Professor Barnhardt's Journal

New site

2009-01-26T15:28:00.003-05:00

PBJ is now located here, so I can keep all of my sites under one roof (or at least try to). These archives will remain here however.

Tips For Winter Trips

2009-01-22T20:11:00.001-05:00

by Ken Levine

Traveling is a nightmare anyway, but during the winter it gets even worse. But fear not, blog faithful. Here are some suggestions for winter air travel:

Check the weather forecast. If it’s not 72 degrees and clear EVERYWHERE in the United States, reschedule.

Do not call the airline for a weather update. You’ll learn it’s cool and overcast in New Delhi.

Allow two hours before the flight, ten hours for the tarmac, two hours for the unscheduled fuel stop, and two hours to retrieve your luggage. And if you’re flying from LA to San Francisco, 45 minutes for the flight itself.

If you print your ticket on one of those self-help stations realize that the chances of it working are the same as five cherries coming up on a slot machine.

Best to print your ticket at home the night before along with the flight schedules of every other airline going to your destination, airport shuttle schedules, Amtrak schedules, and the 1-800 numbers for Ramada, Holiday Inn, Hilton, Marriott, Quality Inn, Best Western, and the YMCA.

Never turn in your rental car until it’s the final boarding call on your flight.

Never fly to, from, or around Chicago.

Always use skycaps. And if you choose to ever see your luggage again, tip.

Remember: “the white zones are for assholes in SUV’s only”.

You are allowed several little three-ounce bottles of something but not one three-and-a-half-ounce bottle of the same thing.

You might want to put that Astroglide into a nondescript little bottle.

Don't book connecting flights in the winter, even in Hawaii.

Don't buy furniture off the Sky Mall.

Don’t have children if you plan on flying anytime in the next fifteen years. Even if it’s one trip.

If they announce they’re overbooked and are looking for volunteers to take a later plane for free trips take it. The flight is going to be cancelled anyway. And you’ll have a jump at getting reservations at the airport Hilton.

Have your laptop, iPod, cellphone, iPhone, Gameboy, Blackberry, camcorder, transistor radio, electric razor, hand held fan, and pacemaker fully charged. Ten hours on the tarmac is a long time.

Upgrade.

Before you get on the flight take Airborne, water, Xanex, Oscillococcinum, Claritan, Ambien, and tequila.

Fake a limp so you can pre-board and guarantee there will be room in the overhead compartments for your stuff.

Bring your own DVD’s, music selection, food, blankets, pillows, reading light, water, magazines, newspapers, coffee, toilet paper. And just to be on the safe side, your own oxygen masks and floatation devices.

But it’s not a good time to catch up on the first season of LOST.

Play the drinking game. Take a swig every time you hear “we apologize for the inconvenience”. Not recommended for those unwilling to get completely shitfaced.

Drinking game #2: “We thank you for your patience.”

Don’t kid yourself. EVERYONE is flying “stand by”.

The scary part used to be the landing. Now it’s pushing off from the gate.

Beware of free Wifi hotspots in airport terminals. Hackers use these to break into your computer. Not a joke.

It’s quieter and smoother in the front of the plane. And screw what they say, if you’re in Coach and you want to use the bathroom go to the ones in First Class.

And finally, always remember: it’s NEVER the airlines' fault. It’s the weather, air traffic controllers, mechanical problems, baggage handler strike, FAA rules, homeland security, airport restrictions, lawmakers, the billy goat curse, lunar eclipses, and most of all -- the media.

Friday Quick Links

2008-12-12T14:50:00.003-05:00

Tomato Soup Cake. Mmmmmmm? [via Scrubbles]
Good interview with Tina Fey and her husband.
Roger Ebert vs. Ben Stein.
Fimoculous has the list of lists again this year.
The state of the cookie.
Bettie Page has passed away.
Bad Christmas commercials.
Good Christmas commercials.

The Election So Far: An A To Z Guide

2008-10-15T15:59:00.002-04:00

by Joe Lavin

A is for Alaska, no longer a forgotten state.

B is for the Bridge to Nowhere, which used to go to the 21st Century until it was diverted.

C is for change. Of what exactly, we're not entirely sure, but we know we like it.

D is for diner, a popular establishment in which crying is encouraged. Also, try their Belgian Waffle special.

E is for earmark, what we'll all give to McCain if we have to hear about them one more time.

F is for the fundamentals of our economy, the strength of which you may not have noticed while trying to fill your gas tank. Luckily, both campaigns agree that the fundamentals of our economy are at least fundamental.

G is for game changer. Ninety seconds after an event, it is always important to ask yourself if that event is a game changer.

H is for hope, Barack Obama's hope that the hockey moms don't beat up all the soccer moms, thus costing him the election.

I is for insider, now the dirtiest word in politics.

J is for Joe Six-Pack, who was probably watching the game rather than the debate.

K is for kitchen table, where late at night the most enlightened conversations are taking place. Well, not at mine, but apparently at everyone else's.

L is for lipstick, good for people or pigs, but not pit bulls.

M is for maverick, a word not mentioned this much on TV since the days of James Garner.

N is for the New York Stock Exchange. Thank God we have an election to distract us from all the depressing issues.

O is for oversight, which would be much more useful if it weren't so easily confused with hindsight.

P is for patriotism, alternately defined as "rich people paying more taxes" or "getting government off our backs."

Q is for question, which it is no longer necessary to answer in a debate.

R is for regulation which so many were against before they were for it.

S is for street, of which the only ones that apparently matter are Main and Wall.

T is for the tingling feeling that'll go up your leg when this election is finally over.

U is for unfiltered, a popular synonym for "no follow-up questions."

V is for Vladimir Putin, currently in a boat off the coast of Alaska, just waiting to pounce.

W is for W embedded in the White House.

X is for Ex-President, which he soon will be.

Y is for YouTube, the perfect place for all your slandering campaign needs.

Z is for zero, the number of times in the next three weeks you'll want to turn on your television for fear of seeing yet another campaign commercial.

Tuesday Quick Links

2008-10-14T23:20:00.002-04:00

Clever.
Jack Handey on the humor section.
Dick Cavett remembers Paul Newman.
A profile of Kenny Shopsin.
Spidercakes...mmmmmmmm.
Fascinating: The Living Room Candidate, a look at political commercials from 1952-2008.

Imaginary Athletics

2008-09-29T23:27:00.002-04:00

by Joe Lavin

Here's a little peek into my adolescent life. When going through boxes in my parent's house, I discovered a whole set of APBA basketball and football games that I used to play. For the uninitiated, APBA is essentially role-playing games for sports. With dice, player cards, a special board, and a complete lack of girls in my life, the thirteen-year-old me was able to create an imaginary sports world where the 1962 Boston Celtics could meet the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers in a best-of-seven series.

Now, of course, I am an adult and would never bother wasting my time with something as ridiculous as an imaginary sporting event. Well, except for fantasy baseball, because you know that's entirely different.

I even found the score sheets I had filled out. For example, those 1962 Celtics were able to beat the 1983 76ers 118-113 in game four to even up the series 2-2. Frank Ramsey of the '62 Celtics scored 34 points and was named the game's MVP. Yes, apparently I even chose an MVP for each game. I did remember to mention the part about not really knowing any girls yet, right?

I suppose this wouldn't be so bad, if I had played with a friend, parent, or brother. But I was an only child. As far as I can remember, I would play most of these games on my own, dutifully coaching both sides at once. Let's just say that it's a safe bet that Philadelphia was not quite as well-coached as my favorite team, the Boston Celtics. I don't know who ended up winning the best-of-seven series, but I wouldn't be surprised if Boston somehow won game 7 in dramatic fashion after the Philadelphia coach accidentally forgot to have Dr. J in the game during the final seconds.

Not surprisingly, the 1981 Celtics also seemed to be winning their series against the 1972 Lakers. Unfortunately, my entire tournament to discover the best basketball team ever could probably only tell you who the best Celtics team was, although as far as I can tell I never finished. Within all the papers, there was also part of a Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, so maybe I did discover girls before I was able to finish my imaginary tournament.

There were other finds, including a set of books about Dungeons and Dragons, which will come in handy in case I need to award any charisma points. I should point out here that, while I did play Dungeons and Dragons, it was only a short phase during seventh grade. I was just experimenting. I didn't like D and D, and I didn't inhale. And just because many of my high school friends were in the so-called "Adventurer's Guild" doesn't mean that I ever played at that point.

I do have to say that there is one good thing about Dungeons and Dragons: the 20-sided dye. You never know when you'll need to make a decision with twenty possible outcomes.

I also found several complete sets of baseball cards from the early 1980s, which would be worth a whole lot more if you hadn't also saved your complete sets of baseball cards from the 1980s. Next time, we should try collecting something that nobody else is collecting.
.
I have since learned that these cards are largely worthless now. There are just too many of them. You might as well throw all yours away now. I will too. After all, I wouldn't dream of convincing everyone to throw out all their baseball cards while holding onto mine, in the hopes that mine will become valuable once supply dwindles. That's just not my style.

I enjoyed looking through all this stuff, but really what's the point, you might be wondering. Well, inexplicably, the same box also contained a confirmation card for me from my Aunt and Uncle. Inside, was a very-crisp $20 bill from the 1980s that I had somehow never noticed. Sometimes, a trip down memory lane really does pay off.

Wednesday Quick Links

2008-08-20T13:02:00.002-04:00

Roger Ebert doesn't like 3-D movies.
More weird advertising from Burger King.
Earth's news feed.
Don Draper has a Twitter account. So do Joan Holloway and Peggy Olsen.
Wordle is cool.
I didn't realize The Hungover Gourmet had a blog.

Interview: Bruce Campbell

2008-08-04T12:39:00.012-04:00

by Bob Sassone

Bruce Campbell is an old friend of ours here at Professor Barnhardt's Journal and one of our favorite people. He has contributed to some of our special issues, and I interviewed him back in 2003. Bruce was nice enough to chat with me while filming the second season of Burn Notice down in Miami, where it's, well, really, really hot.

Hey! How is it living in Miami for filming of Burn Notice? I imagine it being very hot and very sticky, lots of tourists, with the occasional girl walking by in a bikini.

It's all that, but the evenings are spectacular and balmy, and there is almost always a breeze. Miami is as much as character in Burn Notice as any of us. It's exotic, old-fashioned, multi-cultural and all-American. It's a good setting for a show, because anything goes there.

So you seem to have a beer in your hand in every other scene you're in. What's really in those bottles? Water? Fresca? Real beer? Whose idea was it to have you drink a lot of brews?

The "drink" thing came with the role - that's who Sam is. To do it, we use colored bottles filled with good old water. In Miami, water has more value than actual beer, so it comes in handy on hot shooting days.

I heard you hurt yourself? Are they going to write that into the show?

I injured my hamstring while shooting. We will not be writing it in, just shooting around it while I heal.

Yes, I can imagine beer making one rather sick in a climate like that. So any secrets you can tell us about the second season? I mean secrets you can tell that that won't get Matt Nix on your case.

The secret of the second season is that the heat gets turned up a bit, so things are even worse for our dynamic trio!

That's a very sneaky way of not getting specific about the new season, So I noticed that one of the bad guys in season one, one of the agents watching Michael, was named "Bly." He wasn't after some magic orbs, was he? Was that just a coincidence or a wink to the audience?

You are asking me questions that only the writers can answer. I am not responsible - directly - for any of the "in" catch-phrases, but the writers may be giving their own nod.

Tell us a little about My Name Is Bruce, the plot, how long you've been working on it, when it will be released, etc. Sounds like it could be an unofficial Evil Dead sequel that could get fans off your back about another ED film.

Tons of info at my site.

So tell us something about Jeffrey Donovan and Gabrielle Anwar that fans of Burn Notice probably don't know.

Well, aside from Jeffrey's occasional Gout and Gabrielle's case of Lupus, they're just like everyone else!

Ah, I can't wait for that "very special episode" where we learn about Michael Westen's gout...

So how is it working on a weekly series again? Do you prefer it over doing movies, the steadiness of the gig? I think I heard you had to actually move to Miami for filming?

Like any gig, it has ups and downs. Good news: it's a great role on a successful show that I enjoy doing. Downside: the gypsy life. I miss my home in Oregon.

How did you end up in Oregon, anyway? It seems like a part of the country I'd like. Does living there mean you can't do some of the movies/tv shows you'd like to do because you're not in L.A. or are you at a point where you can do what you want and wouldn't want to give up that life anyway?

I love Oregon for obvious reasons: air that you can't see, water that you CAN drink.

I also like the fact that there are no phonies in Oregon. Most folks are the real deal there. My job is fantasy - I don't want it in my personal life. LA is full of freaks, liars and losers.

Work-wise, I won't let anything interfere with my quality of life, so it's more important to live where you want and make the work adjust.

So let's say there's someone out there who hasn't seen Burn Notice yet. Tell us in 50 words or less why their lives are lesser for it and why they should watch.

Burn Notice isn't the same old mish-mash of tired ideas. Matt Nix created a show that reveals the human side of spies, and yet they still kick ass every week. I like that it's not a cop show, a doctor show, or a lawyer show, but every week we deal with life and death situations, legal issues and old-fashioned "buddies" doing stake-out.

(Burn Notice airs Thursday at 10 on USA.)

Clouds And Chrysler

2008-07-30T17:53:00.003-04:00

Brian Lewandowski has some great photos (like the one above) of New York City.

Weekend Quick Links

2008-07-26T14:30:00.002-04:00

The Comics Curmudgeon was on Jeopardy!
Dot's diary from 1945/46, put online by her daughter.
If you like Mad Men, you'll love Basket of Kisses.
Trying to recreate a commercial can be dangerous.
Teaser trailer for The Spirit is great. Full trailer, not so much.

The Fix

2008-07-07T19:29:00.008-04:00

PBJ contributor and all around good guy Tod Golberg has a new book out this summer called The Fix, a novel based on the cool USA Network show Burn Notice, and the first chapter has been posted online.

Fourth of July Quick Links

2008-07-04T10:44:00.002-04:00

The future of magazines?
Skills every man should know how to do.
I want this.
Send a Retro-Gram.
Have you ever wanted to see Boba Fett dance to "What A Feeling" from Flashdance? Now you can.

Wow, It's An Update!

2008-06-20T23:14:00.001-04:00

Sorry for sort of abandoning this site for the past few months. Well, not sort of, definitely. That's going to change.

The Blonde

2008-03-11T15:15:00.003-04:00

Congrats to frequent PBJ contributor Duane Swierczynski, whose novel The Blonde has just been optioned by Mission: Impossible 3 and Gone Baby Gone star Michelle Monaghan.

Thursday Quick Links

2008-02-21T17:06:00.004-05:00

The poetry of Roger Clemens.
A 46 year-old starts smoking.
The Television of Tomorrow, from Tex Avery in 1953.
What if The Beatles did "Stairway To Heaven?"
It's vs. Its
If you haven't heard, The Atlantic web site is now free.
Dinner with George Clooney.

Five Ways YOU Can Make A Difference This Election Season

2008-02-13T16:51:00.001-05:00

by Joe Lavin

1. Call up a rival campaign for a ride to the polls. While you're chauffeured to the polls, that's one less person who can vote for the other side, giving you a net gain of two votes. As a bonus, see if they'll swing by the supermarket for you too.

2. Now that the Republican race is almost decided, convince a Republican to vote "strategically" in the Democratic Primary. I know one Republican who voted for Obama simply because he couldn't stand Hillary Clinton. I'm sure there are other people who can't stand Obama. With enough hard work, you can make this strategy work for your candidate.

3. Call up the Huckabee campaign and say that you're Jean-Claude Van Damme, and that you would just like to help out the campaign in any way you can.

4. When signing up for campaign events, always put down the phone number of a rival campaign. Later, when they try to call you for money, they will instead reach their competitor's office, thus promoting party unity.

5. Tell everyone that you're a super delegate, just to see if you can get any free swag.

Monday Quick Links

2008-01-21T15:59:00.000-05:00

This will keep you up tonight.
A nice tribute to Peg Bracken.
Did you know that Dick Cavett had a blog?
Yes, these are all made out of chewing gum. [via Coudal]
Coffee and cigarettes, together at last!

Merry Christmas To You

2007-12-24T14:40:00.000-05:00

David Barringer, Part 5

2007-12-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

Stat Box:

Birthdate/Birthplace: September 6, 1969 - Chicago
Family: Married with 2 Children; 2 brothers
Favorite TV Shows/Films/Music: The Wire/Robin Williams Live/Smashing Pumpkins
Favorite Food: Homemade Bread
Favorite Drink: Coffee a.m., Banana Smoothie noon, Bell's Oberon p.m.
Favorite Place to Vacation: Island Beach
Dream Car: Jetpack
Favorite Cereal: Homemade Cranberry Granola with Pistacios
If I Wasn't A Designer/Writer I'd Be: a manic-depressive.
Best Advice I Ever Received: If I did not achieve great things, I died in their pursuit.
And the Worst: Make sure you have a career to fall back on.
Five Items In My Glove Compartment Right Now: Leatherman, random CDs, tire gauge, crumpled Google Map printout, car guide.
I'd Make A Great James Bond because: I wear suits well, and I'm taller than any supermodel.
My Idea Of Sexy: there's that moment when two people know it's go time, there's no um, ah, well, if, but, maybe--it's just yes and now. It can be long and slow like a sea expedition or quick and intense like sprinting in place. But it's that connection that seals off the rest of the world and turns solo lust into a sexy duet.
Mac or PC? Originally Mac from IIc to Powerbook, now PC because of work.
Leno or Letterman? Jon Stewart.
Paper or plastic? Plastic. I have a dog.

For more on David, check out his web site and buy his books!

David Barringer, Part 4

2007-12-06T11:52:00.000-05:00

What have you learned from design that helps and improves your writing, and vice versa?

This is going to sound odd, but almost nothing in one can "improve" how well you do in the other. Design has helped me appreciate how hard it is to typeset text, to lay out a magazine, to make a book from start to finish. But I think learning an appreciation is about where it ends. I know that good typesetting can make poor writing look good but still read poorly. Thinking about how my writing is going to look on the page can often hijack the writing process, distracting me into thinking about the design of the whole book before I've written a single chapter. But in certain projects, I have been able to combine the disciplines into a single effort, envisioning the design and writing as part of, more or less, one idea. The Dead Bug Funeral Kit is a good example. I had the idea. Then I looked over all the ways I could construct the kit, meaning I thought first about the design of it. Then when I had the kit done, I worked backwards from the end result to fit the writing into it. I wrote the poems a certain length to fit the page. I wrote instructions that could fit on a scroll. I designed labels that would look good with the limited means at my disposal. That's a good example of design and writing combining within a single project and reinforcing each other so that the whole is greater than the parts. Magazine design is another area where I might be able to say that design and writing reinforce each other and lead to better results, but only when I'm able to both write and design and conceive of them together. In most other areas, I improve my writing only by reimagining and rewriting, not by designing and redesigning.

The vice versa (whether writing has improved my design) probably deserves the same answer. I have a respect for words when thinking about design, I know how you can so easily affect the interpretation simply by adjusting the design of the words, and I might use text differently within a design because I'm a writer. For example, I wrote a short story to fit on a bookmark. This is something a writer is more likely to do. But whether being a writer improves my design is a separate question. I think my love for writing influences my designs, but I also think I'm as likely to screw up a design because I'm a writer than I am to design better.

David Barringer, Part 3

2007-12-05T13:13:00.000-05:00

Who are your favorite writers?

1. Arthur Rex, Little Big Man - Thomas Berger
2. Gargantua & Pantagruel - Rabelais
3. The collected prose of Jorge Luis Borges
4. A Woman of Independent Means - Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
5. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
6. The Naked and the Dead - Norman Mailer
7. Anything by Donald Barthelme
8. Samuel Butler's Notebook
9. Ego 9 - James Agate
10. The recent books by David Markson
11. Jesus' Son- Denis Johnson
12. The Ice at the Bottom of the World - Mark Richards
13. A Relative Stranger - Charles Baxter
14. Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
15. The collected works of Grace Paley
16. Thank You for Not Reading - Dubravka Ugresic
17. Anything by Amy Hempel
18. Eureka Street - Robert McLiam Wilson
19. We - Yevgeny Zamyatin
20. Mystery & Manners - Flannery O'Connor
21. Anything by David Foster Wallace
22. Big Bad Love - Larry Brown
23. Chimera - John Barth
24. Et tu, Babe - Mark Leyner
25. Bats out of Hell - Barry Hannah
26. Mao II - Don DeLillo
27. The Tunnel - Russell Edson
28. All Things, All At Once - Lee K. Abbot
29. Stop-Time - Frank Conroy
30. Devil in the White City - Erik Larson
31. The Satyricon - Petronius
32. The Kama Sutra
33. Emily Dickinson
34. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
35. The Death of Picasso - Guy Davenport
36. Requiem - Curtis White
37. Axel's Castle - Edmund Wilson
38. The Waste Books - Lichtenberg
39. Anything by Nietzsche
40. Chekhov
41. From Dawn to Decadence - Jacques Barzun
42. Anything by Lewis Lapham
43. The Mind at Night - Andrea Rock
44. Primate's Memoir - Robert Sapolsky
45. I Want To Spend The Rest Of My Life Everywhere... - Damien Hirst
46. Beautiful Evidence - Edward Tufte
47. On Being Free - Frithjof Bergmann
48. Anything by George Saunders
49. Catch-22 - Heller
50. The Periodic Table - Primo Levi
51. 100 Years of Solitude - Marquez
52. Anything by E.B. White
53. Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler
54. Short fiction, Oscar Wilde

David Barringer: Part 2

2007-12-04T07:09:00.000-05:00

What do you think of Print On Demand? While I understand the business reasons why someone wouldn't want to do it (bookstores won't carry POD books, publishers don't look at POD books as "real" books,etc), it's also a very easy, cheap way to get your stuff into print. Do you look at POD the same as traditional self-publishing, or does that POD label automatically mark it as something else?

Because of digital technology and a changing publishing industry, I think we can expect to see a lot of hybrid stuff going on well into the future. Barnes & Noble publishes their own imprint of classic works now. What's that? Self-publishing? I don't know. There are press shops now that operate both sheetfed and digital presses. For runs under 1,000, you can use a digital press, no matter what kind of publisher you are. And if the book sells, then you print another 1,000. And so on. Is that on-demand? I think the future of digital-press technology will continue to blur the boundaries between self-publishing and on-demand publishing and short-run printing and all that. I'll give you a rundown of my experience.

XLIBRIS. I used them in 2000 to print my first collection of stories. This was self-publishing and therefore limited to a kind of self-promotion. I hoped I would at least make back my investment, but that didn't happen. Xlibris designs and lays out the book for you, and it's really user friendly. But they charge way too much for an individual author to recoup their investment. Their books are priced too high compared to other titles. And somehow my Xlibris book kept appearing on Alibris, a used-book online seller, at a fraction of the cost of the original book; I bought a few of these and confirmed my suspicions that these were new, not used, books: not cool. I now cannot recommend them to anyone for any reason. I even pulled my book off Xlibris completely, and it's now out of print.

BOOKSURGE. For my second collection of stories, I went with a very small press, and they let me do my own design and typesetting and I even set up the whole thing through Booksurge. Much cheaper and still fun, but also something I did for the lark of it. I made no money on it. I never used them again, and I can't recommend it. One thing I did differently with this book is that I tried to get into bookstores on consignment. This was possible because I had a small press publish it, and so, while it was POD, I could still shelve a few copies with indie bookstores. I sold a hundred or so. Most were shipped back to me. Some bookstores I never followed up with. The transaction costs of consignment with indie bookstores are simply too great. It costs too much to print the book, make the calls, fill out the forms, ship the books, and then either split the cost 60/40 with the bookstore or pay for the return shipping of the books. In many cases, I just let the bookstore keep the books. It wasn't worth the cost to get them back. I was essentially paying to sell my books. Bad news.

CHAPBOOKS. For two of my fiction/graphic-art collections, I worked with two small presses to produce chapbooks. Chapbooks are usually 100 pages or less. They are printed out on someone's desktop printer, folded and bound by hand. Covers may be printed in short runs on a digital press (I did this with my collection We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things, the cover of which was designed by Eduardo Recife of misprintedtype.com). These are another kind of hybrid, made possible by stubborn and creative individuals with personal computers, layout software, and spare change, simpatico with the zine ethic. In this manner, you can control your expenses and earn a little cash by placing your chapbooks with a few select bookstores and, most importantly, by selling them online. We Were Ugly still sells decently well online and in bookstores, according to Word Riot Press. As a designer, I can also heartily recommend this approach because you retain all control and you are very much forced to get down and dirty working hands-on and trying to be imaginative with a small to nonexistent budget. I still make by hand my books of eulogies for the Dead Bug Funeral Kit. I had to get very creative with the production of that book, and I still enjoy making them.

LULU. The new kids on the block of POD are places like Lulu.com. Lulu charges nothing for you to set up your book with them. You need to be very design savvy and have all the software and skill that designing a book requires. But once you design your own book and create your PDFs for the cover and interior, you can order your books one by one. This is still expensive per book. However, I now use this kind of printing technology for very specific purposes. I print out a few copies of my portfolio. I print photo books that I give as gifts to family or friends. And I print early draft copies of my books so that I can proofread the copy and review the cover design and layout. These are great uses of this technology, and they depend on printing very few copies and not trying to earn money off their sale. I don't use Lulu to print books in order to earn money. I can't recommend that. It won't work. But I do recommend using Lulu for these very limited cases.

SHORT-RUN DIGITAL PRESS. Many presses now offer short-run work on their digital presses. I have used a few press shops to print in-house books (like Twisted Fun, a recent collection) and even for my latest novel, American Home Life (published by So New Publishing). For Twisted Fun, I had learned how to negotiate my way through the entire book-printing process, from concept and design to budget and production, and most importantly I had realistic expectations. I spent about $250 to have 50 copies printed. That's $5/book, not great, but not bad. And over time I could earn that money back because I controlled the whole production effort, all costs and all income. For American Home Life, the publisher and I worked with another press shop and took advantage of their digital presses (they also print Ploughshares and Opium Magazine, among others) to print an initial short run, and as the first run sells out, we'll print another run, taking advantage of the digital press to better manage cash flow. So, to sum up, I can only recommend POD as an expensive learning experience and not at all as a business proposition. I recommend making chapbooks using desktop computers and binding them by hand. I recommend trying to sell your books person to person and online through websites and via Powells or Amazon but not on consignment with bookstores. And I recommend using short-run digital presses when working with a publisher to get your books into print economically and at high quality.

You mentioned the Dead Bug Funeral Kit. You have other quirky things available at your site: Picasso Plates, postcards, The Writer's Speciman (which I think should be given to every single person who wants to be a writer). How did these come about and do you see yourself as a business and not just a designer and writer?

I do not think of myself as a business. I'd be doing so many other things in the way of advertising, sales, and marketing if I thought of myself as a business and wanted to turn a profit someday. I rather think of myself as a creative person who makes fun and interesting things and then is able to sell them online. I'd like to continue to create interesting projects and eventually have other people worry about selling them. I'd like to have the Dead Bug Kit and Picasso Plates projects one day sold by a reseller, say, a bookstore chain, a catalog, a place like Restoration Hardware or whatever. I have no ambition or talent for marketing in that way, and I don't pretend to. I'd rather be writing.

It's David Barringer Week!

2007-12-03T09:34:00.000-05:00

We all have our lists of writers we love, those writers that not everyone in the world knows about but should. Sometimes we keep these writers close to us and don't tell anyone, because we want that special bond that we have (or, probably, imagine we have) between ourselves and the author and we don't want to spoil it by telling everyone else about them. But the hell with all that. A great, talented writer deserves to be known to everyone, which is one reason why you should read the work of David Barringer.

David's latest book is the novel American Home Life, which is described as a "comic novel about contemporary suburban fatherhood," but it's so much more, and it's amazing. But his work goes beyond novels. He also...well, all that will come out in the interview below. This entire week of PBJ entries will be an interview with David. He has a lot to say, and if you're a writer or designer or do anything creative, you're especially going to want to pay attention.

Tell us a little about yourself and what you do.

I'm a writer and designer, father of two, moved to North Carolina from Michigan three years ago. I can afford to be a self-employed writer and a full-time dad because my wife is a family doctor. I went to law school, but I never practiced; I just wanted the debt. I've written a novel about a family, a novel about a rooster, a few fiction collections, and a book of graphic-design criticism. I design books and magazines, like Opium Magazine, a literary journal, and I also have a few special projects I do now and then, like The Dead Bug Funeral Kit, which includes a book of eulogies written from kids to their deceased pets.

This is interesting to me, because it seems like you've made a career for yourself as a writer in a very healthy way. You have a "real" job, you have a family, you have kids, you have a life, and it doesn't seem like you get caught up in the whole publishing game. You write what you want and publish through small presses and your own company, and you don't have an agent, but you're still successful. That seems really healthy to me.

Yes, for a writer, a healthy life is terrible luck. All happy families are alike, as Tolstoy wrote, in that a writer can't exploit them in print. The one thing that is worth emphasizing, though, is that I often was my own worst enemy in getting to this point. It took a while for me to surrender and say, "I'm a writer. Get writing." In fact, it took law school. I finished law school five figures in debt and thought, "I'm a writer. Shit." It's hard to make a living as a writer because there is no track, no professional school that can spit you out into a cubicle and a retirement package. Writers stumble and stagger through their careers. I certainly have. I've never worked in a cubicle, never shown up at an office, never taught or gotten an MFA, but I've also never had perks, never had benefits, never had security. I just have the work. So what's been healthy is that I've been able to marry someone who has a career that fits perfectly with my half of our working life, and together we're able to be there for our kids and pay the mortgage. That's a big deal, and in my writerly funks, I often need to smack myself in the head and say, "Appreciate this, you moron."

The rest of the story is that I've worked outside the mainstream publishing world, even as I've written within the mainstream magazine world. I've learned a great deal about book design, printing, publishing, sales, and marketing by doing it this way, and the main thing I've learned is that I would love for someone else to worry about all of that crap. But of course today even the big publishers expect authors to exert all sorts of effort on sales and marketing in a way they never had to do before. So, again, I smack myself in the head and appreciate the power and control I am able to have over the final product, the book, and its dissemination. It's really a pure and personal exercise of creative imagination, and I can say for most of my books, "I did that," and mean it truly. I did it. All of it. The writing, the editing, the proofreading, the cover design, the typesetting, all of it. For better or worse. The book stops here.

How do agents fit in with all of this, in your career? Is an agent necessary? Desired?

I have only two experiences. First, I sent the manuscript of my first novel out to tons of agents, and nada. Only one was interested (Donald Maass), and he did give me a great piece of advice, which I took (I cut my manuscript in half in one night). But he also asked how many short stories I'd published. The answer was none, mainly because I was already freelancing for national magazines, short stories paid diddly, and everyone kept telling me to write a novel and not fool around with short stories. The thing was, traditionally the publication of a short story in a major lit magazine like The New Yorker or Harper's or The Atlantic went a long way in getting your name around (or so goes the theory); publishers really just wanted to know if you'd built a readership. So, I started writing stories. Hundreds of them. Published in journals and, mostly, ezines, which were just blossoming at that time, around 2000. And, of course, having published tons of short stories, I discovered that editors and agents would then ask, "Yes, but do you have a novel?" What they really meant, I think today, was: "Do you have a novel similar to the latest best-selling trend, whether it's Grisham, Harry Potter, chick lit, or confessional memoir, something that will sell itself without us having to do much in the way of creative marketing for it?"

In other words, publishing a short story in a major lit magazine is a proxy for whether you have a readership. And writing a derivative novel is another proxy for whether a readership is going to buy that book. Both of these proxies are talismans against the financial risk of publishing any book. Publishers understand these proxies, even if they still don't understand what readers are ultimately going to buy.

Second, for my second novel, I did indeed send it to another agent (Lilly Ghahrameni). She spent my $200 on photocopied manuscripts Fed-Exed to a variety of major publishers. No avail. She even sent me some of their responses, but I've never read them. I already knew what they would say (mainly about structure). Anyway, that's it. That's as far as I've gotten. I think, basically, it's a damn tough business, and no one really knows what they're doing, business-wise. People in publishing obviously love books and they love writing, but they have no idea what sells. They are as shocked as anyone by the Harry Potter phenom and by the Da Vinci Code's flash in the pan and by Oprah's power. They never saw any of that coming. And, frankly, with the rise of Amazon and Barnes & Noble et al, the reactionary waves are still being felt by the industry, rolling through publishers (who have to deal with fewer but more powerful book buyers) and agents (whom editors pressure to do more to pre-market a book) and on to authors (whom agents pressure to do more to pre-market a book). A great deal of the work of thinking about marketing has been pushed all the way back onto the author, and everyone in the industry still just rides the coattails of the latest unpredictable best-seller.

So, refusing to be cynical, I quickly moved on to small presses and micropresses and people who are working hard to learn the business and get their work done. I treat writing in two ways: first, it's a passion and an art, something that creates my personality even as I create it; second, it's a job, a craft, and so I work at it, hammer and chisel, and keep moving. It's both avocation and vocation, and I never mistake the limelight for the desk lamp.

(Here are part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.)

A Break-Up Letter To Stephen King

2007-10-05T14:50:00.000-04:00

by Adam Finley

My Dearest Stephen,

I’d like to begin by saying that I never expected us to have a perfect relationship. The only perfect relationships exist in poorly written third grade poetry and are usually accompanied by some crude drawing of a young boy and girl holding hands while some oblong heart hovers over their heads. We were more than that, Stephen. We were human beings with all the blemishes and inconsistencies that keep us grounded to the terrestrial world.

If you were to glance at my bookshelf, you would see two shelves are occupied entirely by your tomes. Every early novel is represented: Carrie, The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand, and all the rest. I have them all up to Rose Madder, which I still haven’t read, but don’t assume it represents the exact point where I stopped loving you. In fact, don’t assume I’ve stopped loving you at all, Stephen. You can’t spend almost your entire life with one writer – and that’s not an exaggeration because you’ve published roughly three thousand novels, short stories, audio books, screenplays, and ebooks in my lifetime – and suddenly stop loving them. You’re not that easy to give up on.

Perhaps you do feel it’s easy for people to give up on you, and I understand why you would feel that way. All those children who stayed up late awkwardly trying to hold open one of your Signet paperbacks while shining a dim flashlight on the page have all become snobbish literati who have tossed you aside as if you were nothing more than a Michael Crichton bestseller.

But this isn’t about those pretentious bastards, or how much Michael Crichton sucks. It’s about you and me, Stephen, and why I think we should see other people for the time being.

Why the sudden change of heart? Well I guess it was when I found this quote on your Web site, stephenking.com, referring to your decision to rewrite the first novel in your long-running Dark Tower series:

"Here's the scoop on the new material I've added to The Gunslinger. The idea was to bring The Gunslinger in line with the material in the new books as well as the material in the first four. The other thing I wanted to do was to rewrite to some degree for language because I always felt it had a different feel than the other books because I was so young when I wrote it. The material is about an additional 10% (about 35 manuscript pages) with changes on almost every page."

Stephen, I trudged my way through the 668 pages that made up The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, and what I expected when I finally reached the end was either a small caliber pistol with which to shoot myself, or at least some kind of monetary compensation for the time I wasted trying to swallow the sugary love story between Roland and Susan that made up over ninety percent of the novel. What I did not expect was for you to suddenly decide it necessary to rewrite The Gunslinger simply because you were younger when you wrote it. Stephen, we were both younger then; it was a different time. Let Lucas, Spielberg, and Coppola try to improve on perfection. You are better than they are, and I think you know this. Has Francis Ford Coppola ever made a movie about a man stranded on an island who eats himself bit by bit in order to stay alive? I’m not sure, because I never saw The Godfather III, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t.

Stephen, the last novel I read was Black House, your sequel to The Talisman. I really felt the novel worked – as a treatment for a made-for-TV movie. It just made me pine for the days when you actually wrote stories. Sure, I have Dreamcatcher and From A Buick 8 sitting on my shelf, but they’ll never be read. You’ve hurt me too many times, Stephen. Even when people would dismiss you as a hack I would come to your defense, telling them that no one else could do what you do, that no one else had your imagination. If they insisted, I would refer them to one of your short stories (you know I’ve always felt they were your best work). But after reading your latest collection of short stories, Everything’s Eventual, I can’t even say that anymore. The stories in that collection are not good in the sense that, if I had to make a list of a million good things, and had to pad out the list by listing things that are only slightly good, it still wouldn’t make the list.

Once again you’ve made the announcement that you’re going to retire, but we both know that’s not true. You can say there’s no logical reason for you to keep publishing, but logic will be nowhere to be found during those long summer nights when you’re lying awake wondering why you didn’t make Cujo the rabid Saint Bernard three inches taller. You’ll have the manuscript of Cujo: The Redux to your editor before sunrise.

I’m going to use our time apart to read Ulysses. I wouldn’t recommend that you read anything. You should probably just avoid printed material altogether and do something more constructive and beneficial with your time, like crushing both your hands with the base of a halogen lamp. I only say these things because I care for you deeply, Stephen.

Your intermittently devoted lover,

A.

Ten Favorite Novels (And Fun With Opposites!)

2007-10-04T20:17:00.000-04:00

by Adam Finley

Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
Clothed Breakfast
Would also accept: Dressed Supper

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
Bravery and Loving Outside Branson
Would also accept: Courage and Affection Beyond Des Moines

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
The Landscape of the Writer as an Old Woman
Would also accept: A Snapshot of the Patron as an Elderly Matriarch

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Two Walked Under the Seagull’s Hole
Would also accept: One-Half Crawled Inside an Ostrich’s Log Cabin

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Throw-44
Would also accept: Toss-11 OR Lob-33

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
The Gong Can
No exceptions.

My Education by William S. Burroughs
Your Ignorance
Would also accept: Their Recess

Bear v. Shark: The Novel by Chris Bachelder
Lion v. Dolphin: The Movie
Would also accept: Rabbit v. Salmon: The Pop-Up Book

TIE:

Vanishing Point by David Markson and White Noise by Don DeLillo
Appearing Base and Black Silence
Would also accept: Focus Bottom and African-American Solitude

Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Demon of the Gnats
Would also accept: Lady of a Maggot or Madam of the Bumble Bees