Seth Kaufman's Blog, page 2

Wall Street Journal Tells All

I was featured in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. They splashed the cover of The King of Pain and a picture of yours truly in a story about self published authors. I’m not sure how long this link will work, as the WSJ is a pay-site. But here it is.

The Greatest Presence on all TV?

Meet Barry Weiss.

Now say goodbye to Barry Weiss. That’s because Barry, the greatest “Hollywood guy” this side of Alan Arkin’s character in in Argo, is reportedly leaving the show he graced and dominated .

The show is Storage Wars. And in the the few episodes I’ve seen of Storage Wars — a mash up of Antiques Roadshow, Pawn Stars and every yard sale junky’s imagination — Barry Weiss owned the screen. Everyone else, no matter if they had just scored $10K of merchandise from $1K bid, was just a bit player compared to Barry.

He would ride up in antique cars. He oozed money and charm and the fakery that comes when someone is oozing money and charm. He was handsome. He spent money and made bids with no rhyme or reason. (Maybe because he was funded by producers, according to reports.) He had the omnipresent L.A. shades-and-a-smile salesman shtick that, for me, was utterly magnetic. A man radiating b.s. in all directions and loving it. And while the show is now facing charges of being faked (is anyone surprised?) I think this aura of fradulence just adds to Barry’s glory. Here was a guy just having fun, acting big, but not just acting, because he was, in that L.A. way, big. Which is to say, it turns out he did have money of his own.

Look at the picture below. He’s from central casting, right? But he’s not an actor. He is or was a successful produce trader.

I hope he does go into acting. Because, right now, he is my favorite Reality TV star of all time, leaping over Stacy London (the Mother Theresa of Fashion) and Michael Kors (the funniest man in fashion), dwarfing some of the truly talented on Project Runway, and even beating General Larry Platt, the “Pants on the Ground” guy on American Idol.

I give you America’s Under-appreciated Screen God:

Waterboarding in the News…

As readers of the King of Pain know, a number of torture methods come up, and so I write about torture from time to time here. The latest to weigh in on waterboarding is James Comey, nominee to head the FBI.

Comey told a senate panel today that believes waterboarding is “torture and is illegal,” and that if he were FBI director, he would have “nothing to do with it.”

This came up because, under Bush 2, as U.S. deputy attorney general in 2005, Comey okayed memos giving the CIA go-head to use 13 interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

So is he flip-flopping? Hard to say. In one of the emails he has reservations about using some methods in tandem. So he definitely had limits.

At any rate this is a far cry from Dick Cheney, who famously and, I believe, foolishly termed waterboarding “a no-brainer.”

New Book Free for Two Days

My “house-warning” gift book for homeowners, If You Give an Architect a Contract, is free today and tomorrow as an eBook. If you have a Kindle Fire or you have an Android tablet or phone, you can download it and have a laugh.

Why am I giving away a new book? Great question. As a self-published author, I need to make people aware of the book. Will this work? I have no idea. For now, though the book ranks quite high. It has climbed into the top 1000 free books on Amazon. So, presumably, people will find it as they search for other books.

The other free book that I have given away, The Gizless Days of Thomas Binder, which is a short story from The King of Pain, has not generated very many sales for the novel. But it has been downloaded a few thousand times, so who knows? Maybe I’ll find a reader or two down the line.

NY Times Gets Serious About My Parody

My second book, If You Give an Architect a Contract, is finally available in paperback from Amazon. And I’m proud to report it has already made some news. The New York Times Home section has written a nice article about the book. It is kinda strange to see my book interpreted for its existential elements. They even titled the article “No Exit.” Geez, I thought I was just writing a few semi-serious gags.

Sample quote: “If you give an architect a contract … he’s going to ask for a set of keys,” Mr. Kaufman’s picture book, which was illustrated by Laura Lee Pedersen, starts innocuously enough. “When you give him the keys, he’ll jiggle them, which will remind him of money, and he’ll probably ask for a deposit.” Before long, the reader is immersed in a nightmare of delays, unforeseen expenses and indifferent contractors.

Reading: Life After Life

I’ve written about books about books and metafiction here before. And now, thanks to the wonderful Kate Atkinson and her book Life After Life, I do so again. The premise of the new book is this: what if a character could live her life over and over, until she gets it right? In this case, the main character, Ursula, born to an upper class English family in 1910, dies at birth, is rescued at birth, drowns and then doesn’t drown, and so on. Atkinson is such a good writer that the retelling of Ursula’s life–the different choices she makes, the nuanced repetition and subsequent changes in dialogue–are fascinating and enjoyable. We get tragedy and then relief.

Reading it, I couldn’t help thinking about the fleeting, random quality of life that governs us all. How a single incident, a single moment, being in the wrong place at the right time or the right place at the right time, changes your life. Atkinson has addressed some of this before, the randomness of life. The fact that coincidence is part of life. But never so clearly as this project.

What is so “meta” about all this, is how present the storyteller is in the construction of all the events. By starting over, by rearranging events, this is a book that consistently refers to itself and makes it hard not to think about the storyteller, the string pulling author. What is she up to her? Playing with the form of the novel, retelling the story, mashing up time, ignoring the rules of life? And yet, the story-telling and the voices and observations are so sharp and compassionate, you get sucked right into the heroic Ursula and her huge family as if it were a great English classic.

TKOP Exclusive: Suicide Rate for Reality Contestants Three Times the National Average

It’s starting to look like reality TV shows should come with a Surgeon General’s warning.

Recent suicides Mark Balelo, an auction house owner featured on the reality TV show Storage Wars, and Mindy McCready, a country singer who appeared on Celebrity Rehab, now bring the number of former reality TV show contestants in the U.S. who have died at their own hand to 14. And I’m only counting the suicides since 2005.

The national average rate for suicides is 12.4 per 100,000 people, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. You don’t have to be Nate Silver to look at these numbers and wonder whether the reality TV suicide rate is higher than the national average.

Unfortunately, it seems like you do have to be Nate Silver to dig up the data to prove it. None of the TV data companies I contacted—Tribune Media Services, Baseline, Rovi, IMDB—were able to provide data on how many reality shows have aired since 2005 or how many contestants have appeared on those shows during that time.

So I decided to do my own back-of-the-envelope calculation. I took the 14 shows connected with suicide victims and counted the number of contestants that appeared on them in one year. Then I divided by 14 to get the average number of contestants for the “suicide series” shows: 30. Considering that Supernanny and American Idol had well over 100 contestants (and failed auditions), while The Next Great Baker had 8 (9 if you count the host) and Celebrity Rehab had 8 (18 if you count all the shrinks), 30 seemed like a pretty generous number.

Next, I consulted RealityTVWorld.com, which bills itself as “the Internet’s leading resource for reality television news and information.” The site lists 1,136 shows, including all 22 seasons of The Amazing Race, 12 seasons of American Idol, and even a listing for something called America’s Next Muppet, a six-episode mini-series that never aired.

Now, I took all 1,136 of the shows, a number that includes the aforementioned unmade Muppet show and also includes shows that aired before 2005, and I multiplied by an average of 30 contestants to get 34,080.

If we agree that this number–34,080–is a good faith guesstimate of how many reality TV contestants have appeared since 2005, then things do not look good for the well-being of your average reality show contestant.

14 out of 34,080 reality TV contestants is vastly higher suicide rate than 12.4 out of 100,000 Americans.

In fact, it appears to be more than three times the national average.

What does this disturbing statistic mean?

One web site that has done a good job of tracking reality TV deaths, Tamaratattles.com, reports that four of the contestants who had committed suicide were voted out during episode four of their series. Tamara’s conclusion: “What we have learned here is don’t go on a reality show. And if you do, try like hell not to be voted off in the fourth episode!”

When I studied the list, I was dismayed to see that a show as comparatively well-intentioned as Supernanny had a parent among the departed. For the uninitiated, the Supernanny teaches parents basic behavior modification skills to apply to their kids–be firm and consistent, dammit—while allowing viewers to watch one domestic train wreck after another. As reality shows go, it offers some unseemly family portraits, but it definitely has redeeming qualities.

Single dad James Terrill killed himself six months after appearing on Supernanny. Was his appearance on the show a factor in his death? Impossible to know.

But Terrill’s death, like all these TV suicides, is part of a preponderance of evidence that suggests the scars and wounds arising from this kind of exposure are not good for your mental health, your self-esteem, and ultimately your life.

But wait, you say. You’re sure that Kelly Clarkson, the first American Idol winner and a Grammy-winning sweetheart, would disagree. I’m sure, too. And doubtless there are others who have found their experience empowering or a great career move. And yes, we can’t blame the shows themselves for a few tragic decisions by a few cast members who just couldn’t handle the world.

Or can we?

Winners are the exception in reality TV. The odds are stacked that you will get voted off the island, Randy will diss your stage presence and the next day America will agree, or Heidi Klum will dress down your dress and tell you “You’re out.” Not exactly the best set-up for a confidence-building experience.

As Jackass and Jerry Springer have proven, there’s a pretty big audience for good, clean pain and humiliation. TV producers know this. Even the “best” reality shows offer their fair share of carefully calculated and edited “enter-pain-ment.”

How that pain is processed and internalized by contestants can’t be edited in post-production. And so, in this year of ridiculous programming, while we wait for a sociologist or data-loving blogger to confirm my unofficial data, let’s offer some predictions:

Eventually another contestant is going to snap, either on-screen or off, with tragic results. This is still the gun-happy land of America. It’s going to happen.

When it does—no matter if it’s a suicide or something much, much worse– the shows will have an out. They require all contestants to indemnify the producers from any personal mishaps. But that won’t protect them from coming under heavy criticism for the cynical, stress-inducing frameworks of their shows, and so the genre will be forced to take a harsh look at itself

Expect major hand-wringing. And denial of responsibility. And still more suicides. And more and more envelope-pushing series.

The Kincaid Conundrum Pt. 8

Blogger’s Note: The Kincaid Condundrum is a serial novel about Reuben Kincaid III, the son of the Partridge Family’s manager. Reuben Kincaid III is also a rock manager, but, as former Navy Seal and as a man locked in mortal battle with Carlos Jr, the son of the infamous terrorist, this Kincaid is a man and manager apart. You can find previous chapters here.

“Holy fucking shit,” said Suede.

The Taj Mahal, appeared before them. It was a magical, glorious sight, as if Shah Jahan’s miraculous marble memorial to his wife had somehow been air lifted out of Agra and placed at the edge of the Pacific.

“It’s a hologram,” said Reuben Kincaid III, stopping the car.

“Really?”

“You should know. You guys hologrammed the prophet Mohammed just to incite riots in Iran.”

“That’s not true. Those bastards in Savama started that rumor. They did the whole thing and blamed us. Although give them credit, it was a great idea.

“So that was their counter intelligence?”

“Yes. And, yes, I know the joke: The definition of ‘counter intelligence’ is stupidity. Laugher to the tenth power, right?”

“Spy comedy gold,” Kincaid agreed dryly. “Anyway, that’s a hologram. As soon as we start moving, it will disappear. I read about it in a profile on Erique Davide Einstein. He has a ton of hologram patents.”

Kincaid put the car in gear and the drove parallel to the domed building.

“It’s still there,” said Suede.

The road curved down and away fom the coast.

“It’s gone. But that was impressive.”

“Agreed. You better report that one back home.”

“I”m sure we have worked with him already. He’s on our team.”

Kincaid slowed the car down. “Would you look at that?”

The real house was in sight now. A gleaming glass and steel pagoda, five stories high, with each tier angled differently, so that the building seemed to twist in an architectural pirouette.

“He designed it?”

“I believe so.”

“Again: Impressive.”

They drove down and parked. An Asian man in a tux and white gloves approached with two flutes of champagne on a tray. “Welcome,” he said. “Mr. E.D.E. regrets he cannot be here to greet you at this moment. But he will be here shortly. Please, have some Bollinger’s and make yourselves at home.”

They each took a drink and walked up the black marble stairs that led to the entrance. The first floor had deceptively big; high ceilings. Toward the middle of the building were a series of walls hosting massive paintings, a glass elevator, and deco furniture. Kincaid looked out the glass windows and, in the distance, beyond the small paved parking lot that housed his car and a few others, he noticed a man in military green standing on a rectangular clearing, automatic rifle slung on his shoulder. He seemed to be searching the skies.

“This house is definitely not a hologram,” said Suede.

Kincaid smiled. He turned and looked toward the western side of the pagoda, the side with a water view. There was furniture at that end. And there seemed to be someone enjoying the view.

He sipped the chilled champagne and thought he might as well enjoy the day. How much crazier could it get-safari animals, the Taj Mahal, a 100 ft pagoda? Not much.

The back of the head looked familiar.

“Excuse us,” called Reuben. “Mind if we share your view?”

The head turned. Kincaid wondered if E.D/E. had devised another hologram.

It was Monique De Sinaire.

*******

It had always been Monique De Sinaire.

She had been there flitting in the background for decades now. At the clubs, at private parties, in Malibu, in Kauai and Maui, at Compass Point, at Wimbledon, and the Monaco Gran Prix. Where else? Morton’s after the Oscars, court-side at the Forum.

At first she was just this beautiful woman, sometimes attached to a celebrity, sometimes surrounded by a pack of slightly younger beauties. She and Reuben would say hello and offer each other quick smiles. But that was it. There were always others. It was L.A., the land of the endless supply of young women. But everyone Rueben dallied with seemed to know Monique De Sinaire.

And then, after the first invasion of Iraq, they had been at Gray Bradington’s War Party. Large video screens broadcasting the invasion, Peter Arnett gabbing his Kiwi head off on CNN and she was next to him. Close. Drinking champagne, wearing a beige cardigan over a silk camasole. Her eyes, were what he remembered the most: they were shining.

At him.

And bit by bit, night by night, with months in between of no contact, they had had a fifteen year non-relationship. There had been other women, of course. But she, he suspected now, had sent many of them. It was her way of watching him. She had planned it. She was his mistress, but she was his procurer, providing warm-up acts and hand -holders until she chose to deliver her own spellbinding, bewitching personal ministrations.

Kincaid was sweating.

In this age of Kardashian excess, when lingerie had devolved into an unsubtle hybrid of lace, crushed velvet and leatherette Gestapo torture gear, and when women from the land of Pornistan performed permutations of polymorphous perversion that were diamond hard, red hot, and yet soullessly empty at their core, beaming in from a steroid and surgery-fueled the land of fantasy, Monique De Sinaire communicated a more subtle and ancient carnal essence, the kind that knows that there is nothing more alluring to a man than a bra strap on an otherwise naked shoulder in dim light, or a silk chemise silently revealing the marvelous sculpture of a collar bone so that it beckons, almost glowing and calling out in its perfect porcelain frailty to be touched, traced, stroked like a jewel, or a grazed and nuzzled like the rarest, sacred healing fruit, a fruit that to just caress would be a heavenly prelude to an even greater body-quaking beauty and passion than any man had a right to know; yes, that was it: she exuded magnetized languor and provoked unrequited lust; she spoke fluent “go-ahead: impress me” blasé without saying a word, her eyes drew you in and invariably moved on, dismissing you, leaving you to join the trail of so many other men who tried to decode her message only to ultimately misinterpret her poker-faced passivity as interest, thanks to the hypnotized, self-deluded, horn-bone projections fueled by her beauty and her silence and their own mad delusions of adequacy; yes, it was in her blood; she was French.

She looked at him now. He thought there was something in her eyes. Fear? Regret? Guilt? Silent hunger? It was hard to tell; her silence and beauty distorted everything.

He wondered if he should kill her. First he needed find out if she had set him up. He thought back to the night he rescued Yanni. Monique had introduced him to those blonde babes who turned out to be Russian spies. What the hell was she doing with them? He was sure there was a connection to Carlos Jr. Once he confirmed that, he would decide what to do with her. Of course, he noted to himself, there was always the possibility she would kill him first.

He sipped some champagne, studied her dark eyes, looking for a clue and smiled. He hoped she hadn’t really betrayed him. He didn’t want to kill her.

Love was funny that way.

He heard a whirl in the distance. That would be E.D.E. choppering in. Maybe he would learn what the hell was going on. Clarity couldn’t come fast enough.