Freeloading Gluttons for Punishment …
… Or why writers write for free

I’ve been matchmaking pen with paper since I was knee high to a cactus, and for almost as long I’ve been whoring myself out as a working writer in Los Angeles.
My brethren at the WGA should whip me with a No. 2 pencil, or perhaps, in Web 2.0 world, inflict upon me a cerebral hemorrhage with a computer keyboard upside my noggin. The lost income I’ve suffered since college, when I left the confines of academia and a promising albeit minimum-wage paying career as a sports reporter for the hand-to-mouth existence of an ad agency copywriter and a freelance journalist, is most likely Exhibit A in my inability until just recently to pay off my student loans.
If I ever have children, I’ll have but one piece of sage advice: DON'T EVER become a writer.
The greatest scribes are alcoholics. Now that I think about it, so are the untalented. Attend your local high school basketball game, at least the competitive ones, and from 19 feet, 9 inches you’ll be able to target the bed-headed, mumbling-to-himself newspaper reporter from the otherwise normal crazed high school hoops fan.
Yup, he’s (or she in today’s ethno-sex equal, smoke- and booze-free newsroom) the one wearing the holey, all-area football camp T-shirt beneath the 1976 faded-red Garfield High windbreaker and Birkenstocks over wool socks. Hopefully he remembered to wear pants amid reciting the 10 best quarterbacks during the 1991 season – in Tulsa, Okla. – and telling anyone within earshot why Banning will go all the way this year and how in disarray the Roosevelt girls volleyball team was this season.
He could never be mistaken for an actual athlete. Basically he’s a junkie but a lot less cool.
Then you have your music reviewer, who probably is on drugs or at least wants people to think he is. You can usually spot them at the club, undoubtedly channeling beatnik down to the black turtleneck and horned-rimmed glasses, swaying to the beat almost disapprovingly with hands jammed in his trench coat pockets. No one would blame you for thinking he was fingering the hidden candy of his next intended victim, but he’s most probably stroking his member – that being his trusty tape recorder. After the show, you’ll spot him chain smoking and waxing on about post-punk debauchery in minor E and 1990s grunge band Failure’s “Fantasic Planet” as early dialogue about the crushing weight of capitalism and the resulting slowly implosion of America.
Let’s no mince words. He’s a groupie, though his orgasm comes at the conclusion of 1,000 bombastic clauses describing varieties of music theory stolen from the pages of Rolling Stone. He reads like a piss poor philosopher..
As they say, those who can do, and those who can’t write. And worse, yet, many times we write for free.
But more to heart of the problem with writing is that welfare can seem a step up the social ladder to a new college graduate when compared to making your living for the next 50 years with the written word. Few jobs pay less upon graduation this side of unclogging toilets. But hell, even plumbers have knee-capping Mob-owned unions in their corner. Writers have the WGA, which is poised to finally collapse in its “negotiations” with the big studios on revenue sharing from, among other things, the Internet and reality TV.
Not that it’s there fault. They are writers after all. If they had true talent, they’d be reciting the lines in the script rather than writing them. They’d have the Italian Mafia in their corner, not the gay Mafia.
Us poor writers, unshaven and living hand-to-mouth as we drive to work in cars with oxidized paint jobs that fart screeches and engine knocks alongside suits in leather upholstered BMW 7 Series. We’re all going to the same office, mind you. The only difference is the suit gets the personalized parking spot in the covered parking garage, while we hike six blocks and play Frogger dashing across the boulevard only to return 12 hours later with a paycheck 1/1,800th the size of normal people. And our car, if you can call it that, is newly anointed with a $65 parking ticket or, worse, the boot.
So you wanted to become a writer, eh? Bollocks.
That’s what the WGA has fought for. Unfortunately, for every Academy Award or Pulitzer winning writer there’s a hundred thousand others living paycheck to paycheck. What’s worse, like chasing the dragon is to the heroin addict, writers will spit out volumes on spec or agree to non-paying gigs in exchange to free admission to The Viper Room in the hopes someone somewhere will notice our art and snatch us from clutches of poverty.
And there’s a plethora of predators out there under the guise of “e-zines” and blogs. Visit Craigslist and try searching for Writing and Editing gigs. You’ll find dozens of sites and schemes to lure penniless writers into freely submitting art reviews or, worse yet, handing over their scripts amid promises of “networking with professionals” and “getting your foot in the door.”
Yet we continue to write, no matter the fraudulent offers, the names we’re called or how bad we smell because our water’s been turned off and we’ve resorted to “showering” with used sheets of fabric softener. (A word of advice: you, too, can put to good use to those samples of cologne glued to the fashion magazine ads. Just be wary of the paper cuts.)
But then again, Van Gogh was a pauper and cut off his ear. It’s rumored he did so because he went crazy for the lack of appreciation from his peers. But most likely he found a guy who paid him a couple of bucks for it.
Then there’s the rare yet alluring tales of writers who were this close to vanishing into debtor’s prison – or putting a bullet in their brain and their brain all across the wall – only to hit it big. I often recall the story a friend of mine from one of those big studios told me about the guy, or at least one of them, who wrote “The Net” with Sandra Bullock. The week before Columbia Pictures snatched the script, he was supposedly washing his clothes outside with a garden hose and Dawn. I suspect it was actually a bottle marked “Dish Soap” purchased – or filched – from the 99 cent store.
So, us writers put our head down and trudge on, reminding ourselves it is truly an art form to be able to pump out 1,000 beautiful words woven into a stirring narrative in a mere 15 minutes, even if we net only 15 cents of free parking for the effort.
Still, somehow, we live on. I like to think it's the Irish whiskey that fights off infection, but us writers shuffle on in search of our Walden Wood, in search of that one perfect muse that will uplift us onto a throne of public acceptance.
We like the punishment. And we’re also all slightly crazy, and most of us are still trying to even get accepted into the WGA. And if that doesn't work out, we always have the local basketball game.

Another Candle Snuffed Out

It’s no joke when someone dies and even less so when the life claimed is that of a star that shone so brightly if also misconstrued on the silver screen as in real life. Heath Ledger was such a man.
While adroitly unassuming, freakishly quiet, even, for a Hollywood elite, there was something everyman about him. He surely had balls, as he almost literally showed – and fortunately didn’t – in the cowboy-love drama “Brokeback Mountain,” and which he will definitely display posthumously in this summer’s upcoming “The Dark Knight." It instantly intrigued me when I first learned he would test his chops by revitalizing the role of Jack Nicholson’s “The Joker." What a risk. But he was all about taking them, which in the end robbed his life.
But he unequivocally made it his own. The leaked trailers show as much with Ledger sending chills down the backs of Batman fans young and old alike. True to the new more lurid iteration of the DC Comics classic, Ledger is nothing short of a maniac as he distorts any resemblance to Jack’s campy characterization and then creates his own nefarious moment.
It’s a shame in this day of Britney, Lindsey and Winehouse that one of the seemingly genuine good guys is gone, his life was snuffed out by a seemingly direct result of his art rather than a trapping of it.
Everyone who knew him said they didn’t see it coming. It’s not like Ledger was one of the jet-set sucking down Cristal and cocaine like it was going out of style. Rather he spent his days away from the set with his young daughter in the bohemian section of Brooklyn he called home. But even that special love couldn’t keep him from apparently falling victim to his own brilliance as he reportedly overdosed on sleeping pills, a habit formed during his role in last year's "I'm Not There" about Bob Dylan and then gripped him during the shooting of "Batman Begins 2." He reportedly told people that the his method acting so affected him that he could hardly sleep a night.
A demon claimed him much different than the usual Hollywood affliction. And we’ll all suffer for it.

Boiling Point

Two days later, the odiferous temptation lingered on me like a slip hugging the tasty curves of a buxom brunette model. Pungent best described the scent, as it invaded my clothes, my hair, and I breathed garlic like a medieval dragon. It drove me wild, making my watering mouth a virtual Niagra Falls.
I had a case of Devil Fingers, and, boy, was it good to be this bad.
Actually, by all estimates, I consumed a healthy dose of high protein, low fat fruit from borne from the bottom of the sea. Shellfish, among a few other things, is my guiltiest pleasure. And you can still love yourself when looking in the mirror the next morning.
A friend and I had visited a must if you live in the greater Los Angeles area, and you love all things crustaceous. The Boiling Crab is a chain with several locations mostly smattered in densely Asian-populated areas, namely Garden Grove and Alhambra. And, as I learned on their web site, the ext time I’m in either Dallas or Houston, you need not guess where I’ll be visiting to discover if truly everything is bigger, and spicier, in Texas. The chain actually got its start there in Seadrift, a tiny crabbing town in the southeastern part of the state.
Try this big daddy Cajun menu on for size: 2 pounds of shrimp, with the heads attached, of course; a pound of Alaskan King Crab legs; a whole Dungeness Crab, complete with those “Devil Fingers,” or the lungs served boiled in garlic and served in see-through trash bags. Throw in a helping of boiled potatoes and corn on the cob, and with the tagline “You gonna suck what?”, how can you go wrong?
The menu is not extensive but powerful. There’s also oyster on the half shell at either six or a dozen per order, crawfish, blue crab (seasonal), catfish, gumbo, Cajun fries, Cajun hot wings. And choose your poison, from regular seasoning, which is basically the fish itself, to medium to hot. The latter is not for the faint of heart.
Perhaps best yet, the Boiling Crab has a great, down-home atmosphere, to boot. If a cramped strip-mall storefront a stone’s throw from a Vietnamese coffee shop in Westminster isn’t your style – and if you’re a straight male over 18, trust me it is – sample the decidedly more crab house surroundings in Alhambra about northeast of downtown Los Angeles. But whichever you choose, prepare to wait. Open seven days a week, the Boiling Crab always has a line, from opening at 3 p.m. until the kitchen closes for the evening at a quarter ‘til 10 at night. Not only for the good food but the extremely reasonable prices. A pound of Alaskan King Crab legs produces at least a half dozen meaty stems at $14.99.
The beers are cold, premium and also cheap – Newcastle is $3 a bottle – and the staff is friendly and willing to shoot the shit on everything from the game on one of the newer restaurant’s flat screens or the tunes playing on the jukebox.
Just prepare to get gluttonously dirty, but if you're on a date be sure she (or he) can handle you. Very probably you'll send your co-workers fleeing to another part of the office the following morning. That’s almost worth the experience in itself.

Visit the Boiling Crab to find out more.

An Unsolved Mystery of Life

It must have been July of 1992.
I was either this side or that of 18, and it was a lazy, thrilling summer after the measely book of high school snapped shut, thank God, and the next stop on the train of my life was set to leave the station: college.
I'm guilty of already dating myself, and I'm not talking about my frequent -- or infrequent of late -- fits of masturbation. Basically I'm no spring chicken. I have a growing bald spot, actually three, the ratio of body hair to man skin is appallingly becoming unfavorable, and I actually remember the TV series "Unsolved Mysteries." When I was even younger, I liked to turn off all the lights in my house and freak myself out with the theme music.
There was indeed a strong pulse of life beyond daytime reruns on A&E as it was a very popular show throughout the 1980s and into the early grunge era.
I want to say it was a Wednesday night, because that's when "Unsolved" aired in prime time. And don't even ask I how can forget deadlines at work but I've held on to that little nugget of useless info. Narrator Richard Stack, perhaps best known to my generation and subsequent ones for his deadpan character Rex Kramer in the 1980 farce cum cult classic Airplane!
The specifics escape me, but one of the vignets that evening centered on a young, single expectant mother in 1950s or 60s Los Angeles. It was a story that has played itself out millions of times ever since. A middle class woman out in the real world for the first time got knocked up, the father split and now she didn't know what the fuck to do.
Back then such ill-conceived inconveniences were swept under the rug. Many of the young women were sent by their embarrassed and disappointed families to convents. There they'd live out their final trimesters along side an order of nuns. The sisters would care for the woman, she'd work for the church to pay her way and then once the kid was pushed out it would be put up for adoption. The mother would go back to her "normal" life, the child would be raised by others and everything would fall back into honkydoryville.
My mom was in and out of the family room doing something, and the show broke for commercial. In the blink of an eye, she was kneeling on our brown shag carpet next to me as I lay in my favorite cranny of our L-shaped, beige 1970s plush sofa.
Tears were in her eyes.
She proceeded to tell me how much she loved me and if I was disappointed in her.
"What the fuck?" I thought. Here comes some pre-college gush session.
But no, the next thing out of her mouth fell onto my lap and left me in a vacuum of incredulousness. Somewhere out there, she said, I had a brother. My very own mother, Ms. Catholic Woman of the Year and that lady who everyone she meets instantly loves to death, admitted to me she was hardly the saint she was made out to be. She had found herself in a very similar predicament as the woman on "Unsolved." She, too, had been sent to a convent to wait out her very own D Day. She wondered aloud where her first little boy was. I think she told me he is seven years my senior.
That would make him now about 40.
At that moment, I viewed my mom as a human for the very first time.
She loves movies. She's the kind of person who kept scrapbooks of stars when she grew up. She still has them. They're really quite amazing, and a bit creepy if you ask me.
But for this reason I'm going to insist she watch a movie. She's the kind of person each year as the Golden Globes and the Oscars roll around who tries to catch up on the year's best. For that reason she must see "Juno."
If you haven't yet seen it, see it. If there's one thing religious to me it's not spoiling the plot of films, especially very good ones. But I think it's no secret by now that Diablo Cody's screenplay deals with teen pregnancy. While my mom was in her mid-20s when she had my brother -- that still seems so frickin' weird for me to say -- I think it would resonate with her so many other women.
I tend to dislike sappy, happy endings because it's so the antithesis of the plethora of crap, hate and shitty things in our world, but "Juno" is funny, thoughtful and dorky. It makes sense.
And it makes me wonder who my brother is. Where is he? Is he married with kids? Does he have the same male-pattern baldness I have? My big ears? Is he also a big dork?
I hope so, but to this point it all remains unsolved.

New Hampshire Dreams

Like Ma Bell I've got the ill communication. The hook from rap group A Tribe Called Quest should be the tag line for the national press covering the presidential election process this winter, or at least the official campaign theme song. Because it's starting to make me sick.
Why can't it just be over, already?
Except for perhaps the ongoing Roger Clemens "did he or didn't he?" steroid saga, no other news story this side of Britney Spear's meltdown has the nation, the world even, as riveted as who will be the next leader of the free world. It really doesn't matter who I would prefer, though I will admit he's half-black and, I believe, the embodiment for the causation of real change in Washington, D.C. But that's beside the point.
I've never been a Johnny-Come-Lately when it comes to most anything, especially politics. For some reason, call it a premonition, but I have the uncanny knack of calling it like I see it early on in a race. Later I sit back and say "I told you so." It's like my personal "Inland Empire."
It happened with Bush 43 and can be traced as far back as Jimmy Carter's upstart defeat of President Gerald Ford in 1976. Not to say there was a lot of drama remaining before the fat lady sang.
Proof in point: New Hampshire. The second primary state following Iowa as the national dipstick for gauging who the finalists could be. The winners would have all the momentum for the next battle in South Carolina. John McCain took the GOP side, and the Hillary Clinton took the Dems race.
But what pisses me off to no end is that the media failed to report that despite taking a slight majority of votes, Clinton and Obama share the same number of delegates. Actually Obama has a slight lead. A true look at the current delegate race does show Hillary with a big lead, but that's due to the number of government officials who have given her their support. There's still some 2,500 points out there to be grabbed.
So what did she win, really?
And really, besides my horse, and mine is really the only one that counts -- hey, you can get your own blog and don't you dare get racial on me -- what other options do we really have this go-round?
A two-bit actor who has about as much substance as a cracker, forgive the pun. A lot was made of Fred Thompson's entry into the GOP race over the summer, but thankfully he never quite caught on. Then there's Arkansas' Mike Huckabee, another backwoods hick -- and I can say that because my family hails from Tennesee -- who honestly, at least in public circles, believes in the Adam and Eve story of creation over rational and proven scientific fact. Where's Finn to this Huck when you need him?
Then we have a Mormon and a thrice-married, cross-dresser. And don't forget the old man who took New Hampshire or that wacky Ron Paul, who's a great salesman but has yet to pack the punch of substance necessary to pull votes. And Dennis Kucinich is just plane mad.
On to the Dems, with their great white woman hope. Sorry Hillary but you're no Bill. John Edwards is intriguing and could actually find his way into the vice presidential office this second time around. Bill Richardson is just too far out there in the Badlands.
So who are you going to choose?
Sure, Barack Obama is a feel-good story but with limited experience. Much has been made about the lack of international chops from the junior senator from Illinois. Lest you forget, George Bush had merely his daddy's name, less than two terms as the governor of Texas, and don't forget ownership of the Texas Rangers, on his resume.
And look how good that's turned out.

Into the Great Unknown

I must preface by saying I'm only on page 112. An entirely unabashed fact to admit especially "Day 1" of a, ahem, novel purchase. Especially when remembering to have read somewhere that there is a finite number of pages one should endure before casting aside a capricious work of literature. Life, after all, is short.
Perhaps it was an online article of the MSNBC variety or a post by superstar librarian and author Nancy Pearl who said a good book should grab you in the first 50 pages. Either that or cast it aside for something more provoking, stimulating or whatever you're after.
Honest kids like me had no choice but to read the entire missive cover to cover, that is until the bad kids, and you remember them well -- if you're not one of them yourself -- introduced the saving graces of Cliff Notes. I actually used this shortcut only once in my not so illustrious academic career, I believe during my sophomore year in high school, but for the life of me I can't remember for the Dickens, no pun intended, what it was.
I rest my case.
Reading, otherwise known as the lost art of imagination, opens so many worlds that you can travel much farther than Jules Verne ever dared riding on the wispy pages of parchment. Take your pick: from the social commentary of
My current exercise takes me "Into the Wild," the account of the nomadic life and unfortunate, perhaps misguided, death of Christopher Johnson McCandless, so eloquently recited by renowned naturalist/journalist Jon Krakauer. As I sipped Seattle's Best in the research area of my local Border's, I was instantly carried away by the way Krakauer wove this individual, a disciple of Henry David Thoreau, Leo Tolstoy and Jack London, who despite his privileged upbringing and education made a conscious decision to reject all worldly possessions and follow his sense of adventure and the beauty of the raw Earth all the way to the Alaskan Yukon. The drama made a fine movie, so I've read and heard, but up until now I had avoided it. I'm seriously hope I am not spoiling the ending when I say McCandless would perish. But, then again, if you did not already know this you yourself are living under a rock.
I promised myself I would allow Krakauer to once again take my hand on a splendid adventure as he had many years before with "Into Thin Air" and his harrowing account of overzealous, even down-right cocky climbers attempting to conquer the highest point on Earth: Mount Everest. So, after what I calculate an hour and a half spent in Border's reading the first half dozen chapters and then nearly making my way through another in the wee hours of the following morning, I chomp at the bit to devour the final six chapters plus the epilogue before the rainy weekend can dampen my furtive mood.
As it dawns on my I'm more than half way through my journey to 207 pages, I can only imagine how this book, which has already made an indelible mark on my soul and my outlook on the world and my place in it, will transform me. How it will no doubt invigorate me.
So I read on.
Life is just too damned short not to.

Editor's note -- I finished Into the Wild the very next night, and it has prompted me to make some very big changes in my life. Stay tuned.