Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 31

Interview: Jeremy Chapman, helicopter pilot, toy maker, LA badass

You were a marine?

Yes, I was a Marine.  You should always capitalize Marine.

When?

Technically from May 23rd, 1997 until July 15th 2006.  But being a Marine is as much a state of mind as anything else.  I decided I wanted to go into the Marines in ’95, I was in the Naval Academy and so I started my indoctrination before I was formally a member.

What sent you towards the marines?

Ha!  Well, I wasn’t mailed there or anything.  The Naval Academy has an incredibly large focus on leadership.  They teach a great deal of leading by example, driving forward, setting goals and driving toward them; yet many of the Naval officers there completely failed to meet these incredibly high standards.  I think a major reason for this is that the Navy officers come from various backgrounds:  ship drivers, pilots, supply, legal, medical, etc etc etc.  The Marines are all Marines.  There are of course all sorts of specific jobs in the Marine Corps, but the officers at the Academy work together to present one message.  They had their shit together, and that earned my respect.

What was training like?

Long.  Seriously!  The Academy starts in July before your Freshman year.  It’s essentially an 8 week bootcamp that runs into your first year.  The entire first year you are still in military training.  It would take forever to explain, but there is almost no time “off”.  You are only allowed off campus for 12 hours on Saturdays.  After 4 years of gradually getting more responsibility, you graduate and then go out to learn your specific job in the military.  For Marines that means 5-6 months at The Basic School (TBS), then 3-24 months learning your Military Occupational Specialty.  I was a pilot, so that meant 24 months in Pensacola for Flight School, then another 3-4 months at a Fleet Replacement School where you learn your specific aircraft.  Then, you finally get to the fleet so that you can do your job and… spend the next 2 years learning combat tactics in your aircraft and getting qualifications so that you can lead missions and actually be useful.  In essence, I was in training for about 11 years straight.  The only time I wasn’t training was when I was actually in Iraq fighting the war.

You shot machine guns and all that?

Yup.  Pistols, M-16s, .50 cal machine guns, mini-guns, and my personal favorite:  the automatic grenade launcher.  BOOM!

Tell me about some of the crazy stuff you got to do.

Crazy?  What makes you think it was crazy?  This was highly structured government training!  There’s nothing crazy about it.  I will admit it was a step or two more exciting than training to be an IRS auditor, but we were severely reprimanded if we tried to do anything crazy.  Of course, if the Commanding Officer wasn’t around… we were flying million dollar aircraft with 3000+ HP of thrust… I flew around Iraq at 140 mph, 15’ off the ground, while people were shooting at me.  There’s a fine line between stupid and crazy.

You became a pilot?

Yeah, coming out of the academy if you wanted to go into the Marine Corps you had two options:  Marine Air, or Marine Ground.  At the end of TBS, depending on what was available and what your instructors thought of you, your specific Ground job was given to you.  But if you went Marine Air, then you were guaranteed a slot at Flight School.  I figured if I didn’t like flying, then I could easily transfer to a ground job.  In a way, it was me ensuring that I had the most possible options.

You flew helicopters?

Yeah, I never wanted to fly jets.  It just didn’t appeal to me.  I knew that if I flew jets I would almost never interact with the guys on the ground, and that seemed crazy to me.  The whole point of being a Marine was all of that leadership and junk that I heard about at the Academy, you can’t do that by yourself in a cockpit at 30,000 feet.  Actually, through a quirk of timing, I was offered an attack helicopter position on the East Coast.  But, since I wasn’t supposed to get assigned for another 2 weeks, they gave me the option of putting my name back in the “basket”.  They knew I wanted to go back to the west coast (it is SO much better on the west coast), so they gave me an option.  That was almost unheard of.  I was extremely lucky, because I ended up flying CH-46 helicopters on the west coast.  They do assault support (troop inserts, medevac, etc), and it suited my personality much better than an attack helicopter squadron would have.

What kind?

I flew the venerable CH-46 Sea Knight.  It is a large, grey, school bus-looking, blender, with two large rotors on top.  Kind of the little brother of the Chinook.  The youngest CH-46 in the fleet was built in 1978… only 3 years younger than me.  They are being de-commissioned now and replaced by the V-22 Osprey (the tilt-rotor aircraft).  There’s just nothing like the 46 though…

Where? When?

Where and when did I fly helicopters?  I flew in Pensacola for flight school.  That was cool, I did a lot of my solo flights as trips due east along the beach into Panama City, Florida.  It was a fun because you cruised right along the beach, couldn’t get lost, and there were always chicks on the beach in bikinis willing to flash the helicopter.  You could never really tell if the girls were hot or not because you were too high up, but the idea of it was still fun!  After flight school I was stationed in Oceanside, CA (really close to San Diego).  I flew there for 6 years (minus 3 months were I was flying in Korea, 15 months I was in Iraq, and various other periods where I was in Arizona or Nevada or flying cross-country to North Carolina).

What’s some stuff you saw while flying?

I saw a huge sink hole in the middle of nowhere in Texas.  I saw poor little shepard boys in Iraq get run over by their sheep when we flew over at 20’ and scared the shit out of them.  I saw rockets red glare, bombs bursting in air, and tracers flying by.  I saw sharks, 23’ alligators, sphincter-clenching thunderstorms, and chicks in bikinis in Florida.  I saw dust storms in Arizona and Iraq.  I saw the inside of clouds pretty much everywhere.

What were your missions like?

Mostly casualty evacuations.  You would fly like a madman to get to a dot on the GPS, you’d land and guys in dirty uniforms would run to the back of the helicopter carrying a stretcher, then you would take off and fly to another dot on the GPS.  Meanwhile the corpsman in the back would try and keep the patient stable.  The night one of my friends crashed his helicopter we flew his co-pilot out to a medical ship in the Persian Gulf.  That flight sucked, it was 3am and there was a solid overcast of clouds.  Over the water, miles from any lights and no moon or stars… it was like flying in tar.  You couldn’t see anything and it was incredibly disorienting.

What happened after your tour of duty was over?

I resigned my commission a month before I started grad school.  So I chilled out for a few weeks, and then jumped into an educational grinder.

You lived in LA?

I live in LA.  I moved here a few weeks before I started grad school.  It was an exciting move because I hated Oceanside (nothing but military guys there), and San Diego bored me.  LA held such promise and adventure!  It has mostly lived up to my imagination.  More so if I were rich enough to do everything that LA offers.

Where are you from originally?

I grew up in the Reno/Tahoe area.  We moved around a lot when I was a kid because my mom liked getting married.  I went to Reno High School my freshman year, and then we moved up to Incline Village, NV which is on the north side of the lake.  It was gorgeous; but, being a teenager, we never thought there was anything to do.  You know, besides hiking, swimming, skiing, sledding, boating, etc etc etc…

What’s LA like?

LA is what you make of it.  If you want to hang out with douchebags, they can be found pretty easily.  If you want to hang out with normal people, you can do that without too much effort either.  LA gets a lot of imports from around the country and the world, so there is an incredible amount of diversity in the people here.  I love that about this place.  The downside is that many of them come here chasing some “Hollywood” dream they have in their head.  This means you get a lot of hot morons, and you get a lot of bottom feeders taking advantage of them.  Hollywood has built a bit of a foundation of bullshit, so a lot of people “make it ‘til you fake it”.  The reliance on looks and lies can get a little annoying if you hang around that crowd.  There can be a lot of superficiality, and interest in other people solely based on what you think they can do for you.  There are also a lot of people who just like being creative, a ton of people who just love the weather and outdoor activities, and… well, to be frank, who doesn’t like hot chicks???

You design toys? Tell me about that

Actually, I don’t.  Not technically.  Technically I am a Brand Manager.  I research the market to determine opportunities.  I try to figure out what’s missing, figure out what that gap in the market is worth, then work with a big team of people to fill that gap and make millions of kids happy.  It doesn’t always work.  Usually because kids are stupid and only want what their friends want.  The designers I work with are incredibly talented, I wish I could design like that.  Hell, I wish I could sketch ideas one tenth as well as they do.  As it is, I just make sure they make stuff that fits the strategy that I laid out to fill the hole in the marketplace.

Imagine for a minute that Hot Wheels didn’t exist.  Imagine that there are all sorts of toys, but no toy cars.  I would be the guy who walks around the toy aisles and has an epiphany, “oh my god, there aren’t any toy cars!!”  I would do some research and realize that one out of four kids between the ages of 3 and 11 thinks that cars are super cool, and they would buy 5-6 cars each if they were available for $1.  I do some math and talk to a Chinese factory and discover that I could make and advertise toy cars for $0.80 each.  There are about 2 million boys for each age, and 9 ages in my target market… holy crap!  That means I could sell 5 cars to 18 million boys and earn a profit of $0.20 on each car every year!!  And now you know why Hot Wheels is like printing money.

So, anyway, I do a bunch of research and try and figure out what could work.  I then outline a strategy and make sure that Design, Engineering, Manufacturing, and Marketing all build the right toy and make sure that the right kid hears about it and gets excited about it.  I make kids happy by telling smart people what to do. 

 

I love Us

I’ve never shot a gun before

but I want to.

Can’t you hate your family?

Can’t you live near a water tower with a spelling error?

Please stand out on the lawn with a lemon lime hula hoop,

violet ribbons in your hair and a Sunday dress on.

I wanna drive up in a rusted out car I found by the reservoir,

my white t-shirt, my blue jeans.

I’d like to tell your father and your mother

that you’re coming with me.

Black velvet Elvis on the wall on a cross,

your Italian mineral oil rain lamps leaking by the birdcage.

I’d like them to say “no”

It’d be nice, the air sucked out of the room,

when I said “yes.”

I’d like to shoot them all

Leave their bodies at the kitchen table,

plates of gravy, hand made spaghetti.

Then me and you could roll slow

through wheat fields and strange farms,

“look at that cow!”

“that’s a horse.”

“Same difference”

West then south. Kansas then Texas.

I’d teach you how to drive manual,

you’d piant your toenails dayglo, 

bobbing out the passenger side window.

We’d buy new fuzzy rest stop dice,

those trees that smell like Christmas

dangling off the glovebox. 

You’d say you loved me,

we’d sleep beneath the out of range flash bulb stars

far away from the am/fm radio towers

and the influence of the Eat at Peggy Sue Diner billboards.

I’d kill a gas attendant in Playa Del Mar.

You’d read stained romance novels in motel rooms,

while I oiled the gun and laughed on the phone, to no one.

Your brother would catch us in California, Laguna beach,

riding his motorcycle all night, thinking his life was a movie. 

I’d like that. I’d gun him down from the roof of the Von’s supermarket,

you’d clap, watching him fall over in the only empty parking spot.

“Oh, it feels so real”

We’d eat the barely blemished fruit that you hid up your skirt

up the Pacific coast, all the ghosts stuffed into the trunk.

“Well, all you have to do is keep abandoning cars.”

“Can’t hit a moving target, sweetie.” 

You’d just smirk and toss me grapes

I’d catch them in mid-air like an estranged circus seal 

Most of all, I want romance

I wanna guide you through the silver streets

I wanna make a house in a Sequoia 

1,000 feet off the muddy ground 

I wanna set bear traps and make tiger pits 

with sharpened wooden spikes hidden beneath the leaves.

In feverish worried dreams, all you can do is extend fires 

and riot on anybody who comes between.

Ahhh, In the middle of the wilderness

pretend it’s funny when I pick up a pinecone

to order you a pepperoni pizza with mushrooms and onions

kiss me so deep I almost die

“Let’s start a new life in Alaska.”

Leave in the fog. Dime store sunglasses, 

and a root beer soda in Portland, Oregon.

Be recognized for your sins, eating a soft cone

outside the Tasty Freeze. 

Be forever cool and polite, 

when the dipshit cops arrive

short and star struck, multiplying like bunnies

to drag me off. Offer them gum.

And you:  don’t scream

don’t send me beautiful handwritten letters

don’t kiss the envelope with fire engine red lip stick

don’t come to my execution 

just remember what we had in the Grand Canyon

that I’m not gonna disclose here

cause, people talk

and I’d like our love to be private

despite the myth around it

that everybody thinks is their own

Saturday. Feb. 23rd, 2013

The doorbell rang. I walked down the hall delirious, my hair wild, “What?”

“Exterminator,” he said through the door.
“Fuck.” I opened the door, taking off the chain. A short guy with a mullet. Grey t-shirt, blue dickies. My apartment was trashed. Clothes and beer bottles everywhere. He walked in, swinging his bag.
“The guy next door has bed bugs,” I said. “We don’t want them here.”
We=me and my girl.
“Who would?” the exterminator says, “but I’m spraying for roaches.”
“No roaches here,” I said.
“You been bit?”
“By what? A wolf?” I laughed, “A vampire bat?”
“Bugs … bed bugs?” he said.
“No,” I pushed a pile of clothes to the side of the hallway with my foot. He looked at a crack in the wall. “But the guy next door said he has them in his place, so they might come over here. We’re paranoid.”
“I’d just spray. You’d bag all your clothes up. Put the mattress in a plastic bag. No big deal. Just a bunch of poison.”
Through the wall, my neighbor started to sing. He’s an opera guy. He was doing his scales. Loud. So loud.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Bill,” I said, “with the bed bugs.”
“Ah, shit,” he grinned.
“I get his mail sometimes. Electric bills and stuff like that, but I never remember to give it to him til I hear him singing. I don’t like to go over there when he’s singing. It’s weird.”
“What’s weird about it. My mother always played opera records. La Boheme, Madama Butterfly … Gianni Schicchi.”
“He’s balls ass naked,” I said. “That’s how he sings. The UPS guy told me.”

He laughed, “Then, I’m not going over there.”
“I don’t think he has roaches anyway, just bed bugs.”
I offered the exterminator coffee, but he declined. I went back down the hallway, but my girl was zonked out cold. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. We’d had quite a rough night. I put some clothes on, fixed my hair. Then, I figured I’d go and do my least favorite thing … get my fucking mail from the post office.
I’d been given a slip. Some kind of package at the inner city postal office. I searched for my car keys but couldn’t find them anywhere. eventually, I had to wake up my girl and ask her for clues. She said, “I have no idea where you’re keys are.”
It’d been a real rough night. I suddenly remembered that we’d driven back from New Jersey a little too toasted from a party, I’d drunk driven my car over the GWB and stuck it in the parking garage on 172nd street.
“Oh my god, I totally forgot that,” she said. I kissed her, walked out into the rain. The korean lady was down at my trash cans taking all of the glass bottles, I gave her our twelve pack from the Friday and Saturday. She smiled. We both winced in the rain, as if it was causing us great pain.
At the garage, I got my car, drove it through the rain to the post office. I parked at a hydrant, ran inside and got my mail, praying to beat the traffic cops. The pretty black lady at the window was quick, she handed me a flat cardboard package. I tore it open right there,
“What is it?” she asked through her bulletproof glass.
“A record!” I said.
“A record? What year is this?”
“Lady, I don’t even know what day this is.”
“Saturday, sweetie,” she said, blowing me a kiss, walking off into the maze of boxes and packages.
I got into my car right as the cops showed up, whoop whoop.
“All good officers!” I said, climbing in my car, driving down 165th street.
The Moth podcast was on the radio. People telling stories in front of a live audience. I wanted to go and do one of those. Or I wanted to fly to Portland, OR and see my friend who does her own out there at a dumpling place. I changed the station, it was a Rolling Stone’s song that I hadn’t heard in a long time, “Under My Thumb.”
I found a parking spot by the river. I walked in the rain back into my apartment building. As I walked up the stairs the place smelled like spanish cooking. The Dominicans were making something beautiful. I could hear Bill singing his Opera scales from two floors down. The exterminator was walking down the stairs as I was walking up.
“Have a good one, Buddy,” he said.
“You too, man,” I said, waving.
My girl, Spout was awake, sitting at the kitchen table. She smiled at me. She’d poured us both coffee. “Another hour,” she said, “the girl is coming to do my hair.”
“The test for the wedding, yeah,” I said. “I’ll take the record player into our room (the green room), you can have the office (the pink room).”
“Bless you, boy.”
“Think she’ll have time after to cut my mullet?”
“Of course,” Spout said, holding my hand on the table.
There was a pile of Bill’s mail sitting by a beer bottle I’d forgotten to take down to the Korean lady at the trash cans.
“What are you gonna do, today?” she asked.
“Write,” I said. “And drink all the coffee on 173rd street.”

Fourth of July Weekend

The shrieking of tires startled me from my magazine: swimsuit girls kissing in tropical water. I looked up as a blue LeSabre, already smoking severely, was struck by a rusted out F-250 pickup truck. The impact shredded plastic, ripped away metal, sent the LeSabre careening out of control—pummeling into the tollbooth next to mine.

Debris whizzed in my window next to my head. Cling. I  flinched so hard that I’d cut my head open striking it on the door handle. The floor felt electrified.

Black smoke, all around. All there was. I jumped out of my booth as tires squealed again. The pickup thundering away from the LeSabre, ripping its own bumper and fender off. It almost got struck by another car as it zoomed away wildly through the lanes.

Stop pay toll …

The LeSabre which’d arrived smoking, was then fully on fire. Flames licked from beneath the hood. I coughed in a fit as the wind sent the fumes at me. Cars stacked up behind us. Holiday traffic. Heat wave. But everyone was still snaking by in super slow motion: rubber necking as birth right, rolling through the toll without paying.

“It’s gonna blow up!” I heard an old woman yell out of a red station wagon, like it was an action movie.

I ran to the LeSabre, the dashboard engulfed. I ripped open the driver side door.  A woman fell out, her hair on fire, orange dress, shoeless. I rolled her around on the blacktop, stomping out the fire with my white Nike’s. I beat the fire out with my palms, my shirt, with her own dress. She moaned. I beat harder. The fire vanished.

There was a little girl in a car seat, still in the back. Three years old. Blonde pigtails. I yanked at her, the car seat was still buckled in, she shrieked in my face, clawing me, as I unclipped her belt. I threw the car seat with her in it out onto the road–skidding. The plastic was hot, melting. I had no fingerprints on my left hand for two months. All I could smell was burning hair, skin, plastic.

The kid shrieked louder. And louder. The burnt woman wheezed. Her once fair face now black. There were driver’s outside their cars then, staring at me. It was the fourth of July. I heard an ambulance. I heard a thousand car radios all at once. I heard the horns in the distance because traffic was stopped. Someone else screamed, “It’s gonna blow up!” It was my second day on the job.

Radio Show, Safari, Novel News, AWP

Last night, I did another episode of The Unknown Show the interview radio show that I do on Tuesday nights. I like to feature writers and musicians but am open to whoever has a story to tell: a strange job, a weird slant on life, some complaints to voice. Whatever. Listen to the show, it gets better each time … If you like what you hear, hit me up.

Some other things are going on (of course). I’m getting married on May 4th, so there’s a lot of planning for that. Just got my suit on Saturday and our rings. Honeymoon planning is going real well too … African safari it looks to be, “babe, I wanna ride elephants.”

“Elephants it shall be.”

Been doing a lot of rewrites and revisions on the novel Tollbooth. Getting ready to pass it off to the copy editor in about three weeks. Have also been working on cover design, and author photo and all that crap and acquiring “blurbs” for the book from some of my peers who’ve done the work I’m doing now and have out excellent books of their own from top notch houses/presses … It’s a lot of fun being able to reach out to writers you respect and have them enthusiastically return some respect back. Ah, all for fun. But really also, part of a community. I dig that most.

Also getting ready to head out to AWP (a big meet up for lit. zines/sites/houses/writers/editors in Boston where I’m set to meet up with a ton of writer friends that I’m always down for knocking back some beers with. I’ll also be doing a reading, poetry I believe on Friday afternoon in downtown Boston. Poetry readings are actually a blast, if you’ve never done one, give it a try. You might be surprised how much you like it.

How To Run A Poetry Workshop

Here is a general guideline to simply and easily running your own poetry workshop. All that means, is getting together with some writers you admire/respect and getting/giving constructive criticism on each others work.

1. Bring a poem

2. Print it out so each person has a copy

3. Take turns reading your poem out load. Read slow and confidently.

4. First the author reads it aloud.

5. Then one other person in the workshop reads it out loud (usually, a woman reads a man’s poem or vice versa) This way there are two distinct voices reading the same piece aloud.

6. Each person in the workshop makes notes/notations on the print out poem passed to them that was just read.

7 The notations should mention everything you like about the poem. There is always something good to say about someone’s work. Always. Let them know what you appreciate.

8. After that, the notes should mention everything you don’t like about the poem and why with a focus on saying, “what didn’t work and how it can be resolved or refined to become successful”

For instance: typos, jumbled words, unclear imagery, weak words, unintentional confusion …

9. Each person in the work shop takes turns reading their notes about your work/poem/story out loud.

Take this opportunity to mark up your work for later revision.

10. when everyone has critiqued it, you are able to offer some explanation of your work, but really that should be unnecessary. The object is to use their notes for your benefits. You already know what you know. You want to use the experience to strengthen your work, not rationalize its flaws.

11. Then you all move on to the next poem and repeat steps 1-10 for the next poem and the ones after that.

12. Afterwards, collect the notes on your poem from the group for your own benefit.

I found the workshop to he highly effective. Very enjoyable. It was my first writing group meet up/work shop for poetry and I have to say it was very enjoyable in a way that I hadn’t considered.

We did ours in a neighborhood bar, at a regular table with people around us. No one even seemed to notice what was going on. Certainly you can do a workshop in any public space, including your own home.

Of course, this could easily be done for short stories. Give it a try.

Good luck. Hit me up if you have questions. Let me know your experiences with these in the past.

Interview: Frankie Metro

Here is an interview I conducted with Frankie Metro, a favorite writer of mine. I’ve known him online and in real life for about two years. His stuff always surprises me in the best ways. I met him through the publication of his excellent book of poetry, The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry and a column that he used to write for Red Fez called the Left Handed Smoker. There’s a lot of links in this interview, take the time to check them out if you are able. Some real cool stuff.

Frankie Metro is Chief Rocknrolla (music/book reviews editor) at Unlikely Stories Episode: IV and co-editor of the online/print publication Kleft Jaw. His first poetry chapbook: The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry is now available from Crisis Chronicles Press. Someday, he’ll be dead. But until then, he’s not content until the stars burnout.

Thanks for doing this interview with me. Tell me about Kleft Jaw it sounds like a real interesting project …

Kleft Jaw stemmed from a lighthearted, extremely nerdy conversation I was having with co-editor Dustin Holland, about the Greek Klephts who fought against the occupation of their country by the Ottoman Empire. I remember Dustin was describing this book to me (Black Mask and Up Against the Wall Motherfucker) which had an interesting commentary on the activities of these “warrior poets”-they would light campfires on the hillsides and sing songs of battle and victory. the young men below the hills heard their songs and came up to join them. I’m paraphrasing of course, but the concept of attacking the conventions of monarchistic society really hit home for me, in that the current status of the literary world (small press, big press, medium press whatever) is filled to the brim with such nearsighted convention. So we took the name of the warriors, added a Jaw to it, like the donkey jaw Samson used to beat the shit out of Romans, and voila! Kleft Jaw. Our main objective is to further the cause of transcendental realism in literature i.e. realizing the full capacity/barriers of the human consciousness, and thereby breaking them and extending those barriers for further exploration. It builds upon itself, the human mind. And if there’s anything we can do to champion that progression, well… what the fuck else we going to do? I don’t have enough comic books to keep me busy these days.

You’re an avid reader, what’s the last great book you read?

I just finished David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, and I feel amazingly accomplished in saying that. I’ve met maybe 3 people that have sat through the entirety of 1000+ pages. For me, books are challenges. If there’s no challenge, then there’s no reason to talk. That’s how my wife Lindsey stole my heart actually, she sent me my very first Henry Miller book, saying, I think this would do you some good. It was Tropic of Capricorn. I was going through a very difficult time, had just moved back in with my parents after a failed stint in Florida, just released from jail, and this book made me realize that even though the settings are different, opposition and commonality are sometimes meant for each other. It can be the greatest inspiration, opposition. And books create the ultimate opportunity for commonality Therefore, when the 2 combine in a needed situation, it becomes the greatest love affair.

Where are you from? Where have you lived?

I was originally born in Iowa, was adopted at 2, moved to Ky, lived (if you can call it that) there for 23+ years, left for Florida, trekked around there for a few years off and on, and then got married and moved to Phoenix, during the summer, big mistake, left there after 4-5 months and several shitty phone jobs later, and now I love Albuquerque!

What do you like to do in ABQ? For instance, if somebody is coming to town, where should they check out, (i.e.. venues, bars, bookstores … food)

There are 2 sides of the street in downtown ABQ. One is the hipster side (the left) and the other is nothing but douches block to block (the right). For instance, on the right hand side of the street you have The Library, which don’t let the name fool you, they’re about as interested in books as I am in becoming a Klan member. But then on (the left) you have an equally pretentious set, but not as vocal about it. I do like the left, I really do. I love The Anodyne and the Sister Bar. But my own personal Cheers comes from the middle ground on 2nd street. Chama River. We hung out there right? The bookstores never seem to be open when i come around. Maybe they don’t like the middlegrounders here… ?

You work in a hostel on route 66. I was lucky enough to come and chill there with you and bunch of other poets for an event thrown by the lit. underground … what a great time  that was. What’s it like working in a hostel?

It’s a challenge and a Godsend. I mean, I love the whole idea of working for room and board, no bills!, but I don’t know if I can say I’m a real people person. I’ve had numerous years in customer service and whatnot and the one thing ive taken away from it all, is that customers suck. But the guests that come through are for the most part, pretty kool individuals. I just met a guy last night who is mistaken for either Skrillex or Jason Schwartzman all the time. We talked about the Cannabis Cup in LA this weekend, until he asked if I had any pot, which i said no, cause I didn’t have enough to smoke with either Skrillex or Jason Schwartzman at the time. Sorry amigos

That’s funny as hell. What projects are you currently working on?

Currently, I’m really taking to journalism. I write a lot of book reviews these days for Unlikely Stories, but I want to pursure more Gonzo Journalistic endeavors, considering Gonzo Journalism was one of my first lit scene loves. I miss Hunter S Thompson. Other than that it’s all pretty much editing these days. We (Kleft Jaw Press) are putting out our first poetry collection for Andrew Boeglin come 4/20/13 entitled Galaxy vs. Sabretooth and it’s been a real fuckin blast working on this book. The kid is on fire!

Your Chapbook the Anarchist’s Black Book of Poetry out from Crisis Chronicle Press was a very tight work, what went into the writing for that? How long did it take? What is your self editing process like?

The majority of that book was written in 2010 and the recurring poem (Streets of the Pan Americano Nightmare) i.e. the base of the book, was written in one day during multiple/illegal breaks while working at another call center in Florida. Alot of it had to do with my times there, but there’s a mix of environments (physical and mental) that went into its production, including ABQ and Phoenix. When I edit, I can’t just get ideas down and move on. I get really OCD about it while writing, so if there’s a comma that’s off, and i dont change it right away, you can bet it’s in the mental log, position and everything. I can’t just write something and it not be professionally presented. It kills me. I drive my chief editors crazy with notes about typos and the like. It’s torture self editing.

You were in Florida … you were working at a call center, what else?

I was living with a woman and 4 kids at the time. I wasn’t really happy. It’s hard for me to rundown my environment on that book man. In all honesty, I don’t know where I was at during that time (mentally). It stretches from 2010 on to the (almost)-present? I guess, if you want me to size it up, The Anarchist’s Blac Book of Poetry is about being an individual haunted by individualism. In essence, that book was a great purge for me. I had to get some of that stuff out or it was going to eat me. I will say that at the time of writing it, I had a healthy obsessions with Henry Miller. Anymore, talking about it seems futile, ’cause I’m totally not in that space anymore. You ever get like that man? Were you just hate everything that you did before? That’s the book. Crisis Chronicles did an excellent job with it, and I guess you could call it a labor of love, but these days, it reads bitter to me, and i’m not that bitter anymore. I found a woman that I love, who is mentioned in one of the first poems (and possibly several after that) called Team Zen. That’s where I want to end up when they shut the casket yo. I want to be on Team Zen.

What’s your daily life like?

My daily life was once described, by Lindsey, like waking up everyday to a new slumber party/agro session. We keep it pretty loose around here, and typically shy away from looking at or using watches or clocks. ABQ is a really open place to live and thrive artistically. Sure you have your issues, but aside from the occasionally proposed knife fight or momentary scuffle, it’s a good life amigo.

Another project of yours that I was really blown away with was/is The Meth Lab, a website featuring some pretty wild poetry and prose. Tell me more about that:

The Meth Lab was started a few years ago by Newamba Flamingo. He asked me to help out and seeing as how Newamba Flamingo is like, almost literally a blood brother, I accepted. We’ve published all sorts of moral turpitude at The Meth Lab. It doesn’t get the kinda respect it should, in my opinion, because the name can have a less than favorable effect on those that skim by it. But man, since our induction we’ve published a shit ton of great writers and artists:

Ryder Collins- author of Homegirl!

Bud Smith

Jason Neese

Aurora Killpoet

Yossarian Hunter

just to name a few … shit

What do you get out of running your own publication. for instance, Kleft Jaw, from what I’ve seen so far is a complex labor of love … describe what goes into making your own zine/website/literary endeavor, ie. The Meth Lab, Kleft Jaw … ect …

I get to keep my sanity. I dunno man. I guess what goes into it is making love, sweaty stank brown sheet vinegar kinda love to it. You’re really asking the wrong guy what goes into making this stuff. Cause I’m still figuring it all out. Not a pro at this by any means. Luckily at Kleft Jaw I have a partner as well. Dustin Holland and I read submissions, we choose what we like, what we think fits the transcendental realist genre, and we do a lot of DIY shit to make it happen. We use glue and tape and paper cutters and rulers and we fucks with pictures ya know? We fucks with pictures hardkore. The biggest problem for me, editing a mag, is I have to deal with people that don’t read the flipping submission guidelines. When we see someone that obviously hasnt even glanced at our homepage, and they send us bios when we dont ask for them and they send us docx files when we ask that you paste it in the body of the email, that stuff is really testing, cause it’s a matter of courtesy endurance. I can’t be courteous to people I view as being condescending or fake. I just can’t. Fuck you if you are.

You’re a music critic too, can you recommend something(s)?

I would highly suggest The Mountain Goats. Funnily enough, I saw a FB ad here a couple weeks back, that was trying to get votes for their lead singer to be named Poet Laureate of United States. I think if anyone deserves that title, it’s that guy. Amazing lyrics. Pretty much the drive of the band. The music itself isn’t very special, but the words man. Goddamn the words will hit you from (left!) field. Also, Birdy Nam Nam. All of Tinyamp records. Nuff said.

Speaking of Tiny Amp records, Kleft Jaw is putting out a chapbook from their own Andrew Boegling (AKA: William Seward Bonnie) right? 

Yes! Galaxy vs. Sabretooth is Andrew Boeglin’s bleeding heart, diced, chopped, screwed, remixed. It’s all there. The kid writes love poems that are actually enjoyable to read. I’m just amazed he can pull that off. We’ll be releasing it on 4/20/13 and from what I understand, there is a release party in Denver in the making as we speak. Funny thing is, The recreational Cannabis Cup ceremonies are scheduled for Denver that same weekend. So guess what we’ll be doing m’fers… It’s going to be a 40 page, perfect bound glossy covered release, and it’s going to rip a whole in the time/space continuum. Yup.

When I hung with you in ABQ I was real impressed that you didn’t have to have a car. I think it’s pretty great. You skateboarding around alot … tell me about that



I’ve been skateboarding since I was 7. I hate water, so no surfing. I hate snow, so no snowboarding. I love the motherfucking streets. And there is (almost) no greater release when you’re super tense than ripping up some curb. I’m older these days of course, and not as risky as I used to be. But yeah, i’ve been that guy hitching on the passenger side door when you’re going 40 mph in your Toyota Tercel. Scaaaaary…

I’ll leave you here with a poem called Pre-Nup that Frankie read on the Unknown Show last Tuesday:

“Pre-nup”

by Frankie Metro 

The Shattered, Unspoken

mouth of hell is asking for a divorce

from the Cruel, Unflinching nerve of

the egoist’s bedside manner. matter of

fact, it’s been given on good authority,

that once the theatrics are all but played

out every demon in the legion of the larynx

will come out with a gold or platinum tooth

that whistles like a catastrophe near a school

yard crossing. if there’s any chance for reconciliation

it lies in being able to recognize how much fun is

too much fun(?) we all know the ego is abrupt, forceful.

we know it as cunning & at the same time oblivious

to others pleas for rationality. but it’s a kinky game

it plays with itself, where instead of platinum plated

underlings with the capacity for independent vertical mobility,

the egoist sees progressive opportunity. each tiff with the Undoing

is like a phrenology course you mistake for church. every move

in the heart of a beast is effort toward strangling something

or the soft everlasting touch. there’s no real difference in species.

the nuptial between hell & the ego. it’s as sacred as the

hand brokered deal between piety & success. there’s just more

red in the color scheme.

On Writing

 

I mostly write while I drive
on my phone, sideways, 
used to just be red lights
but the human spirit 
can endure anything
such as motion
the new jersey turnpike
tunnels beneath the earth
lower manhattan traffic
I had a query for a novel
that I typed with my thumbs
commuting back and forth
to the refinery where I work
and my home wherever that is
I wrote the query at 73mph
and also the novel
steering with my knee
an agent wants to see pages
so I’ve begun to feverishly edit
in the slow lane
my hazards on
taking this shit seriously

How to Write a Short Story

I’ve been meeting a lot of people who wonder, “How is a short story written, what is involved?” I figured I’d break it down into simple steps. They don’t have to be followed exactly, but, they’ll probably help you on your quest.

Get an idea
Since it’s ready taken, don’t worry that it’s already taken
Masturbate to a photo of Flannery O’Connor
Have a cup of coffee
Start your story briskly!
Briskly throw it away after 5 minutes.
It’s the law.
Restart.
Write about life
Or death
Don’t let anyone else know that, make them think the plot is about as simple and carefree as having sex in a helicopter.
The first sentence of your story should only take you about seven months
If you think it’s done any sooner than that, keep crumpling it up and throwing it in your bird cage
Have a bird and a bird cage
Maybe a cockatiel just cause that’s funny to say
Cockatiel
write a rough draft of your idea
keep it loose
put in some of the key building blocks of life and humanity
such as love
betrayal
trust
typos
grammatical errors
explosions
the Pacific Ocean,
You love the ocean but don’t get to go as often as you’d like
In the short story mention a bunch of other cool shit
you have a lot of options
Don’t mention anything lame for more than 3/4 of a sentence.
Have you been writing on a yellow legal pad with a blue ball point pen? Go back to number 6.
Ask everybody on the street for clues about who Alice Monroe is
did they tell you? Perfect. Add some of her wisdom
find out from the deli girl slicing your ham who Denis Johnson is
insist on “thin sliced ham”
Back to the story. Add tension
add more tension
Make sure there’s a conflict
Make sure there’s a resolution
Make sure your character undergoes some monumentous forced bullshit change
Does it feel forced?
not working
Force harder
Add some love triangles
Also add an artistic scene of the narrator glancing out at the Pacific Ocean like the end of Barton fink.
Was that a short story?
I dunno
Maybe write Barton Fink as a short
Or whatever you want
It’s your story
You call out of your job for a week
You finish the first draft of your short story!
Celebrate!
Go out for a $250 steak dinner
Get a strawberry slushy from 7-11, add 13 shots of mescal
Get drunk in a random limo
Tell the limo driver to take you to Raymond Carver’s house
“Who’s that?”
“Look her up motherfucker.”
“Get out of my limo, you look like you’re gonna choke on your own vomit.”
At home you hit your head on the mirror, slipping in the bathroom
Nasty
Get some stitches
“What happened to your head?” someone asks
“Art” you say. Not meaning it. You just think it’s funny to say.
Submit your first draft to McSweeny’s!
Get rejected by the mailman as you hand him/her the envelope
Send it also to Esquire
The Paris Review
Your mom
Get rejections from all the magazines in six months
Your mom whenever Thanksgiving is
Rewrite your story
Type it this time
I thought you had enough common sense to type your draft …
you sent a handwritten story in an envelope without even an SASE? OMG?!
It goes like this:
Idea
Yellow legal pad
blue ball point pen
Type it up
Double space it
12 point times new roman
Put your email and name on the top of each page
Don’t be a smug asshole in your bio
Be nice
Thank the editor for their time
That’s it
SASE if sending through snail mail
who cares if it’s digital.
whew, alright, pressing  on …
Ok, you need critiques on your story
It’s obvious
Have your barber look it over
“Make your protagonist a barber” he’ll say
Don’t do it
Spell check your work again
It’s ‘your’ not ‘you’re’
Or ‘it’s’ not ‘its’
A bunch of other shit
Delete all the Martians
All the celebrity psychics
All the werewolf detectives
Write about regular people
Give them regular names
Or no names
Make their lives interesting (kinda)
But please don’t make them spies
Or cops
Or Jean Claude Van Dame
Rewrite the first sentence over and over and over again until blood comes out of your eyes
Then delete the entire story
Say “Fuck why did I delete that?”
Take your computer to a tech geek. Have the file rescued from wherever fucked up accidentally deleted files go.
Take the tech geek on a romantic weekend getaway to a secluded bed and breakfast in upstate NY
Screw loudly
Get complaints from the old couple that run it
Print them out your story on the printer by the chess board next to the fireplace
“Lose the barber. Who wants to read about a barber?” the old lady says.
“Make him a werewolf spy,” the old man suggests.
Submit the second draft to university presses
Get rejected
Marry the tech geek on the beach
You both love the beach
Submit draft 3 to online websites like Pank and the Nervous Breakdown
Get rejected
Submit draft 6 or better to small press online sites
Get accepted!
Say, “fuck them! One more draft”
Resend to the New Yorker.
Never hear back
Forget your story for a decade
start a family with the tech geek
Get a condo
Take the cockatiel with you
Gain 24 pounds
Figure out how to make jello no bake cherry cheese cake
“Easy as shit”
Have two kids
Twins
Whatever non identical is called
Boys
Kyle and Wiley
Start growing your own weed in a secret room behind your bookcase
Also, take your family on a vacation to see colonial Williamsburg in Virginia
They’ll hate it
You’ll hate it
That kinda stuff is good for your writing. Hate.
Also: crash your car into a telephone pole while fucked up on over the counter prescription medication that you crushed up and snorted
It doesn’t matter
It was a Mazda miata
That’s also good for your writing
Tell your kids “SHUT THE FUCK UP! I’m trying to write”
Draft 8
Draft 9
Suffer at work
Get the silent treatment at home
Decide to enter into rehab for the prescription drugs you snort
Adderal mostly
This saves your marriage
Your kids make the highschool soccer team
Whatever
Soccer sucks
Take your first writings class!
After the first class take the writing teacher out to the bar
ask, “So how did you get published in the New Yorker?”
Be surprised when the teacher says, “sheesh, I can’t even get a short story published in the local newspaper.”
Send your story to the local newspaper
It’s accepted!
Reject them too.
Laugh at the editor on the phone.
“Sorry, bub” you say. “Bigger and better things, bub.”
Do some research
Get someone to hit you with rocks so you finally understand Shirley Jackson’s “the lottery”
Workshop your story all that year at one of your six writer’s groups
Shut up and Write!
Write Prison!
Write N’ Munch
Scribble Fun
The Leather Elbow Pad
MFA MOTHERFUCKER’S ANONYMOUS
they’re all helpful
Tighten up your troublesome short story with all that wonderful FREE advice from all those other aspiring writers
Get a twitter account
Follow people who hash tag #ThePenIsMightierThanGettingFucked
Follow Raymond Carver
Finally read one of his stories
Tell me if it’s any good
Make your story sadder
Put in cancer
A car crashing into a train
Maybe some assault of some kind. people love that
Give everybody a pet dog with a wet nose
set the story in Pittsburg
In a steel mill
The day it’s set to close
Give every character a ton of back story
Write it in third person present tense
Oh shit your story is 63,000 words
Lean what flash fiction is
Learn Hemmingway’s 6 word story about the fucking baby shoes
Learn who Hemingway is
Cut your story by 61,000 words
Ditch the steel mill
Let your cockatiel go free
It dies in the snow
“Stupid” your computer geek spouse says
Your kids laugh
You think that’s a bad sign
Maybe they all need lithium
You don’t want any
You think psych drugs will take away your creativity
after work one day you stop in a your local seedy dive bar where bands and poets play/read and you are surprised to see a zine stuffed in the toilet
Fish it out
Rinse it off
what the hell, you send them your story
They publish your story!
You are 55 years old, you feel accomplished
“I’m a published author” you scream from your home at the top of Mt. Everest which you climb up and down all the time to do all your goddamned errands and crap.
That’s irony
Learn that.
Put it in your new shit.
Now, write a zillion more stories.
About what?
Anything but writing
Unless you don’t give a fuck
Just have fun
Go to the beach
Bring sandwiches
And an umbrella
And a blanket big enough for all of you
Watch the blue sky
jump in the green ocean
Feel good while you can
say, “I think this sandwich just gave me an idea for a story …”
“About what?”
“You’ll see. When they publish it.”
“Who?”
“Well, I’m not sure yet.”
“There’s sand in my sandwich.”
“Isn’t that exactly what life is?”
The sun goes behind a cloud and a chill comes off the ocean
you lay down next to your love
you both cover up for a little with the big beach towel
that’s your favorite part

FREE BOOK FOR KINDLE

Free kindle download of my short story collection Or Something Like That

Free today (Wednesday feb. 13th) and tomorrow ( Thursday feb. 14th)

Here’s a link to an audio recording to the first story in the collection Me, My Brother and Silver Bullet

Thanks, as always for reading. Please spread the word to anyone you’d know who’d like to read a collection of funny/strange short stories for the price of zero dineros.

Mucho gracias!