May you experience great literature this New Year

In retropect this final day of the first decade of the "new" millennium, this has been a holiday season filled with discoveries, mainly about myself, tribulations and hope, which I guess really can spring eternal if you keep an open mind. Though I greet the new year with much concern about what's next for me, I am also excited about discovering what's ahead.

Creatively, I seem to be peaking, just when I thought my best days were behind me. I keep repeating the mantra "James Michener" over and over again, reminding myself that this late writer accomplished it all into his forties and beyond, having his final of some 40 novels published before he died in his late seventies, I believe. If you have not read Michener yet, treat yourself to at least one of his stories in 2010 as your literary resolution. While he's a lot more like Steinbeck than King, you will find anything he's written hard to put down. If you are young, start with The Drifters, which most of us read as teens as we dreamt of travelling the world in search of love and adventure, and then try The Source, Hawaii... and perhaps the one I am reading now, Caribbean. There are so many it will take you decades to read them all, but it is well worth your time. May Mr. Michener's spirit smile on you.

Then again, reading appears to be a pasttime reserved for older folk. I hope that is wrong of me to say. I have derived such pleasure lost in books that I cannot imagine life without them. I started devouring H.P. Lovecraft after Bram Stoker
stok(er)ed my fires with his seminal Dracula and I was hooked on horror for life, but I also enjoy biographies - the interesting lives of Rod Serling, Alfred Hitchcock, Houdini, Bram Stoker, Nicolas Tesla, Klaus Kinski and the late, self-proclaimed Satanist Anton Lavey spring immediately to mind - and science fiction has always been a favourite genre, as well. Try anything by Robert Sheckley and Damon Knight, as much as Harlan Ellison, Larry Niven, Isaac Asimov and Philip K.Dick, all of whom I recommend for a good thrill on paper.

One of my favourite writers, Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park and, of course, the TV series ER, which he created) died last year, but a complete ms was found in his desk drawer and published, his swan song. Pirate Latitudes is said to be sub-par for a Crichton novel, which is probably why it sat dusty and lonely in his desk drawer, but hey, what a gift to his legions of fans.

And I still love reading the tiny tomes, and admiring the art, of another of my all-time faves, the late Edward Gorey. If you do not know about Gorey, take a look. You are in for a real treat.

Finally, there's Bram D. Eisenthal. You likely haven't heard of his work yet, but if things go well and he lives long enough, maybe he will improve on the two short stories he's had published so far, Migraine and Hard Night. Maybe... all he's gotta do is invoke the spirt of James Michener and, of course, spend a lot more time utilizing his God-given talent.

A Happy and Healthy New Year to you and yours. I hope it's a great 2010 for us all.

Ghoulash like you've never had before

Well, I am quite jazzed for tomorrow, because I may be doing two cool things: interviewing film programming guru Philip Spurrell for an article and checking out a graveyard in Chambly that may be suitable as a shooting venue for my horror short Graveyard Ghoulash. I wrote the story last year and it's a wee one, just 500 words. But I think it has tremendous potential as a 10-15 minute short film, my first ever. I'd like to shoot a day or two this winter and another day when the weather is greener. I figure the film likely won't make any money, but it would be a good festival filler and who knows? Since I can't get any work in Montreal as a film publicist - mainly because there ARE no English films shooting at present - I may as well try to join the ranks of the film production community. Maybe James Cameron will ask me to co-write or produce Avatar2: Return of the Insanely Tall Attractive Alien Blue People. I really liked your first installment, Jim. Why not?

So, check out Graveyard Ghoulash, possible coming soon, to a festival near you...

Basterds bring out the badgers in us all

Just reflecting on the film Inglourious Basterds, which I bought on DVD last week and just viewed for the first time since I saw it in theatres. I am a little disgusted with myself, mainly because I cheered the murder of Nazi basterds a bit too voraciously. I am the son of a Roumanian Holocaust survivor, so I suppose a bit of glee is to be expected. My late mother Mina Eisenthal (maiden name, as well) suffered a lot at the hands of the Nazi-supported thugs of the Antonescu regime and, yeah, I really hate the people who made her endure that hell on Earth.

But to be watching a movie and truly HATING characters portrayed by actors on a screen... to the point where the anger flowing through my veins was so palpable I wished I had a group of Nazis at my disposal so that I could bash their heads in? Not something I was proud to be experiencing at that moment. Yes, we are human and these emotions are very human, otherwise we'd not be given the capacity to feel them. Still, what does this say for our moral characters, for our sense of Godliness, or for our capacity to realize peace on Earth... when a mere movie can trigger such anger?

I wonder if Quentin Tarantino had any life experiences that caused HIM to feel such emotions as he shot the film. I am actually in contact with his mom vis email, but I doubt she would know... she and he are not on very close terms and she hadn't even seen the film yet when last we wrote one another three weeks ago.

In any event, food for serious thought. And a warning to neo-Nazis and general Jew haters: we, too, are capable of animalistic actions, as are you. Even the more moral or peace-seeking of us can go off like lethal missiles when our animal side kicks in, when we feel we are being assaulted or are cornered like the badger I cornered in my rural Ottawa office many years ago. Long story... but the badger fought like hell and got past the much bigger me, because his will to survive made him a vicious beast. And he had not even seen Inglourious Basterds yet.

God help us all, filmmakers and normal folk alike.

Secret agent man?

Christmas day and what's a Jew to do? Quiet for me this year and I have lots of time to reflect on what I am doing right... and wrong, to further my career. I'm not getting any younger and I am too ambitious to simply fade away without a good fight. So, how best to do that... anyone?

I have thought about this often and I have been stymied by ignorance, but I think I need a literary agent. I've tried, once when I had an idea for what I thought was a good concept, reprinting many of my travel pieces on the unusual and the macabre, and I sent the kit to a New York agent. She read it, considered it, and finally passed. I am assuming this is normal for many writers and that you often have to plug, plug, plug away till you hit pay-dirt. The problem is, I am far from connected in this area.

I'm not sure if these professionals even exist, but someone once told me that there are agents who can help me recycle many of the features I have had published... and there have been a lot of these since my first, published in 1993. Sounds like a great idea on paper. But in fact? Not sure... anyone know about this?

Some of my published articles have been placed on my first website, at www.scribeworld.net and are pretty good. I always thought my feature A Son's Manifesto, a intimate look at how an adoptee feels deep in his guts, is worth another publishing cycle. It appeared in The Gazette, our Montreal daily, on Mother's Day 1998, and many people think it is one of the best things I have written to date. If you are adopted or have given a child up for adoption... or know any of these individuals... take a peek. I had to really expose a raw nerve to write this and it was well worth the effort in terms of emotion and information. It was also very cathartic for me, because I am troubled by the lack of information I possess on my roots. Angry.

Another issue I am having is whether anyone is even reading this blog. I don't get any notifications, I have three public followers INCLUDING myself, and I don't know whether I am supposed to discover whether I am being read. Or not. Anyone reading? Please let me know. Even if you hate it, it's better for me to know I suck rather than writing in a vacuum.

Merry Christmas to the Christian community and goodwill and health to all!

About time we had a vagina

Okay, so a reader told me about the latest organ to achieve supersized status...

http://www.killahbeez.com/2008/06/21/the-2nd-gtfoh-award-vulva-taxi/

And all I can say is, it's about time! There is NO reason a giant colon should get all the attention, as far as I'm concerned, and a vulva is such a natural candidate for the category of Gigantor. I can't tell you how many times, during my tenure as Colon Guy, someone quipped to me "why don't you guys create a whole series of human organs to take on tour?" And I always pointed out that it's gotta be a natural tunnel, or orifice, to create a natural environment for the public to walk through. The anus, the esophagus, the ear canal and, hell yeah, the vagina, all fit into that category. And what would you rather walk through, besides a giant colon... the human ear canal, or a giant vagina??? Come on, this is such a no-brainer.

So kudos to the Vagina People. I salute you! With all the seriousness I can muster!

Pumping my way to a sharper mind and body

You know, I firmly believe that as a writer ages, he needs to take additional measures to keep his mind sharp, otherwise it turns to mush. And a mushy mind doesn't really yield the same results as a finely-honed one. So after a year and a half of pretty much remaining sedentary, I am heading back to the gym today. When I was younger, till age 45 or so, I was into weights bigtime. At one point, taking the natural supplement Creatine, I was a monster compared to today. Then I tore my bicep - an injury that doesn't heal unless you have surgery to reattach the affected tendon... I didn't - and my serious weight-lifting days were over. Because I had focused so much on growing my muscle mass and not working the muscle that needed it most (the cardiac one!), I ignored the cardio aspect of the ritual.

Now, when I walk into that hallowed temple, Pump Fitness in Cote Saint-Luc, I do about 40 minutes on the eliptical and then about 15-20 minutes of lighter weights or weight machines. My heart is so important to me as I age, because that's going to keep me alive, not a bigger bicep or rock-hard abs. I never had a six-pack, anyways, not even when I was 19, had 18-inch arms and weighed 140 pounds. There's a little quip I like to relate: When they walk past my coffin and it's open (which it won't be, most likely), when they comment "Man, he looks fantastic," it will be small comfort. It's what's inside that really counts. Then again, that sort of logic is lost on the young. I get it now.

Wish me luck. I am going to power up with an egg-white omelette, three small low-fat turkey sausage links and a slice of whole wheat bread and then it's off to nirvana. Hope your weekend is going swimmingly!

A lifetime of moneymaking pursuits

Another half-day, another blog... I was just sitting around thinking of ways to make a buck. I have a virtual lifetime... well, not virtual, actual... of work experience that must be worth SOMETHING today.

A few of the more memorable jobs I have undertaken since I was 14:

Busboy at the defunct Castle des Monts in Ste. Agathe-des-Monts, Quebec... the same place that Duddy Kravitz (played so brilliantly by a very young Richard Dreyfuss)worked in the film The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz. I actually slept in the same place (but never used my left hand... see the film) and worked the same dining room he did. The renonwned place, a real hotspot in the 1940s and 1950s akin to the resorts in the Catskills, burned down a few years later.

Dairyman at Steinberg's, Montreal's historic grocery chain that went under in 1992 after some 80 years. I worked at the Cote St. Luc Shopping Centre even though I was underage. My dad knew the store manager, the now-deceased Moe Caplan, and got me in. I first worked as a wrapper at the cash and was SO good at it that I was promoted to dairyman. It went great for a few days, till my massive pallet of milk cartons caught on the industrial fridge door handle and about 250 quarts fell off the pallet, half of them bursting open and flooding the store floor with milk. I was fired that day.

Audio Tester at Cinram, a then Montreal producer of Long Play (LP) records. I checked the presses on the nightshift to ensure that the records were coming off them in good condition, so I had to visually inspect them for warping and a condition called "unfill," where the grooves are not cut properly. Outlandos D'Amour by The Police was the big title that summer (1974 or so) and I must have listened to it on turntable-with-headphones 500 times ensuring the quality was primo. I still shudder when Roxanne is on the radio.

Cleaner at two hospitals over three consecutive summers: Probably the best paying job I ever had as a teen, I cleaned floors just like the big boys, removing stains caused by every conceivable body fluid. I think I was earning $200 a week when the most anyone my age got was $90. And it was cool working in a medical environment, likely one of the reasons I passed the 130-hour Canadian Red Cross EMR course two years ago and volunteered as a stagiere EMS First Responder in my community till last year. Most unusual work done as a teen... grabbing a corpse by his ice-cold feet and lifting him onto a gurney, as requested by an orderly. My exploits certainly inspired Michael Crichton to write ER.

Director of Sales and Marketing at Semtronix, a small electro-mechanical design and prototype shop in Ottawa, mid-1980s, during the towns halcyon days as Silicon valley North. Exciting times helping this upstart business get their first contracts, at a location in Greely, in the middle of farmland. The business eventually went under due to infighting between the partners. Memorable moment: Going to work on a Saturday, leaving the front door open on a hot summer's day... and getting trapped inside with a really pissed off badger it took me two hours to shoosh out the door. The things we do for our career.

Film unit publicist: As I mentioned in my first blog message, the best job I ever had, creatively, interest-wise and every other way. The person who handles all publicity and media requests during the shooting of a film, I worked with the likes of David Bowie, Marlon Brando, Ashley Judd, all the freres Baldwin, John Lithgow, Ben Kingsley, Jack Palance, Katie Holmes, Roy Dupuis, Tia Carrere, Hulk Hogan (Terry Bolea), Donald Sutherland, Brigitte Nielsen... and hundreds of others. It was not always fun or easy, with so many egos to satisfy and wide-ranging attitudes, but I feel blessed to have done it. As a film buff, there is no better place to hang out than on a movie set.

And last/most recent but certainly not least... The Colon Guy. Need I say more?

A toute a l'heure!

Fridays are only the beginning

Most of you are thrilled today, right? It's Friday, the week is over, we are seven days closer to Christmas and the holidays are so near we can taste them as easily as sipping spiked egg nog. Well, for me,for many freelancers, this is the end of another week with very little income and a weekend with no prospects for finding work. At least there's Craig's List and a dozen other sites where I can apply for jobs. But when you are working at home, as I am at present, weekends are not necessary... they are redundant. It's not like I can go away for the weekend, because every dollar I spend is one dollar closer to that comfortable outdoor box I last referred to.

But because the working world pretty much goes to sleep, weekends also provide ample time to evaluate where you are going and to plan the week ahead. I am going to do that this weekend... I'll check the online job sites, apply to a few and maybe, just maybe, work on some horror fiction late at night. I have a short story I want to turn into a short film, so I have a script to finish. I'll keep you posted on that... it's a good concept and requires a cemetery willing to host me. Orherwise, like Burke and Hare, I may just have to creep in, stealthily, in the middle of the night under a full moon, to do dastardly deeds... creatively speaking, of course.

By the way, I reviewed the latest Stephen King novel, Under the Dome, a month ago and I am surprised it hasn't cracked the best seller lists yet. Mind you, it IS almost 1,100 pages long and weighs about five lbs, so maybe no one can lift it... let me know if you have read it yet and what you think. I liked it, but it IS really too long in my opinion.

Have a great weekend and I will try to post at some point. I'm new to this, so I am still testing out my diarybility.

Vaya con dios, muchachos!

A writer is a writer by any other name

So, it has come to this.

Having spent 10 months working for a cancer non-profit and touring Canada with a giant colon... yep, you read me right... here I am again, unemployed. It happens to the best of us, but at 52, I was hoping for better things. I thought I'd be living the American/Canadian dream: the big house, wife and three kids, nice salary, two vacations per year, summer house in the Hamptons/Laurentians... you know that one. We all have it and I know plenty of people here in Montreal who are living it. Not so many these days, but certainly some. I've been a writer my entire life, save for eight useless years in sales when I was young, naive and thought that a paycheck was all that mattered... and a decade in film as a unit publicist, likely the best job I ever had. The English film industry died a slow death here in Quebec starting in the early part of this millennium and I have been floundering career-wise ever since.

I thought I had it made with my recent job at the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada, as National Director of Exhibits, touring the country with a 40-foot long, eight-foot high, pink, inflatable colon. The goal was to show people (using all the gruesome pathologies than can afflict this organ many of us are so embarassed about that we ignore it) why early screening for colorectal cancer is SO essential, at least from the age of 50 and above.

So, I took The Giant Colon to 11 cities, as far north as the Northwest Territories, from March till October, only to discover that this amazing work I was doing - truly lifesaving in nature - was merely a cover for a sales job. It requires a used-car salesman to do properly, not a writer/publicist. I was certainly pressured to book it like a salesman, at a cost of $12,500 for the first day, in any case. And I really learned a lot about myself in the process. I am a writer, plain and simple, as good as any writer on the planet. Okay, I also take pretty decent pics, but writing... ahhh, that is what most defines me, what I'd like etched on my gravestone. WRITER. Perhaps in Gothic script, satisfying the spirit of the horror buff in me.

I thought I'd give you a glimpse into the life of a career writer in trouble. It's tough out there today and, yeah, I'm scared shitless, not knowing whether I'll be able to find well-paying, meaningful work again, or whether I'll wind up living in a box on Ste. Catherine Street, ogling the strippers as they walk to-and-fro, from one downtown strip joint to the next. Stripping is one job where I'd make a great living... but, nah, it's a young person's pursuit and I don't have the body anymore. Mind you, I DID rejoin my old gym yesterday, so you never know.

I'll keep you posted.