More Ways For You, The Writer, To Avoid Being an Asshole

Posted on March 23rd, 2019 by Adam-Troy Castro

There are a couple of things you can do, as a struggling writer of any level of talent from dire to genius, that will mark you among your colleagues as an asshole.

There are actually way more than a couple, but these are the two I am thinking about today.

One is declaring that you can “write rings around” someone popular. Seriously. Your privilege as a writer is that you can take that hat off, and react as a reader any time you want. You want to say that so-and-so sucks, you can, and nobody will draw a direct line between that and your ego if you don’t offer up your own writing as superior example in the same thought. You think Stephen King, to name one, or JK Rowling, to name another, suck? Fine; I disagree with you, but you are welcome to present your argument. In that debate, you have the status of reader.

Just don’t put your writer hat on. Don’t say, in the same thought, that you are better, let alone much better, than the writer you’re pointing at. And especially not to present the corollary that the luminary has enjoyed the success you should know. Even if you’re right, and you’re probably not, this is something only an asshole would do.

The other thing not to do is claim that your failure, up to this point, to get a big publishing contract, is due to the conspiracy of insiders in the New York Publishing industry, where you “have to have connections” and “know somebody.” You may well BE the next Stephen King in potential, but just saying that is a spit in the face of everybody who labored over a novel and got a deal for it, and again, it’s something only an asshole would do.

These are simple warnings. Know better.

Seriously. This is not rocket science.

Tags: Assholes, Life Wisdom | Category Books, Life Wisdom, Writing

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Posted on March 7th, 2019 by Adam-Troy Castro

Last night’s film noir on Netflix Disk: PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET (1953), written and directed by Sam Fuller, starring Richard Widmark, Thelma Ritter, and Jean Peters.

And for some time you can be forgiven for thinking you’re watching something first-rate.

Widmark is a low-level subway pickpocket who rifles through the purse of tough dame Peters, starting a citywide search for the microfilm she was delivering, which is wanted by the commies. The great Thelma Ritter is a police snitch whose grandest ambition in life is not being buried in an unmarked grave. Widmark is terrific. Peters is terrific. Ritter is beyond terrific. The hardboiled dialogue is terrific. The black and white cinematography is absolutely spectacular, right down to a climactic fistfight in a subway tunnel, and if you love nothing else you will love the waterfront bait shack where Widmark’s character lives, an open-air hellhole that cannot provide much in the way of shelter, and that he nevertheless rules like a penthouse. The movie deserved an Oscar just for that set. Sooner or later, though, you will realize that the story itself is Just Plain Stupid. Forget the actions of the cops, which are dumb as hell. When Peters comes looking for the microfilm, Widmark knocks her unconscious with a punch, revives her with a face-full of beer, and then during the negotiation that follows starts groping her face like it’s a grapefruit and he’s trying to determine its freshness, something she has absolutely no problem with even though he’s robbed her and knocked her out in the same day. The circumstances render it not a love scene but an outright molestation. Twenty minutes of screen time later, less than a day of story later, she’s madly in love with him, and he with her — though he doesn’t treat her any better. It’s not a movie for the age of #MeToo, and when I said that her character doesn’t make a whit of sense, Judi aptly noted, “She was written by a man.”

At the end, Widmark and Peters head off for a fine ’50s happy ending, which kind of ignores that, among other things, he’s a penniless three-time loser who lives in a shack by the river. They face a boundless future together.

You want to say, “That’s not the way it works. That’s not the way any of this works.”

Individual scenes are terrific; the story makes no sense whatsoever.

Tags: Jean Peters, Movies, Pickup on South Street, Richard Widmark, Sam Fuller, Thelma Ritter | Category Movies, Mystery

The True Story Of The Fart To End All Farts

Posted on March 6th, 2019 by Adam-Troy Castro

Just as horror stories tend to be better when they illustrate some fundamental truth of human nature, just as the same is true of comedies and thrillers, the same is true of this true story from my past, involving one of the greatest farts in all of human history.

I am a hundred percent serious. This fart happened, it was every bit as epic as I have indicated, and its circumstances reveal a basic human truth.

It happened when two couples went out for dinner, which as was typical at the eatery I reference, was voluminous; and as it happened, the four of us stood around in the parking lot later, too engaged in conversation to part.

Then one of us, whose name I won’t mention except to assure you that it was not me — and I am not being falsely modest here, as I have been known for some highly prodigious farts in my life — let loose.

And I want you to know that this fart lasted a full two minutes.

How do I know that it lasted this long? Because we had time to talk about it.

We said, Jesus, will this fart ever end?

We said, I didn’t know a fart of this duration was even possible.

We changed subjects, but circled back to the fart, which was still ongoing. We noted when it changed tone and pitch, presuming by this point that it was almost depleted, but lived to observe that it simply changed pitch again thirty seconds later. I am telling you. It was a wonderment, and for two solid minutes we tracked its progress like NASA tracks a rocket’s trajectory.

And then it ended, and we went on with our lives.

Except for the next couple of years or so, whenever the four of us got together, there was always at least one reference to the great blow.

It became a subject of nostalgia.

One the producer expressed irritation at.

So it went unmentioned for years, and fine; except recently, with almost two decades past since the night in question, it suddenly came up again.

And I have to tell you that though memory remained green, for three of us, the guilty party professed no memory of the incident at all. We were making it up, surely. It never happened.

And we elected not to make an argument of it.

From whence we get the nugget of truth, an eternal epiphany about human relations, whether you happen to be talking about a fart, or conversations about a fart.

Sometimes you just have to let it go.

Tags: Life Wisdom | Category Life Wisdom, Sneaky Metaphors, True Stories