Alex Madrigal, illustrator extraordinaire, has started work on the book’s cover art. Although my freehand sucks, I did him the “favor” of putting together a rough movie poster-style comp to give him some idea of the book’s zodiac of characters & action. The result was insane, and proof that I probably need my Photoshop examined. But if you look closely, you’ll see Bill, Stark, Mouse, Hank, and Larry (Hank and Larry are the women skating in the tighty whities—it was 1 a.m. and I was too tired to bother looking for appropriate heads, so for now, they’re women; no harm there). Lovely. Brace yourself, then click here to see the whole picture in all its glory.

…scribbled on yourself with marker, uncorked a bottle of tequila that had a miniature penis inside, and then stuffed your underwear with 3 straight razors, 1 buzzing electric razor, and shaving cream, it might look like this…. All men should test their underwear to make sure it can stand up to a beating. Fruit of the Loom should totally hire me!

Things I Learned: 1. Hornitos Tequila burns when it runs down your chin, but the bottle’s neck is big enough that you can push a fake weiner through there. 2. Panties full of Barbasol *will* cause your parts to go numb. 3. Norelco’s cordless 7340XL razor will continue running even when submerged in shaving cream. 4. Sharpie Permanent Marker comes off knees+arms easily with soap and a loofah, but the chest is a bitch.

Photo from my “Manly Man” piece in last night’s 5x5x5 Show, Sylvia White Gallery, Ventura. Thanks again to everyone who came out, to John White for putting it together, and to KayDee Kersten for photography.

Calling Ventura art fans! What do tequila and my tighty white underwear have in common? Find out when I perform MANLY MAN, a short new performance art piece at the Sylvia White Gallery this Friday downtown! Plus see John White and other killer performers do their thing! FREE at The 5x5x5 Show, Sylvia White Gallery, 1783 E. Main St., Ventura, 8PM sharp. See you there!

Here’s a taste of the insanity I’ve been cooking up for the 2013 Hollywood Fringe Festival in June with John Gilkey, Natalie Palamides, Alec Jones-Trujillo, Tyler Watson, Gabriel McKinney, Tim Reid, Claire Titelman, and Don Colliver. The show’s called Wet The Hippo, and our preview shows all sold out, so don’t delay! Get ticket info here!

 
*** UPDATE: Bitter Lemons, L.A.’s most trusted source for theater news & reviews, just posted a great review of WET THE HIPPO, and called the duo piece that I performed with Natalie Palamides “…absolutely hilarious…hallucinatory….” Not bad!

During what I’d hoped would be my final pass through the novel, I found a few stubborn clunker lines that had somehow survived my past attempts to smooth everything out. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; 124,000 words gives lame writing plenty of quarter—proof, I guess that a book’s never really done.

I know I could keep tweaking and editing forever, but the end must come sometime, or the pages will never see the light of day. So, after 13 years in varying states of disarray and progress, here it is, in the photo above and on my desk: the very last draft of Two Performance Artists (I swear!). After one more read-through, it’ll head back to the editor for another pre-press read while a second copy goes to the publisher’s book designer so layout can begin on the galley proofs I’ll mail to early reviewers this summer.

Maybe “done” is best defined as when I walk away from the keyboard for the very last time.

*** UPDATE: The prepress edit is back from Charlie, my editor, and finished. OMG it’s DONE! Next stop: advance copies for reviewers. Thank you Charlie, KayDee, and Freakshow Books. Stop by the Two Performance Artists website to follow the madness. It’s gonna be a wild(er) ride from here on out!

“Books are never finished; they’re merely abandoned.”
      —Oscar Wilde

After 13 years of plotting, writing, editing, and rewriting the novel, I’ve finally arrived at that predictable point where I can no longer see the words on the page objectively. Ink just runs into more ink. Yesterday I opened my folder of past edits and was shocked to find I’d saved over 1,000 versions of the book since 2000. Is that excessive? Ha. No wonder my brain’s fried. My new myopia is making me a terrible proofreader, which is disconcerting as I claw through my final round of edits.

I read all the time about writers who somehow manage to squeeze out an artful bestseller in under a year. I don’t understand how they’re able to do it so quickly. When I took cosmology in college (thank you, Dr. Benford), I was the last student to finish the final exam because of all the math, with the quickest students finishing in just 45 minutes; I still don’t understand how they were able to do that, either.

When I think back over what took the longest during the novel’s construction, the story’s plotting stands out—I spent 3 months in a Tenderloin cafe diagramming the action’s timeline in a sketchbook with a black Sharpie (I was unemployed at the time, thank God, or it would’ve taken me a year). Writing the performance art scenes, though, took the longest. I wanted them to have the detail of real performances, but with rapid POV cuts to move a reader between the points of action in a cinematic style. Each performance piece took 2-3 weeks to conceive, then 1-2 months to actually write, which is about twice as long as I typically spend on creating a solo performance art piece I’ll perform live.

Hemingway supposedly finished draft one of The Sun Also Rises in under two months. Clearly I need a faster muse.

“The faster I write, the better my output. If I’m going slow, I’m in trouble—it means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.”
    —Raymond Chandler

Sat. April 6th I’ll be in WET THE HIPPO, a seriously demented show produced by JOHN GILKEY, a longtime Cirque du Soliel clown and insane man. It’s improvised, but it’s not “improv.” It’s just…well, insane, hilarious, and terrifying, and maybe the new face of avant garde performance. Doors at 7. Only $5 at the door. Flight Theater at The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. GUARANTEED to sell out, so arrive early!

(While you’re at it, if you want to know more about John, Cirque, and the danger of clowns, have a listen to this radio interview I did with John late last year).

*** UPDATE: There’ll be another performance this Friday, May 3, 2013, at 10PM as we get ready for the Hollywood Fringe Festival. I’ll be performing on stage, plus playing a cajon drum to accompany one of the spazziest performances you’ll ever see! Tickets only $5! Doors at 9:30. Flight Theater at The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood. Free booze. Come watch the insanity!

*** UPDATE: The show sold out and killed! Don’t miss us at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in June, 2013!  Check out a few photos from the show, or learn about tickets.

“Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me?” —1 Samuel 21:14

My sexy, sassy, and brilliant partner-in-crime KayDee and I tied the knot in Florida! Yay us! We headed down to the Keys after. Too much to tell…manatees, mangroves, sandy beaches, kayaks, lizards, white trash retirees, great service, Hemingway’s house, fat boat captains, fried boat sluts, buried treasure, a diving museum, a sweet little hotel named Ocean House, and earlier at our reception, watching my very conservative step-dad and his fiancée on the dance floor, both of them oblivious to the fact that the song playing was “I’m Fucking You” by Enrique Iglesias…they danced to it, bobbing back and forth in a tight embrace, happy as clams with no idea…I didn’t have the heart to tell them….hahaha

I’m sharpening the pen on the strop as we speak. Just got the novel back from my U.K. editor Charlie. Fantastic, painstakingly detailed feedback. Really, if you want a smart critique, hit me up for Charlie’s contract info. It was less brutal than I’d expected, but I’ll admit it: I’m dreading having to tear at my narrative threads. But that’s the path, right? The finery’s in the edits, at least for me. Maybe Hemingway shat gold on every first draft. Not me. I shit shit. And then I work it like Play-Doh.

I still remember being in college and asking a poetry teacher/friend if he knew of any writing contacts or gigs he might hook me up with over the summer. You know, something easy—slip into the warm bath for 3 months as an intern with the inside track. No dice. His answer to me: “Want to be a writer? Hit the streets, fucker.”

This week’s JIMMY’S POTPOURRI show will feature the music of Tony Bennett, plus musings on Rasputin, dirty dreams, and other madness. Sunday 9am-noon, streaming live online at www.killradio.org