thing I really recall, with any kind of clarity, was stumbling upon that old Fanta commercial on YouTube. You know the one, with the impressively obnoxious song: "Wanna Fanta, don't you wanna, Fanta Fanta."

Then I... blacked out... and I don't know how or... or... blacked... wanna... Fanta... it's like--oh, oh God no... wanna FANTA WANNA FANTA!!!!!!

Or You Could Take Everyone With You

"To everyone who has ever emailed to ask me for advice on writing, my answer is: get a deadline. That's all you really need. Forget about luck. Don't fret about talent. Just pay someone larger than you to kick your knees until they fold the wrong way if you don't hand in 800 words by five o'clock. You'll be amazed at what comes out."
-- Charlie Brooker

But I use my knees every day.

Productivity's a funny thing. Too little and you feel like you've wasted a chunk of your life. Too much and you wind up tired and groggy, less capable of appreciating your production with an appropriately rested eye. It even makes weekends daunting: do I do something valuable or do I rest for the week ahead? Damned either way, aren't you? And three-day weekends do not solve the dilemma; they just give you more time in which to enact your bad choice. And don't you dare think about striking a healthy balance by doing some of both. I can see you working it out in your head right now. Just stop. Stop it immediately.

This is to say that I've started grad school. Hopefully that won't hold up productivity here too much. If I get some free time, it'll be between the wife, video games, and you lot.

... But What Can I Do?

Okay, fellow drunks, I'm out of here for a couple of weeks.

In the meantime, I recommend watching Charlie Booker's Black Mirror, a Twilight Zone-esque take on our abusive relationship with the television, computer, and smartphone screens that put us in touch the terrible world all around us. One episode has recently been optioned for a film by Robert Downey, Jr., so if you watch it now, you can say you were on board with it before it became popular State-side.

I'll write at you soon. And remember to Love Each Other. 

Doorman review

Full disclosure: I donated $20 to the Indiegogo for this project. I also stand to gain nothing from it's potential success, save some measure of pride. So take this review as you will. 

A person toiling much below the upper-middle class strata assumes a sponge-like experience, absorbing abuse and humiliation as an understood aspect of earning room and board on this cosmic rock of ours. Some among us use that fodder to fuel outside projects that, at bottom, provide a catharsis and a bonding point with our fellow drones. At the other end, a select few create something like art. Doorman is closer to the latter.

It's hard to do a spoiler-free review of a ten minute film. So if this seems short, there's the reason. The Doorman project is best understood as a pilot, introducing the world to the filmic version of Doorman's truly excellent blog, with more to follow, should the festival scene prove fair. The pilot is funny, stuffed with pathos, and even features a touch of redemption toward the end--the kind of minor, fleeting victory that provides working slobs with just enough energy to keep us coming back for more. Minor nitpick: that redemption comes a bit too easily. But within the time constraints, Doorman gives the story all the breathing room he can. The blog has too much material for a feature length, so one must temper expectations (and I would watch a three-hour epic of this).

In a world stocked with Sharknadoes and Adam Sandler's Fuck It, They're Paying Us Anyway 2, it's beyond refreshing to get a project that has a more than a few sprigs of heart thrown in. You can't watch it yet. But I hope one day you can.

Grade: A-

#Doorman Rises

Doorman (who you might remember from here) has spent the last few months working on a web series based on his tragicomic travails in the world of Doorman-ing. With a ferocious desire to escape his shit-tastic job and some generous Internet investment, he's recently wrapped on a pilot for the series. The trailer for that pilot is here, and it's pretty exciting.

I'm not totally sure what's next (ask him yourself), but I imagine it's film festivals, hype, a ten-episode deal with Netflix, coke orgies, a phase of being absolutely intolerable, burnout, back to Doorman-ing, and finally redemption.

Seriously: I'm ecstatic to see any talented and driven writer use their craft to lift themselves from the Everyday. We all need that reinforcement every now and again.

Cheers, Doorman.

Half-Drunken Anniversary

One year ago today, I began blogging into the void. Thanks, void.

I recently stumbled upon a nostalgia-soaked post of mine about the wonderful possibilities of dinosaur cloning.

If dinosaur fare isn't your bag (in which case: what kind of sick, twisted freak are you?), then you may prefer some of my more popular posts, including my semi-intimate take on Bar Rescue's confrontation with Piratz, my eulogy for Matt Groening's seminal Life in Hell comic strip, and my defense of D.C. statehood. If you like the political stuff, here was my endorsement of Obama, which pretty obviously cinched the election for him (go ahead, prove me wrong (no, don't prove me wrong, I couldn't take the humiliation)). And less political--but at least as important--was my recent attempted take down of that insipid Miller 64 commercial.

And I shouldn't forget the original purpose of this blog: Nos Populus. I've largely neglected my book here over the last few months. But it is available for Kindle and paperback. I still hope to get some other stores open shortly, perhaps even for Nook. Read excerpts here, here, and here. You can also read about the inspirations for protagonist James Reso and his sworn adversary President Dennis Ward, among other notable influences for Nos Populus, such as the War in Iraq and American University. See also my experiences with self-publishing my book.

Lastly, be sure to check back here for the first ever half-drunken short story, coming later this month.

Thank you, readers. Here's to one more year. And then maybe another after that. We'll see.

Goodbye, Mr. Destructo?

Mobutu Sese Soku was the CIA-backed President of Zaire from 1965 until 1997. Given his sponsors, his stomping grounds, and the length of his rule, you've probably already guessed that he was a sociopathic, murderous dictator, installed to keep the Commies at bay in central Africa.

A very different Mobutu Sese Soku was, until recently, a blogger of no mean repute, running the often great, occasionally transcendent, Et Tu, Mr. Destructo? before being raptured into the enviable air of Gawker, where he was billed as "America's Screaming Conscience."  He also boasted one of the funnier Twitter feeds that ever I did follow.

"I'M GONNA FUCK YOU UP, CHIEF!" — Joe Biden eating fistfuls of bbq Fritos from a BIG GRAB bag tucked by his crotch, watching Paul Ryan on TV
— Mobutu Sese Seko (@Mobute) August 11, 2012

I started reading Mobutu some time during his pre-Gawker days, when having my own blog still seemed to me like a waste of time. His almost free-form rants, routed in equal parts anger and semi-ironic detachment, were a strong sign that the spirit of Bill Hicks remains intact some place. He possessed a strong rotation of topics ranging from politics to sports to literature, and was armed with a reference window that would make Dennis Miller blush, if he were capable of shame. In my more self-conscious moments, I imagine Mobutu's voice tearing into my weaker posts, Something Awful-style, and I know I have to do better.

So his last piece for Gawker, in which he reveals himself as the mostly anonymous "Jeb Lund" and writes at gut-wrenching length about the damage the Internet can do to a person who deserves bad and receives worse, hit me pretty hard. In part because having this mystery lifted feels even more disruptive than the time my Sunday School teacher causally mentioned that there is no Santa Claus (not gonna lie, I always pictured him being black; Mobute and Santa, I mean). And in part for the very intimate reminder of what a terrible place the Internet can be. Mobute was forged in the fires of the Internet's most pitiless subforums and paid the price for his shenanigans there. His readers were generally unaware of that price, merely enjoying the caramelized fruits of what remained. Until yesterday. That's a reminder we could all use more often.

But I'm not so pained over the loss of his work, because we won't. This isn't the end for Lund's writing, it appears. Just of Mobute's. And, with luck, the start of something new for Lund. At the very least, Internet willing, we'll always have his archives.

Cheers, Mobute.

Bad Roommate

I've linked to Doorman before. But do yourself a favor and check out his real life, three part tale of roommate fuckery in Manhattan, featuring Smuttynose beer, rash decisions, legal threats, and Vitamin Water bottles filled with cigarette butts. It's the fizzle-out stories that are the most haunting, I think; they run counter to our conditioned expectation of the climatic encounter that's supposed to close every plot. When we don't get that encounter, it sticks with us.

Read Doorman's story. And, if you have a good roommate, find them, pull them close to you, and whisper into their ear that you are prepared to die for them, while softly hushing their protests of confusion.

Half-Drunken Blog Love

This post is just a blogger expressing his platonic love for some other bloggers.  Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

The Rude Pundit has been running one of the web's best liberal blogs for nearly nine years now.  His was the first blog I read even semi-regularly.  Somewhere in an alternate universe, where I'm a much more talented blogger, I'm still not as good as him.  His recent post about Mittens' campaign contains one of the most apt descriptions of the man's baffling lack of person-ability I've ever read:

Mitt Romney is not only not someone you'd want to have a beer with, but he's someone who, given the right circumstances and the right bar, you'd want to punch in the nose for being such a self-righteous cock.

The Doorman is one I've come across more recently, when he friended me on Facebook and started following me on Twitter as a kind of comedian-networking thing.  Not the sort of thing I usually go in for, but his work is funny and insightful enough (not to mention focused--what I would give for that kind of a consistency to my topics) to make it worth my while not to decline.  Declining a friend request, by the way, is a completely acceptable response to getting such a request from someone you don't know (wanting to decline someone you do know is another matter entirely).  This is not what someone recently did to the Doorman, who has now been blocked from friending anyone for thirty days.  So, you know: fuck you, guy who ratted to Zuckerberg. 

While I'm throwing blogs at you, you've probably seen Glove and Boots.  It's mostly dedicated to hyping their videos, so cut out the middle man and check out their YouTube page.  G+B is basically what Jim Henson would've been if he'd had the nerve to be balls-to-the-wall funny instead of safe and politely funny.  

Lastly, a friend of mine bakes some pretty goddamn delicious desserts--particularly the truffles.  She blogs about said desserts here sometimes. What's that, you think that truffles are gay?  First: no, in point of fact, they're not.  Second, even if they could be, so what?  They taste great.  Third: fuck you again, guy who I can only assume is the same douche who ratted on the Doorman.  Really, who else would be such a douche?  

Half-Drunken Housekeeping

The keys to the Fortress of Solitude fell into a sewer grate.  I'm going to have to fish them out before Superman gets back.  Dude is gonna pissed enough about this.

In the meantime, a few quick notes:

I've been spending the week talking up Nos Populus.  Excerpts, as always, can be found here, here, and here.  For more, check out the "Nos Populus" label below.  The Nos Populus Facebook page is here.  My adventures in self-publishing here and here.  I can also be followed on Twitter @IRobertsWriter. 

And, for unrelated fun, my most viewed post (by far, for some reason), about Matt Groening's Life In Hell. No, really, I know people say this kind of thing to sound modest, but I truly just rubbed that one out one afternoon and it took off.  As long as people like it, I guess. 

Back tomorrow with some more thoughts on self-publishing and why I love Patton Oswalt.

Going out for cigarettes, kids.

Alright, guys, I'm out of here for a couple of weeks.  Gettin' hitched and then away on honeymoon.

While I'm gone, make sure to check out my brief write-ups for Nos Populus, and all the excerpts, too.  If you like those, you may also enjoy the story of my self-publishing experience.  And, if you still want more for whatever reason, well, you might as well go order your copy of Nos Populus. 

I know I've been heavy on sports lately.  That's mostly because I find sports relatively easy to cover at a time when I've had too much on my plate as is.  Plus, the campaigns have (probably deliberately) been keeping quiet during this pre-convention phase and there'll be plenty of time to cover the election over the next 22 weeks or so (yes, really).  And as the summer rolls along, there'll be more book and movie reviews, as well (eight weeks until The Dark Knight Rises!).  And plenty more besides; inspiration is never a problem--time is. 

So until next month: take it easy.  Don't do anything I wouldn't do.  Or, you know, do.  I'm not your boss.

Pre-Gaming

I've never cared for the word "blog."  I mean, really, say it out loud.  Right now.  Blog.  Blog.  Tell me that's an attractive word.  My midwestern-cum-mid-Atlantic accent makes it sound like I'm trying to cough something up.  A Southern accent--drawing the "o" out into an "ah" or "aw"--might conjure an image of an ugly, if harmless, swamp creature.  Going Aussie makes it sound like a sort of minor infection.  I think the fact that anyone can say the word without either gagging or giggling says something about where we are as a culture. 

This is just about the word, mind you.  I have no philosophical problems with platform (obviously).  Even if I did, tough shit, this is just the way the opinion-shaping and promotional industries have shifted.  Oh, what's that?  "Promotional?"  Yeah, about that... I wrote a novel: Nos Populus.  Self-published it (a story for another time).  It's available on Amazon now, will be available for Kindle within the next week or so, and I hope to have some other outlets open soon, too.  I'd be lying if I said I'd have started this blog with or without all that as an incentive.  But I promise not to use this thing solely for the purposes of shilling. 

This blog, The Half-Drunken Scribe, is somewhere between a heartfelt project and a whim.  As such, I'm not totally sure where's it's going.  And I know that's probably the best way to make sure it never goes anywhere, but Nos Populus started the same way, so there.  Over time I'll write what I think and feel, comment on any subject that comes to mind.  Politics will show up, both as promotion for the book and because it's something I know well enough that can also get some readership (hello, page hits).  There'll also be literary and film discussion; I'll talk about Nos Populus (as well as any future novels).  Music, sports, current events, alcohol (the title will have a payoff, I promise).  Really, I'm willing to talk about whatever, so long as it helps entertains people who are bored at work and sharpens my writing.  If I get an audience, I'll write on almost whatever you want.  You'll inform the discussion and give me some prompts, for lack of a better word.  And if that audience goes one direction, I must follow them, for I am their blogger.

And maybe, together, we'll find a better word than "blog."