Intentionally Bad Fiction

The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a contest that asks contestants to write the worst possible opening sentence to a hypothetical novel in several categories. It is named for Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote this gem:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents--except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness."

The site is here: http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/index.htm, but the good stuff, this year's results, are here: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/scott.rice/blfc2008.htm.

It's refreshing to read bad writing done intentionally, rather than intentional writing done badly.

New Escovedo

Alejandro Escovedo's "Real Animal" is out and to me it's his best yet. This guy has to be on the short list of the best American singer-songwriters around right now. He is musically original and a poet with words. "Real Animal" is autobiographical, covering Escovedo's musical and personal journeys with insight and honesty. Now if he'd just call me up to play guitar for him! Highly recommended.

Heavy Load

Jesus, just when you think there is nothing original in music, along comes Heavy Load, subjects of the documentary, "Heavy Load: A Film About Happiness". These guys remind us of what creating music should be about. See the documentary, listen to the music...try to let go of expectations and let it happen. And yeah, maybe they'll remind you about happiness. Good stuff.

Gertrude Stein : "Reflections on the Atomic Bomb"

This is a good, short read that can apply today to much more than the Bomb. Read it here.

Essay Contest Winner

I'm not much into the idea of entering "contests," (but then, I guess every fiction submission I make is a type of contest) but at the urging of my professor in Issues in Jewish-American Writing, I submitted a paper I wrote to a Jewish Studies Interdisciplinary Program essay contest and won. The paper, "Mending the Self: Second-Generation Survivor Narratives" considers second-generation Holocaust survivor narratives, using Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus and Thane Rosenbaum's Elijah Visible.

Spare time can be dangerous

So my friend / bass player / producer (he produced "Long Way Home") Fab and I decided to make a couple of entries for a new reality show about jingle writers (we really have no clue what the show is beyond that). To submit, we had to write two jingles of thirty seconds about fake products or companies (we had a list of choices) and do some kind video to accompany them. Regardless of the outcome, we had a total blast brainstorming and creating the stuff. Fab turned out to be an excellent jingle writer. So if you want to see what spare time becomes in our hands, take a look:


Or, watch it here: Friendship Air



Or, watch it here: Fruit It Up!

Second story chosen for publication

Got a call tonight letting me know I had misunderstood an email I recieved last week, but it's the kind of misunderstanding I like. The Northridge Review will not only publish "Text Messages That Came With the Cellphone" (see last post) in the fall but will also publish "return of the orchards." Rock! "return of the orchards" is an experimental fiction story I wrote for a fiction class and a story I grew to like as I wrote and rewrote. My instructor thought it shared some elements of Stein's "Tender Buttons", though certainly not the mastery of that work. "Tender Buttons" is an amazingly fresh read, considering it was written almost a century ago! At any rate, "return of the orchards" is irreverent and scatalogical...and what more can you ask?