Naturist vs. nuturist: Lost column!

Happened to find this little “lost Honeymooners episode” floating around in cyberspace the other night, and would’ve included it if I’d found it when I was compiling the book last year.

   I’ve lived near the beach all my life, so I’ve had some experience with (I’ll say it the way they like us to say it) naturists.

   When many beach states tried to ban thong bikinis in the ’80s, I laughed along with everyone else, both at the effort and at the sight of the ol’ butt floss.

   I laughed even harder when a woman near me was arrested for nude sunbathing at a state park, and then returned a day later wearing only a thin copy of the Constitution. Guess where the Fifth Amendment was?

    So, what I am about to say shocks even me a bit. Here I write up at you, naked, wearing nothing but a towel.

    Actually, the towel is just for now. Later on tonight, I doubt I’ll be
wearing anything at all.

    It really hit me about a year ago, when that Alanis Morrisette song ‘You Learn,” came out. I know, I know, getting any inspiration from Alanis is suspect and makes me feel kind of weird, but bear with me.

    There’s a line in there that goes, “I highly recommend walking
around nude in your living room to anyone.”

   I thought, “Hmm, I might know a little about that.”

   There’s a certain something so intensely relaxing about sitting, walking, doing whatever in your living room in the buff. It’s not a sexual thing, as I know full well the difference between the naked and the nude. And the even bigger difference between the naked and the nekkid.

    Think about this for a sec: Just imagine how good it feels to take your shoes off after wearing them all day. Then, think how good it feels when your socks finally come off. Same kinda thing.

    A few years ago, I got into the habit of taking a shower
as soon as I got home from work because the pressure and the stress of
everyday business life was driving me out of my skin. Showers have always
had interesting effects on me. I still get my best ideas and do my best
writing (in my head) in the shower.

    Afterward, I usually was just too exhausted to go all the way to my
bedroom to put on sweats. I would get out of the shower, not bother
to put any clothes on and disappear into my bachelor-approved, ugly brown recliner and “Mystery Science Theater 3000” at 3 a.m.

    I’m not so sure that I’m a nudist. It seems to me that most nudists are closet exhibitionists, and naturism is pretty much a front for that. Same way that I might be a spiritual kind of guy, but you won’t catch me dead in a church. Or, maybe you will, actually. Don’t suppose I’ll have much to say about it at that point.

    All I know is that when I was just about to lose my mind, needing to
arrive at the silence of myself and stay there for a really long time every night after work, I was far more relaxed in my birthday suit than in my work suit.

    I don’t get the mail that way, I don’t walk the dog that way, I don’t
sunbathe that way, I don’t do the grocery shopping that way, I don’t drive that way, I don’t get the paper that way. I just, on occasion, write for the paper that way.

    I’m pretty sure I’m not alone. So, if you’ve ever wanted to experiment
with at-home nudism, here are a few tips.
-Don’t read in the nude. Paper cuts.
-Invest in a robe. People have a way of disturbing your meditation.
-Don’t buy white blinds. Get simulated wood grain ones. The TV at night is
just enough light to cast interesting silhouettes.
-No pizza. Imagine the horror the McDonald’s coffee lady went through.
Multiply it.

    Remember, you’re the one that pays your life’s rent. Don’t
let anybody tell you you’re perverted. Unless, of course, you are.

The other kids here in the Trailer Park

Getting ready for the Baltimore Book Festival this weekend, after successfully haunting the Brooklyn Book Festival this past Sunday (as a prelude to seeing the fantastic “Einstein on the Beach” by Philip Glass. Go see this if it comes to your city).

This year, the Codorus Press elves will have a little DVD player playing the book trailers for our three books, “Immaculate Deception” by Scott B. Pruden, “Don’t Be Cruel” by Mike Argento and “Acid Indigestion Eyes” by yours truly.

Gotta admit, the book trailer idea is still funky to me. Movie trailer? Yes. Love them. Even will just watch old trailers for fun. Well, I guess I just made the argument for book trailers.

Readers do seem to watch them. I just fear, like Papa Vonnegut, that it puts us another step closer to being gestational movie producers. Guess I can’t help it. I should know, being a writer on generational issues, that I’m a product of the TV/movie generation no matter what I wish.

That said, check out the freshly minted book trailer for “Acid Indigestion Eyes.” And share with your friends.

P.S.  Free copy of the uncorrected proof of “Acid” for the first person who tells me where the title of this blog came from …

Your end-of-summer gifts

     It’s over. It was nice while it lasted. But Summer’s Almost Gone. And so goes my little summer vacation from the book, and the blog, and by extension, you. Don’t take it personally. It was me, not you.

Here, let me try to make it up to you. “Acid Indigestion Eyes” is free for Amazon Kindle users for the next 3 days, Sept. 4 through Sept. 6. Almost 1,600 people took advantage of the deal last time, and actually pushed the book to the top 10 on the humor chart! So, if you didn’t get one then, get one now. This’ll be it for freebies for awhile. Full report TK in a forthcoming blog.

Incidentally, you’ll have lotsa chances to grab it in person over the next few months. It’s book fair season! I’ll be in Baltimore at the end of the month, then I’ll be speaking on some roundtables at Frostburg State’s annual Indie Lit Fest, and at the insanely top-quality Chestertown Book Festival the first week of November. I expect to be haunting the Brooklyn Book Festival and Miami Book Fair International, as well.
But first, one more little gift. For you music lovers out there, here’s my personal definitive Generation X anthem, with The Shockers.

Land of the Free

At first, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense. You spend a few thousand hours (and you can go ahead and value each of your hours) writing a book, getting it designed, printed, distributed, and somebody tells you it’s a good idea to give it away for free. FREE? It’s hard enough to think with a business head when you’re a creative type. How is that possibly a good business model?

But, there’s plenty of good evidence that giving your book away can be a great business move. First, pull back and take the longview. Conventional wisdom says it takes an author five books before he or she has a core audience built. If you’re on book one, chances are your audience has been extremely low. Even the best-handled first novels sell in the 2,000 to 5,000-copy range, and that’s on a major press. So, not counting however many review copies went out, that’s probably about 5,500 eyes at best.

Writing buddy Scott B. Pruden mounted an Amazon giveaway for “Immaculate Deception” a few weeks ago, and it was downloaded more than 6,000 times. Plus, Amazon actually paid him per book. Plus plus, it spurred people to start buying the book, and his sales have gone up 1,000 percent over previous months.

Plus plus plus, for a brief, shining moment, Scott was No. 2 on the Amazon Sci-Fi best-sellers list. He’s currently in the top 25 in satire, three weeks after the giveaway. Can’t take that away from him. He’s now a best-selling author.

So, I’m taking his lead. “Acid Indigestion Eyes” will be free all weekend for the Amazon Kindle. If you’ve been wanting to read it, now’s a great time. Free’s a great price, right? Hell, I hardly ever pay full price for a reading copy of a book. Inscribed to Allen Ginsberg? Different story.

Get it while you can, tell your friends, and help me get to book two.

 

Some e-book love

“Acid Indigestion Eyes” got some love from www.addictedtoebooks.com today. Check it out on the front page. And dig how that cover pops out from the pack (if I do say so myself).

Trailer Park II

In last week’s Sugar Bear post, I slyly slipped in what is the second of the trailers for “Acid Indigestion Eyes.” I’ll be doing a few of these NPRish, podcast-style videos for YouTube in the coming weeks.

Book trailers are one of those things that I really didn’t think were useful when I first heard of them. Movie trailers, yes. But book trailers? How do you do a trailer for a book? I’ve come around a lot since my trip to BEA last year, when the book trailer buzz was really building. I’ve seen some pretty great ones with real cinematic feel. Check out Scott Pruden’s trailer for “Immaculate Deception.” We’ve talked about how somebody should option ID and go blockbuster. Now, after seeing Scott’s trailer, it seems like so much closer to a reality, somehow. Hopefully, he’ll be able to do the indoctrination video for the Church of the New Revelation that he’s been writing a script for. And hopefully, it’ll go viral.

It’s not as cinematic as Scott’s, but here is trailer No. 2. “The Chocolate War.”

 

 

 

 

 

Optimus, Prime

Anybody who has a Kindle with Amazon Prime and is interested in having a look at “Acid Indigestion Eyes,” the book is now part of the lending library. It’s also a 99-cent special to buy and have it as your very own, to love and hug and call George. Click on the book.

Sugar Bear was my hero

It’s one of the failings of my adult life that I didn’t come up with cereal milk. Momofuku beat me to that. Specifically Christina Tosi. Who, if she ever happens to see this blog, is invited any time, any day, to Karaoke with me.

Here’s my warped version of the cereal world by way of Biggie and Tupac. Special treat if you click on Sugar Bear.

THE CHOCOLATE WAR

Boy, am I glad to be an adult. Usually, you hear it the other way around – people wishing they were kids again. Uh- uh, I can do without reliving the nasty taunts, the pubescent fumblings between 3:30 and 5 p.m., the multiple stepmothers. Here’s a big reason why. Today, after years of politically correct cereals, the big cereal companies are going back to their sugary roots. Even better, their prime marketing ploys are being aimed at … drumroll please … ADULTS! Apparently, 60 percent of people who eat Frosted Flakes are over 18. Some of the adults I know could eat an entire box of Pops in one sitting without the milk (that would be me). I grew up in a dark era, when sugar suddenly became poison. Aerobics became exercise, noodles became pasta, and breakfast became bran muffins. Gak.

It was even worse for breakfast heroes. My personal hero, Sugar Bear, a true smooth ’70s icon on the level of Shaft, lost his entire identity when his cereal, Super Sugar Crisp, became simply Super Crisp. Suggie was out, and they brought in some Super Bear imposter, who didn’t have anywhere near the cool and charm of Sugar Bear.

The sweetness was sucked completely out of mornings. Sugar Pops became just Pops. Sugar Smacks were just Smacks. Sugar Frosted Flakes (of Corn) were no more. They became, simply, Frosted Flakes (of Corn).

The whole hierarchical cereal structure was coming down. There used to be three gangs – The Sugs, The Co-Cos and The Fluffs (marshmallow, of course). The Fluffs got through it all unscathed by staying Switzerland neutral. But The Sugs and The Co-Cos were desperate. Turf war time.

Don Tony (the Tiger) was losing face. He just went along with the new name, and most of The Sugs lost respect. Sugar Bear went east. Dig ’Em went to Cali. Soon, The Sugs and The Co-Cos broke apart, teaming up into two camps. Either you went with Sugar Bear, you went with Dig ’Em or you went sniveling for favors to Don Tony.

The only one making out really well was Dig ’Em. When Sugar Smacks became just Smacks, not only did he just learn to give a lot of high fives, the in-joke name of the cereal became the crunchies of choice for those with the munchies. Sugar Bear couldn’t even get into Studio 54. He was a has-been in a time when freaks were the norm. The second the owners saw that blue turtleneck on the velvet rope, it was insult time.

“Are you nuts? Nobody wears blue turtlenecks now. Nobody! Hell, you don’t even shave anymore! Look at you! Anyway, Dig ’Em’s already in here, and we don’t need another cereal jock. Get lost! … Allllllright, trannies! Need a few more trannies!”

Things got rough. Sugar Bear’s camp spent most of its time taunting Dig ’Em. Sug tried to start up his own cereal label, with Sonny (Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs) as his top choc. Next thing you know, Sonny gets popped in a crossfire. Then, Dig ’Em’s main man, Count Chocula, bites it at the Cocoa Train awards.

Meanwhile, it was the beginning of the Chocolate War for us real people. For nearly a decade, the closest that moms across the country would let you to a chocolatey cereal was the Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs in “Calvin and Hobbes.” Man, I could just taste that cereal every morning, reading that comic strip with my bran muffin and prune juice.

I always knew something wasn’t right. Soon, the joggers started dropping dead of heart attacks. Saccharin started killing lab rats. Nutra Sweet started giving you headaches.

Life is bitter enough without sugar. So bring on the Wheaties with sugar coatings! Frost the Mini-Wheats on BOTH sides! Cocoa on every flake! From now on, I’m not eating any breakfast that doesn’t turn my teeth brown. And nobody can say a got-damn thing.

Get some rhythm

For a couple of years, I was invited to speak at my university during its annual symposium on how to be a professional writer. My speech always included a segment on how becoming a musician can help you to feel the rhythm in your writing. You can even just get a set of bongos and learn how to keep the beat. So much good writing involves an undercurrent of rhythm. So, get some physical rhythm going and it’ll work its way onto your blank pages of fear.

Along those lines, here’s what I was working on last week instead of the blog. Hope you like it.

Deep background

Some of you might not be aware of what “Acid Indigestion Eyes” was before it was the wildfire-successful book that it has become. Back in the mid-90s, they were newspaper columns that ran on the wire. My unmet buddy Scott B. Pruden, author of “Immaculate Deception,”  used to read those columns in Camden, S.C., when he was a reporter, and used to cuss at the paper when he read me, apparently.

He most graciously wrote the foreword to “Acid.” Here it is in its entirety.

Remember, George, no man is a failure who has friends.

FOREWORD

What you hold in your hand – via either physical book
or electronic reader – is a time capsule of a generation
that no one really thought would amount to much.

It is full of reflections on the lives of people coming of
age in the shadow of another generation that was convinced
it was smarter, cooler and more culturally significant than …
well, pretty much any other generation before or since.

We, who this previous generation dubbed Generation
X, were regarded as lazy, shiftless, lacking direction or motivation
and had not one great movement or momentous bit of
social change to our credit. In the grand history of the world,
the Baby Boomers made it pretty obvious they thought we
were punks.

Spirits were high, optimism abounded and it seemed
like money was flowing everywhere that someone whispered
about a new online entrepreneurial venture. But for me, the
1990s are a timeline of a friendship that, when these columns
were written, didn’t yet exist.

First, a bit of background.

The Internet as we know it now was still in its infancy.
Blogging didn’t exist. What we had was its predecessor, the
newspaper column. The important difference between newspaper
columns and blogging is that while any bonehead with
a computer, an opinion and a modicum of skill can be a blogger,
not just anyone could get a newspaper column.

It helped to already be on the editorial staff of a newspaper,
because this was an excellent sign that you could already
read and write (not a prerequisite for bloggers, if you
hadn’t noticed). Because of the Internet, the early 1990s were
an odd time for newspapers. The suspicion was that if all news
could be delivered electronically, why would young people
ever want to pick up a newspaper again? And so, the frightened
50-something newspaper publishers sat down with their
40-something managing editors and said, “What can we do
to keep people in their 20s – this ‘Generation X’ – from completely
abandoning printed newspapers?”

Those 40-something managing editors turned to their
younger, slightly more hip and in-touch city editors with the
same question. Their answer:We must make the Gen X readers
know that we care about them, too. And thus was born the
Generation X column. It was in many ways a desperate, lastditch
attempt for newspapers to retain possibly the last generation
of new readers they would ever see.

Enter Wayne Lockwood. His column was syndicated
to hundreds of papers, which is how I first came to read his
musings in The State newspaper, based in Columbia, S.C.
The concept of a Gen X columnist deviated sharply
from that of the traditional columnist – usually an older white
guy who bloviated on local issues by repeating the work of the
staff reporters with a little opinion thrown in, or on national
issues by taking an unreasonable partisan stance and going on
about it for 600 to 800 words.

But Wayne was different. First of all, there was his column
mug – what civilians would call his photo.He looked like
a young Arlo Guthrie, all long hair and beard punctuated by
a friendly grin and topped off with glasses that were unfortunately
fashionable for men at the time.

Then there were the words. In my mid-20s (and a few
years older than Wayne) at the time I read his first dispatch,
I was stunned by how well he reflected the same crises of love,
work and life that I was facing. It was as if I were already listening
to a friend over beers.

However, as an aspiring columnist myself working at a
small-town newspaper in South Carolina, I couldn’t help muttering
under my breath as I read Wayne’s work, “That son of
a bitch. I should have his job.”

I continued to read Wayne’s columns and became a begrudging
fan, interested in hearing what he would have to say
about the things I knew so well.

At the same time, my competitive streak compelled me
to hone my own writing in an effort to approach the high bar
Wayne had set for me.

But in 1996, I took a hiatus from things Wayne after I
went west to work at a different newspaper. It wasn’t until returning
to the East Coast that I would again slip into his orbit.
It was about four months after I had started a new job as a
copy editor and designer at the York Daily Record that a
ponytailed interviewee rolled through the door, gunning for
a copy editor job on the sports desk.

He seemed cool and proved he would be a great addition
to the staff by doing impressive work and readily agreeing
to join us for after-deadline beers. But his name didn’t ring
a bell. Over the ensuing months I had talked with Wayne
about his career as a columnist and for some reason never put
the pieces together.

It wasn’t until months later, during another bit of after-deadline
socializing, that a switch flipped in my brain, and I
realized that the person with whom I had developed a growing
friendship was the same person whose columns I had read
a few years before. It came like a flash of boozy light, and I recall
expressing a sentiment similar to, “You son of a bitch …
I wanted your job!”

My envy by that point was only joking. But little did I
know that Wayne was not through pushing me. In the midst
of yet another after-deadline round of drinks, he first proposed
the idea for the publishing house that brought to market
my first novel and the volume you hold in your hands now.

As for the writing itself, it remains remarkably fresh
even in the face of all that has changed since the mid-1990s.
While our technology has changed significantly, what people
aspire to has not.

Though it might be via text message and Facebook,
20-somethings still fall in and out of love, wish they had better
jobs (or jobs at all) and wonder what the future holds.

For those of us who lived through the decade recounted
in these essays, they can provide a reminder of those
heady days when the world seemed to be changing for the better
and it was OK to be optimistic again. But rather than nostalgic
totems, it’s best instead to view this as a deeply personal
historical document – the record of one young man’s hopes,
dreams, yearnings, disappointments and triumphs during a
particular time in history.

For me they are all that, as well as a reminder of the
friendship that they spawned.

Scott B. Pruden
July 2011