Time to turn and burn
Press on, dear reader
[Photo by me]
So, it’s Friday. Another week nearing to a close. The only thing worse than the Sunday Scaries is the Freaky Fridays. Did I get enough done this week? Did I move the needle? What fresh hell will this weekend bring? That remains to be seen.
Last week, I related that I was interviewing with three different tech companies. Two of those opportunities reached a conclusion. In summation, I would say I was overqualified for both roles. I suppose there are worse problems to have.
Speaking of work, I got an email this week from an adult movie star who … thought I was an adult movie star … so … she was asking me for advice?
She wrote:
I have been in the adult entertainment industry for right at ten years now. I was not the most responsible when starting in the industry and blew a lot of my money I should have been saving all this time. So I am seeking some advice from a fellow veteran. What is or has been a good schedule to go in to work that worked for you? Also, how did you go about saving your money and how did you about “taxes?”
For some reason, I got on Tinder this week. I ended up matching with one of Hollywood’s most famous TV producers.
Here’s what he wrote:
I’m 6’1”, so I deleted him.
Apparently, men don’t like to wear masks. I imagine they surmise doing so will make them look weak or emasculted. Dear Men: You are wrong. Wearing a mask makes you look strong and intelligent. Thank you for your service.
Before the world changed, I went into an adult store in West Hollywood, and I started talking to the guy behind the counter. We had a conversation about a high-tech chastity belt device for men that I was thinking about writing about. At a certain point during the conversation, he pulled up his shirt and pointed out that he was wearing an adult diaper. This is a thing, in case you’re not aware. In any case, some people might have been grossed out, but I was kind of delighted. I loved that he was shamless about his desires and unhibited in sharing them.
I go for a lot of walks. Here’s a shot from this morning. Since it’s in black and white, you can’t see that the sun is rising amidst an eerie orange glow caused by the fires burning across California. It reminded me of a line from William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying:
The sun, an hour above the horizon, is poised like a bloody egg upon a crest of thunderheads; the light has turned copper: in the eye portentous, in the nose sulphurous, smelling of lightning.
I really haven’t been doing video meetings with friends since the pandemic started, but yesterday I did a Zoom social. It was fun. It allowed me to connect with two friends who I hadn’t seen in years. They’re both writers. I’m a writer. We split the screen into gallery views, three talking heads taking turns talking about words across the virtual divide.
In late 2017, I had the opportunity to visit Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Mississippi. I’d ended up in Memphis, Tennessee, on a fluke, largely due to a hurricane. In Memphis, I ate the best fried chicken I’ve ever had, visited Graceland, and watched the money wars at a strip club. From Memphis, I drove down to Oxford on a pilgrimage to my literary Graceland. I’d wanted to visit Rowan Oak since I took a senior seminar on Faulkner when I was finishing up my undergraduate degree at U.C. Berkeley. It was such a delight to walk through those rooms, to see the walls upon which he wrote:
Faulkner's struggle with A Fable, his World War I novel, is literally written on the walls of Rowan Oak. For eight years he would work on it and set it aside. More than six years into the effort, he organized drafts and notes by stacking them on tables beneath eight chapter headings he wrote in pencil on the white office walls.
Ron Jeremy was a hoarder, apparently.
This week, HILOBROW published my appreciation of “A Clockwork Orange.”
An excerpt:
In 2020, writing an appreciation of A Clockwork Orange seems like a near transgressive act. Despite its moralistic underpinnings, the 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick is a visual celebration of the worst that humanity can conjure.
I’m a writer and a strategy consultant. Want to hire me? Contact me.
