Bud Smith's Blog: Bud Smith , page 32

How To Pick Up Chicks in 110 EZ Steps

I’ve been meeting a lot of people who wonder, “What’s the best way to pick up chicks?” 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 born
Chicks love babies
Just be a baby as long as you can
Resist growing any bigger than a baby and thus becoming a toddler
When you’re six years old, you’ll have to start devolving some hobbies to show chicks that you’re interesting
Don’t eat paste
Read a lot.
Read good shit, like Thomas the Train and the Phantom Tollbooth
Don’t pretend to be a dinosaur when they’re around. Unless they’re into that.
Start slicking your hair back
None of the other six year olds will be slicking their hair back yet, it’ll give you an edge
Probably don’t peg any girls in the face with rocks on the playground
Also, don’t rip their pigtails out
so now you’re out of grammar school
congratulations
Now that you’re ten years old, get a car (yes, you’re 10 years old, I understand)
Get a car
all the other kids will ride the school bus to school or ride their BMXs, get a car
probably a Transam
It doesn’t matter if you can’t see over the steering wheel
crash the Transam
get a badass scar
a face scar
now you’re eleven years old and have a legend that’ll surround you
You’ll be popular
Make friends
Make friends
But only with other kids who have good looking chick sisters
Wear fancy shoes, shiny ones. Nicer than your dads.
Wear a suit everyday
Don’t bother with a tie
Graduate middle shcool at the top of your class
Or get into a fight with the principal on the last day of school and spend the summer in juvenile detention.
Learn French
just kidding, that doesn’t work
Brush your teeth
So now you’re in highschool, stay in there and learn
If your Sex Ed teacher is sexy you’ll want to try and lose your virginity with them if you haven’t already
Hang cool pictures in your locker of you climbing mountains
flying on the back of golden eagles
wrestling bears
all that crap
When you see a chick you sweat, wink at her
don’t do that quickdraw thing with the pistols. They think that’s lame.
forget pickup lines
ask questions
ask her more questions
this is important
no talky: no nookie
find one that makes you laugh
make her laugh too
if she’s not interesting you’ll never get bored. If she’s not interesting don’t bother trying to pick her up.
a new direction: take a high dollar prostitute to the homecoming dance
take a girl to the prom who couldn’t get a date: it’s just the right thing to do
have a high dollar prostitute waiting for the both of you in the motel room after prom, surprise!
don’t take your dates to the movies
or museums
Take them on acid trips
Graduate high school, but don’t go to the graduation. There’s no opportunities for meeting chicks there.
Go to college
major in smooching and not telling
for more college info see: Animal House
see The Graduate
see: Ernest Goes to College
see: Back to School with Rodney Dangerfield
After college, get a nice place of your own far enough away from the train tracks and the corner where people get shot, but close enough that you can walk to get your drugs
have a pet alligator
have a house where every wall is a tropical fish tank
Tell girls you’re in Metallica
if they say, “Metallica sucks,” you say, “I know that’s why I’m quitting the band today.”
get good at back rubs
get some kind of fancy back rub certification
don’t tell anyone about the certificate let the back rub myth travel by way of whispers in the shadows
get some facial hair
you’ll either look better or worse
If you look worse, cut it off
listen as the chicks say, “you look better!”
Remember how much chicks loved you when you were a baby?
Become a baby again. Find Zoltar.
Or steal a baby
Don’t make a baby
That means no more chicks
Get a heart shaped hot tub
A red race car of some kind with a moonroof
A guitar signed by Eddie Van Halen
A fur coat made from those arctic wolves that rock
Carry a suitcase full of your money handcuffed to your wrist
Buy the Godfather trilogy on DVD
Use Godfather 3 as a coaster
Chicks dig that
Also: if they ask you if you’ve read a certain book, say “No, I wrote that under a pen name”
Concentrate on your career
By that I mean concentrate on not having one. It interferes with picking up chicks.
Be rich
How do I get rich?
That’s another step by step list for another time.
When you hit middle age, start to talk with a British accent
If you’re British start communicating with sign language
If you’re deaf, you already get all the chicks
When you hit 56, you better put in an ANOTHER in ground pool. Each year add ANOTHER in ground pool. Until you hit 75. Then, just chill.
As you get older, walk with a cane with a very large jewel on top
Wear an Indiana Jones hat
Tip your hat at all the ladies
don’t talk about the old days
have fun at all costs
always be kind and patient and caring
if somebody looks like they need help, help them
At 100 years of age, settle down from the dating circuit
Ask your best gal to go steady
Pass away in your sleep on a warm spring afternoon on a hammock by the river.

Writing A Novel From Start to Finish (in steps)

I’ve been meeting a lot of people who wonder, “How is a novel 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.

the idea (get the idea)
make sure it’s a stupid idea that nobody has used yet
add some sex
add some more sex
make it three-way sex of some kind
don’t focus on the plot, focus on the main character’s dick and what the main character’s dick wants from the world
If it’s a lady protagonist, concentrate on her pussy and what it wants from the world (or to give the world … ie, babies, nothing, copulation, ect.)
draft out a scene
draft out another
throw them away
ditch your sex obsessed characters
think of ones that want something from life other than mindless bang action
write another scene. save this one. hold into it til the revision process (six years from now)(throw it away then)
in the first chapter, make your character do something heroic if he/she is an unlikeable character, or something unlikeable if he is a hero. Make him/her more complex
how?
I dunno, have them save a fucking cat from a tree …
or have them throw a cat into a tree (see 14)
while you draft out the beginning stages of your novel, keep the tension high. In all sex scenes don’t use lube. But it’s more than that! Add fights, terse dialogue, arguments, mistakes. These things keep the reader interested.
Give your writing odd details
avoid the “info dump”
that means, don’t tell me everything about the characters right away. Practice the slow reveal
reveal as much about your characters through dialouge as you can
do the same with the plot
at this point, whatever your plot is, make it simpler and stupider
congratulations, you are halfway done with your draft!
how? That was quick?
it doesn’t take as long as you think it will.
keep a notebook by your bed. carry a notebook with you wherever you go. take notes on your cellphone. Or, if you really wanna be productive, write on your cellphone with your thumbs.
the middle of your book sucks
you wanna stop
you don’t. you keep going because Bud Smith says, “YOU CAN FIX IT LATER”
your characters have nothing to do
what do I do? My characters are bored …
send them to the zoo. Have one fuck a lion. Have another one get eaten by a bear. Have one start working at the zoo at the balloon stand. Change your main character into a penguin for awhile.
why?
Penguin is a great publishing house and maybe the main character being a penguin will help you get published there
it rains, you get drunk
you skip out on work
you don’t write for three weeks
you make a small note on the back of a business card that says, “I need an MFA”
A friend calls you up and asks you if you wanna trip
you trip. shrooms soaked in boiling water with green tea bags and lemon. Also, mint.
later that night, laying in bed, you can’t sleep. You think about your novel. You decide to get rid of the zoo scene
the new draft has a car chase
the new draft has a fist fight between a brother and a sister. He loses a tooth. A very valuable ring of hers get’s swallowed by a penguin.
get rid of the fucking penguin
whatever
raise the tension
3/4 of the way through the book don’t even think about adding a dream sequence
also, don’t even think about setting up a twist ending
fuck your twist ending idea
whatever your conflict is, make it more badass
start to worry that your book is too crazy
make it crazier
draft out the conclusion
it’s perfect, you say!
tear it up
rewrite it
excellent!
wait a year
write another thirty pages after the “old ending”
SUBMIT!
SEND EVERYWHERE
don’t bother to learn how to query correctly
send a random letter to every agent in the world full of tangents and a bio that makes no sense and says nothing about who you are
get rejections
get a million more rejections
get one rejection that says, “run spell check on your query letter”
another that says, “for your benefit, please check out QUERY SHARK to learn how to write a proper query letter”
you actually take both of those critiques as legitimate advice.
you fix your shit
it takes another two years
you send out a great query
AN AGENT or SMALL INDIE HOUSE wants PAGES
40 pages please, double spaced … 12 point times, contact info, bio, page numbers
you send it out that night
your manuscript has not been edited
so you never hear from anyone
ever
the rest of your life
a year later, you say, “Maybe I should spell check my novel …”
you do that
then you say, “what the fuck, maybe I’ll even proofread it.”
How though?
Ok, it’s easy
first take the word doc, make the font 18 instead of 12, make the line spacing 1.5 instead of one. Start at the beginning. Delete all the parts that annoy you.
Remove the unnecessary ands and ors and buts
do this all the way to the end
fix your dialogue by reading it out loud
fix your punctuation like you’ll die if it’s wrong
this part is important: PRINT YOUR NOVEL OUT
make a dummy proof on a website like Createspace
export the word doc as a PDF, upload
make yourself a cool book cover with a simple program
It’ll cost you three dollars to order a dummy proof for yourself
$3!!!!
Yeah, unbelievable right?
The proof comes. It looks all fucked up. Cover is stupid. The inside is hard to read, make notes about the text spacing, the layout, the overall look of your book
try Georgia font 11 for a 6 x 9 book. 1 inch margins whereabouts. 1.1 line spacing. 1.2 is even better
drink all the alcohol in your house
get fucked a couple times
refreshed, dig into the book, sober
SOBER
STAY SOBER
OK?
get a highlighter
as you read your dummy proof highlight a shit ton of it
you will find an amazing amount of mistakes, missing words, typos, crap sentences … all that shit
if your original idea was stupid enough
if your characters have enough life
if your plot is about life
if there is a change
if there is a fight to the death
if there is mind blowing sex
if there is friction and intrigue and tension and blood
your manuscript will be salvageable
salvageable
yes … you’re dummy draft is 83,000 words, with the highlighter and a blue ball point pen you will strip 32,000 words
why?
the part with the goddamned penguin. The fucking dream sequences. The twist ending.  The part where no one was fighting or fucking or slowly revealing the plot and changing as a result, YOU HAVE TO TAKE ALL THAT OUT
You whimper
You remove those things, though it kills you
you add more references to the real world
your own memories
your fears
you put your favorite songs in there
you get your characters trashed
you set things on fire
you blow things up
you make everything more ridiculous
you make everything matter MORE
you add a moment of unexpected tenderness
soft things
sharp things
there are three dimensions, maybe more
in a separate word file, you start to write these things down
it comes real easy, you’re surprised
you feel drunk
you sweat a lot
it’s 4 am and you’re still writing
two months later, “finished”, you order a new dummy proof.
this one is 90% to your liking
you decide to give six copies away to people who you think will give you an honest opinion
no one even reads it
you try to find an editor from among your online friends
you can’t find anyone to edit it for you
you consider freelance editing services
you note that it’s $1000 dollars, you cry
so, you start to write another book …
but, a year later, you do go back to the penguin manuscript
you start to edit it yourself
really edit it
it sucks
it’s the worst thing you’ve ever had to do
but you stick with it
it takes three months, but you actually copy edit you’re own book
you’re so proud!
you send it out for consideration at a house that you respect
you get a rejection that says, “It will benefit you to have your work copy edited. The wiring here is very rough. Not to mention that the part about throwing a cat into a tree was very cruel.”
lose the cat part
find a writer who you admire
make sure they like you too
swap manuscripts with them
you edit  theirs
they edit yours
go chapter for chapter
when it’s ALL done, fuck their brains out
they are awesome
you are awesome
SEND YOUR FINAL DRAFT OUT TO A VERY SMALL PUBLISHING HOUSE
They accept it!
Reject them!
Send it somewhere better
They reject you
send out a zillion more queries
talk to everyone
make yourself a blog
get a twitter
go to parties
go to readings
read your fucking work
extend your bio
write short stories
BUT I’M A NOVELIST
fuck you, idiot
write short stories, get them ran at literary websites you like
make friends with people who are cool
buy them beers
go see rock concerts with them
submit some poems to cool lit sites
BUT I’M NOT A POET
you’re a writer, write some poems, asshole
go perform your work. DO READINGS.
NO!
YES! DO READINGS
get in zines. get in newspapers, get in everything
write everyday
write every night
write while you sleep
edit, edit, edit
one day you get a request, WE WANT PAGES
you send pages
they say, we wanna see more
you die from excitement
but you did all the work, you spent your time crawling up from the underground. You learned on the way up. You were full of doubt and misery and pain, but THEY WANT A FULL MANUSCRIPT
you cross your fingers, you send it out
you wait
they like it!
they want it!
they want you to change a lot of things
like what?
well .. it needs more tension and more sex and a love triangle and it needs spies and vampires and magic
No problem
tell them yes
but what you mean is, “fuck off”
work on your revisions
work on your rewrites
miss your deadline
miss the next one too
send them “not what they wanted”
listen to them say, “PERFECT!” as if their suggestions weren’t even uttered.
the copy editing begins with an outside editor
you get a proof with almost every single word changed
you reject every single correction
the copy editor feels slighted
fuck the copy editor
your book comes out!
it doesn’t change your life
you don’t make that much money
but …
you have fun at the release party
you avoid all the reviews
you take your significant other to a seaside town and rent a room by the ocean. You buy $200 worth of average weed. You smoke it all. Laugh your asses off, screw in the hot tub, though it’s really difficult (not like the movies)
your partner says, “What’s next? You gonna write another book?”
you say, “No.”
You’re done
it was the hardest and most draining thing that you’ve ever attempted
the payout wasn’t worth it
you’ve gained 36 pounds
you haven’t played the guitar in three years
“So what are you gonna do with all your free time now?”
you say, “come over here and kiss me deep.”
and that’s it
for awhile
just for awhile

Sex Tape

Sometimes, i went in my closet and got the blue VHS that i’d recorded with her mother’s camcorder. the tape had me and Carry awkwardly fucking in the basement where i used to live. she was nude except her purple fishnets. i was real tan and had a beard back then. people sometimes asked me if i was Portugese. they’d ask Carry if she needed a ride anywhere. she always looked like she needed a lift. she said, “i’d love you more if you were from somewhere exotic.”

there was a neon green fishtank in my room beneath a clockwork orange poster. we did it doggy style, so high. as a joke, she kept moaning, “João! Oh João!” we laughed wildly. The tape came out stupid, all we could mostly see was my hairy ass, the fish tank glowing, the curled edge of the poster. afterwards, as we laid, drinking bitter boxed wine we’d stolen from Food Universe, she criticized my cinematography, “you should have put the camera on the dresser, not the night stand.” i said, “there’ll be a million more tapes. you direct the next one.”

there weren’t any more though. things disintegrated. the summer got more humid. there was a fire in the boiler room across the mildewed hall. i would have burnt up on my bare mattress but i got drunk and fell asleep at a party i wasn’t even invited to. everything melted. the fish tank burst. the poster became ash. Carry got a ride to a college i didn’t even wanna know the name of. as the sweat rolled off of me, and i added more limestone to the concrete in the overbearing sun, i only became more and more Portugese. i started saying i was from Azeitão. but no one ever asked me why.

——————————————————————————————–

The Silver Face

I was at a costume party: a warehouse in the city. I had on a silver mask that had been given to me as a gift by a strange girl I’d met while waiting out a rainstorm underneath an overhang.

The party was packed.

I was dancing with the same girl. She kept spinning, her long red dress covered in neon birds twirling around. Other guys there were trying to make time with her. I didn’t care, but when I looked back at her, she had inadvertently begun to float and I started yelling at the guys because they were down on their hands and knees looking up her dress and she wasn’t happy about that.

I got shoved hard. A beer was thrown in my face. The gift, the silver face I wore sizzled as if it was a hot pan frying an egg. It’d begun to glow white on my face, I could see a halo around everything. I looked at my hands, they were as bright as the sun.

One of the men threw a punch. A fist came at me in what seemed like super slow motion. I ducked, threw a counter punch that went off like a sonic boom. There was an audible crunch, the guy soared into the DJ booth cracking the plexi glass.

People ran everywhere. Mayhem erupted at the warehouse. The music stopped. The girl in the red dress floated out the window. She yelled to me, “I’m sorry! it wasn’t supposed to be like this.” Someone was screaming, “He’s dead!”

There was blood all over the DJ booth glass. The guy I’d hit. Broken neck.

I ran out of the warehouse in a sea of moving bodies. On the street, I walked quickly with my hands in my pocket to hide them. The light from my knuckles, palms, veins was fading. My jacket started to smoke. It was catching fire from my hands. I took it off, tossed it on the sidewalk. As it burnt up, I kept walking.

By the time I got back to my apartment, I was in a hot sweat. I ran to the bathroom, my face throbbed. In the mirror, I no longer looked the same. The mask was gone. Absorbed.

I was growing. I watched it happen. My shoulders popped out of their sockets. My shirt shredded on my back. My pants split at the seams.

I began to glow again. In the mirror, my skin looked like the surface of the moon. Lunar iridescence.

I backed away, found I could barely fit out of my bathroom door.

There was a knock on my window.

The girl in the long red dress waved to me.

I opened up the window.

“Let’s go,” she said. “They’re coming for you. It won’t be good.”

Already the sirens were audible in the distance. I could hear everything then, if I concentrated.

“The police,” I said.

“No time,” she said, “come out here.”

“I can’t fly.”

“Of course you can.”

I stepped out the window. The both of us went up over the building. Down below, I could see the first of the police cars coming. But also, I saw men standing on the sidewalk in long trench coats. One was holding a sword that was on fire.

“Who are they?”

“I hope you never have to find out.”

They looked up at us, as we flew higher. I watched them flicker, vanishing as if a projector was flicked off.

Interview: Matt Guerruckey

I was in LA recently for the West Coast release of Uno Kudo. We threw a pretty big party at an art gallery in downtown Los Angeles and holy smokes … there was even an orchestra that showed up to play. (Those things are usually at VFW halls with punk bands providing the music) (so … whoa!)

Matt Guerruckey came out, we had a few drinks, and were able to meet in person for the first time  since knowing each other for about a year online. We just did a radio interview with Matt on the Unknown Show, so click on that lovely blue text if you want to here me talk like I have 27 marbles in my mouth, or if you’d like to hear Matt’s great insight on modern lit. running your own website … ect. ect  … if that’s not enough for you, there’s a whole goddamn print interview below. Holy Cow, that’s a lot of Guerruckey!

Matthew Guerruckey is the Editor-in-Chief of the literary web zine Drunk Monkeys. His short stories have appeared in Connotation Press, Five 2 One Magazine, and upcoming editions of The Weekenders and Bartleby Snopes. His pop-culture writing can be found at Screen Spy. He can be reached at guerruckey@hotmail.com or on Twitter @guerruckey

Matt, thanks for sitting down with me here. You run the website Drunk Monkeys. What interests you about running your own site?

The random nature of it all. I love that I get correspondence and submissions from all types of people from all over the world. We’ve run pieces from China, Australia, Nigeria, and that’s been an interesting view of different perspectives. Writers—and especially beginning writers, where most of our submissions originate—haven’t learned yet how to hide their perspective in the mechanics of storytelling, and it just bleeds all over the page. When I read through our slush pile I really feel like I’m seeing these people at their most honest. There’s a vulnerability about that I find really engaging.

Do you consider yourself more of a publisher or writer, or are the lines blurry?

I think of myself, first and foremost, as a writer. Part of the reason I launched Drunk Monkeys—and definitely the reason I made a very public show of it to friends and family as I did—was to have no excuse to be lazy about my writing. I didn’t just want to be one of those people that make big plans and pronouncements and then never follow up on it. Part of what fueled my productivity in the beginning was the fear of falling flat on my face.

Over the course of last year, though, I did begin to feel more like a publisher because submissions became so overwhelming, and work so busy, that it took away time that I would have been writing. Though, in all honestly, that’s a justification for not getting to work on my own stuff. This year I’ve recommitted to writing, and it’s been incredible—but I have to keep that work ethic going.

What are you interested in covering with Drunk Monkeys?

The only thing that would concern me is if readers ever knew exactly what to expect from the site. I like knowing that we’re going to publish a poem each Tuesday and a short story each Friday, but that’s just for my own peace of mind planning things—I want the content of those pieces to be as unpredictable as possible. And on all the days in between I want to hit readers with things they might not expect, whether it’s a humor essay, a horoscope, or an interview with someone they may never have heard of, but who has a fascinating take on life. Whether or not they realize it, the thing that most people love about the internet is its randomness. You go online to research wildebeests and end up watching the intro to the 80’s Gummi Bears cartoon—for the site to continue to be successful it has to retain some spontaneity.

What are you aiming to cover in your own writing?

I have pretty lofty goals, but part of the fun of the writing process is seeing what burbles to the surface on its own (well, sometimes fun, sometimes alarming). I have a very humanistic take on life, but that’s tempered with this obsessive-compulsive need for structure and ritual. So I end up fascinated with the push and pull between chaos and order, and of there really is any purpose to life. The only meaning that I’ve been able to determine is that we’re here to be nice to each other—and I don’t mean that in a weak, polite way, I mean that in the sense of helping the person right next to you with whatever they need to get through their day, because without those basic kindnesses life rings hollow.

Here’s a link to one of Matt’s short stories, Trail of Fire.

Take a peak! It’s Meg Tuite’s website, who rocks with a capital R. Click everything.

Freelancing sounds like most writer’s dream. Working from home and being able to write under your own watch. Is it daunting? Are there unexpected sides to it you didn’t foresee? 

It is daunting if I give myself time to think about it, which is why I keep myself as busy as possible. I’ve had periods of significant depression and self-loathing in my life, but if I let that creep in now it would derail a lot of planning, practice, and sacrifice—not just on my part, but from people who love me and support me. I don’t take that responsibility lightly. Every day is a recommitment to my goals and my future, and it has to be for this to work.

I’ve always worked best independently, but in the past I’ve not been able to prioritize things well enough to get anything off the ground. The good thing about my previous work experience is it gave me an in-depth understanding of things like time management. So far, I’m surprising myself with just how much I’ve been able to get done and how much easier it’s getting to express myself.

How do you do your writing?

I use Scrivener, a program that helps organize notes and drafts together. It’s got a split-screen feature that’s the best thing in the world. I like to think it allows my creative brain and my editorial brain to work together rather than tear each other apart. Whatever the reason, it’s freed me up to just write without stopping to think too much about structure, while also providing an easy way to plan a structure that I can implement later.

How do you edit yourself?

Once I’m done with the Scrivener draft I go over the resulting Word Document for grammatical errors and read the entire thing out loud to pick up on any clunky phrasing. That’s probably the number one piece of advice I can offer any fiction writer—listen to how your stuff reads. It’s an entirely different experience hearing it from your voice than in your head. In your head you make a lot of automatic connections because the ideal form of what you want to express is rattling around in there, but you can’t guarantee you’ve gotten it on paper until you read it and notice something’s missing.

What advice do you have for young writers who would like to have their own blog or website but struggle with getting it off the ground?

Just go for it—it’ll turn into whatever it’s meant to be. The platforms are free and easy to learn, and the only way to become a writer is to write. There’s no other time in history where it’s been so easy to get your stuff out there for someone else to read. But, also, don’t expect the world to beat its path to your door. It takes time to build an audience, but sooner or later you’ll find it, if you stick with it. Be cautiously daring.

What’s your daily life like?

At the beginning of the year I started working from home full-time (freelance writing), but before that I worked office jobs for fifteen years. So to help that transition, and to make sure I get to spend time with my wife at nights, I try to keep as close to a steady schedule as possible. I get up, make breakfast for us, and see her off to work, then I start free writing on whatever project is most important. I keep mornings for the bulk of my pre-editing writing, because my censors haven’t woken up yet. Then after lunch I do website work—reading submissions, formatting posts, talking to writers, etc. Late afternoon is for taking a first editorial run at whatever I wrote in the morning—or for finishing up a story that’s got momentum. I’m also, as needed, running errands and doing chores all day. This year is a crazy, once in-a-lifetime opportunity, and it really matters to me that things are going well in our home life as well as my career.

A lot of writers would love to try their hand at writing freelance. What advice could you give them for cracking into that side of things? Where do they start? What would help them get going with that?

Honestly, I’m just at the start of that process myself. Figuring out the proper form for cover letters and what markets your work really belongs in takes a steep learning curve, and I don’t know that I’d be qualified to give anybody advice on that yet. It definitely takes humility, though. You’re going to get notes. You’re going to get rejections. Learn to love rejections more than acceptances, because you get to take an awkward idea and make it whole.

Matt, you’re an LA guy, what’s it like living there?

Bright. In the 70′s, every developer in the San Fernando Valley decided that cream stucco was the way to go for every condo and apartment complex, which makes it blinding out here.

Los Angeles is just a big suburb, with all of these amazing little pockets of activity, but none of it feels like a unified structure. Every neighborhood is trying to be another neighborhood, and they end up all homogenizing each other—Studio City wants to be Beverly Hills, Beverly Hills wants to be Bel-Air, Bel-Air thinks it’s Monaco. The beautiful neighborhoods are boring and the exciting neighborhoods are ugly, but I don’t think that’s just an L.A. phenomenon.

The shitty things that people say about Los Angeles are all true, but I like it here. I split time growing up between here and the Midwest, and I’m definitely glad to be out here. I love more densely populated areas like Chicago and San Francisco (or Toronto, where my wife is from), but there’s something comforting about Los Angeles once you accept the fact that it doesn’t give a fuck about you.

Do you believe in the east coast versus west coast stuff that 90s rappers carried out? Are you still living that dream? Stand up comedians did that too …

Well, East Coast and West Coast people are definitely different, but I don’t see the need to feud. Although maybe Brett Easton Ellis and Jonathan Safran-Foer can get a couple of hard-hitting crews behind them and take it to the streets. Imagine those two tied to each other with switchblades like the “Beat It” video.

Have you ever been to the east coast?

I’ve never been to the east coast, no, but I’ve been to every state west of Chicago. I’d love to go, especially since so many of the writers that are working with me on Drunk Monkeys are from the east–New York, Pennsylvania, etc.

Well, when you get here, we’ll drink some beer. It’s EZ. Where did Drunk Monkeys come from?

The seed of the idea came from, of all places, Cracked.com. I read an article about the bizarre drawings in the margins of medieval manuscripts, which I thought was fascinating. Back in those days the only way to reproduce a work like The Bible was to write it out longhand, and they were these gorgeous artifacts. All of that monotonous work and sexual repression comes out in the margins there—so you’d be reading about Onan getting blasted with lightning for spilling his seed and here a half-inch away is a monkey with his finger up the Pope’s ass. There’s something so human in that, placed on the edge of an object that’s supposed to be sacrosanct. The vulnerability of that appealed to me. It really seemed to be a cross-section of what humanity’s all about, this beautiful juncture of art and literature and the sacred and the profane.

So I was thinking about that seeming contradiction, and how I could carry forward that feeling into the world, and the idea for the site just sort of came fully formed into my head. I think that’s what carried me through the first few months, when I was basically just publishing whatever I could put together or my friends and family (and I was lucky to know quite a few great writers, including my wife) I just had no idea that I could fail because it seemed like I’d already done it. I’ve only had one other experience like that, and that was on my first date with my wife.

But I was out of the loop, and had no idea that there was this vibrant community of people who had already had the exact same idea and had been doing this kind of stuff for years.  The site really started to become what I hoped it would be when we got guys like Gabriel Ricard and Donald McCarthy writing regularly for us. It helped to solidify this identity, and made me feel like it wasn’t just me standing alone looking out for this project. That sort of grab-bag nature is really important to me—I want to be the kind of site where you’ve got Gabriel writing about anime or wrestling right next to Donald writing about politics and Nate Graziano’s short fiction. Because, again, that was the kernel of inspiration in its founding, that it should and could be anything.

What are your plans for the future of your website?

Right now we’re in a transition. We’re moving toward making exclusive content available as an eBook or PDF download, while still publishing free content on the website. I’m hoping that will bring some revenue in. We’ve had to stop paying writers for works published on the site, which I don’t feel great about, because one of the founding principles of the site was that writers deserve to get paid for their efforts. We will still be paying out for the anthology.

But that’s another good thing about Drunk Monkeys, it’s always evolving. Right now we’ve got more eclectic content than ever before, and I’m really happy about that.

Are you planning on venturing into print at any point?

I think we’re going to explore doing print-on-demand for issues of the magazine. I’ve always loved the idea of print, because, again, there’s something special about that work as an artifact that you can hold in your hands, but it’s just too cost prohibitive for us now. But going forward, it’s definitely something I hope to see us involved in.

In your own writing life, what are you working on?

I was just able to begin writing full-time, and I’m tearing through short stories while also picking away at my first novel. It’s been really gratifying to dive into writing. I’ve surprised myself with a few things and gotten good feedback on others that weren’t quite as successful. A big surprise for me was finding out that my style would be so dialogue-driven, almost every story I’ve written hinges on an important conversation, things said and left unsaid. That’s definitely not the style of writing I began with, but it makes it more engaging for me, it ends up very improvisational, and I’m never quite sure (even though I’m a meticulous outliner) where the characters are going to steer the ship.

My short story “The Lonely Funeral of Arturo Gomez”, will be popping up in the February issue of The Weekenders Magazine, and I’ve got a few other stories out in the market that I’m hoping get picked up soon.

You cover a lot of TV, movies and music at Drunk Monkeys, what are your current favorites from each category so far for 2013?

It’s pretty early in the year to say as far as movies go, and my favorite new TV show, Ben & Kate, just got cancelled. So 2013′s not off to a great start for my own personal pop-culture tastes, but there’s a lot coming up. I’ll be glad to start covering Community again, beginning this week. I love the show, but I have no idea what it is without Dan Harmon. I’m trying to keep an open mind. Last season I did that on Drunk Monkeys, but this season I’ll be writing recaps for Screen Spy, where I’ve done a few columns and covered this past season of Breaking Bad. I’m also really excited to cover the final episodes of that show this summer.

I’ve heard a lot about Breaking Bad but I’ve never seen an episode of it. Describe to me why the show works so well and why it’s such a hit with people. Analyze it as a piece of art and tell me why it works, please.

It works because it’s the perfect mixture of crime-genre pulp and character study.  The underlying situation—a teacher cooks and sells meth to provide for his family after a cancer diagnosis—is intriguing, but what makes the show so addictive is how attached you become to the characters. If Walt was not such a well-drawn character, we wouldn’t care so much about the danger he finds himself in, and caring for the characters makes the action scenes even more intense, because you know enough of their internal battle to feel like you’re inside their heads as the action unfolds. The final scene of the third season will make you fucking cry yourself to sleep.

It’s interesting, Breaking Bad premiered a full year before the market tanked, but from the very beginning it’s served as a metaphor for America’s collective lust for power and money, and the dehumanizing effect of losing sight of all other goals. In the beginning, Walt just needs enough money to provide for his family, so why doesn’t he stop when he’s far surpassed his own lofty benchmarks for that security? Viewers know the answer, because we’ve come to understand Walt so well (a testament not only to the sharp writing but to the way Bryan Cranston disappears into that role), and the show respects its viewers enough to let them come to their own conclusions about whether Walt is making the right decisions. I personally find Walt infuriating, but that’s because the people he’s endangering—especially his partner Jesse and his brother-in-law Hank—are characters whose humanity I really identify with.

Anyone who cares about the craft of writing and building characters really owes it to themselves to watch Breaking Bad. It’s narrative storytelling at its very finest. I think the only show that comes close to what it’s achieved is The Wire. We’re at the head of a sea change in pop culture, where the best writers are going to seek out opportunities in television rather than film. The broad story canvas that TV allows lets you build a world in ways that film never could, and I think that it’s time to reappraise TV as a vehicle for artistic expression.

What’s the oddest experience you’ve had in the small press/website scene?

Well, there was this one time that an explosion came out of nothingness, sending dust and gasses spiraling through the void until they congealed into solid matter which eventually formed into living cells which multiplied and evolved into more complicated forms until ape creatures came down from the trees and started walking upright, building cities, and fucking a whole lot. Positively everyone had a literary blog. It was great.

Thanks Matt, mucho gracias. Here’s a pic of Matt with that dude from the Shining.

Two Links

A couple things …

a podcast was recorded of my story “My Brother and Me and Silver Bullet” read by Nate Tower
click here to check it out.

My radio show “The Unknown Show” is coming again tonight at 7pm set. Call in if you’d like 
(805) 856-2808

thanks

Our New Standard Rejection Form

For Immediate Release:

Subject:
 
INCREDIBLY POSITIVE AND HUMBLED REJECTION FORM LETTER (version 7)


Attn: editors, here it is! Another rewrite on our standard form letter for use in response to submissions (rejections, dummies, not acceptances … haha) as per the new review cycle for 2013. Please use this one on all rejections of poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction! There will be a revised form letter for crappy articles that belong on Cracked.sincerely,
head editor!———————————————————————————————–

Hiya,

thanks for your interest in _________ Journal! After carefully reviewing your submission we would like to thank you so so so so so so so so so so much for letting us have the opportunity to read it. It was honestly the best submission we have ever read in our entire goddamned lives. Whoa!

We were floored by your writing and had to talk about it all afternoon and into the evening in our little round table discussion thingy that we do, blah blah blah, you get the point.

However, after careful consideration, it was determined that your writing is TOO GOOD for our publication. It would destroy all the other writing around it that we routinely accept from the monkey hacks who suck qwerty dicks in Hell compared to you … so, we re gonna have to reject your submission.

Ughhhhhhhh … blows! We wanna put your submission in! Actually we want to run 20 back to back instances of your piece and call it the issue, but … that ain’t gonna happen.

Instead: we have these suggestions for what you can do with your piece.

#1: Make it into a billboard and put it up EVERYWHERE so the world can see it.
#2: make it into a country so that we can live there and be peaceful and happy.
#3: shoot it into space so that it populates other worlds where other life forms can be happy too.Thanks! And best of luck!

–The Editors





…

The Unknown Show

I did my first radio show last night. It was called The Unknown Show and it functions as an interview show with readings of short stories and poems for those that are invited by me or who are gracious enough to call in.

I’d like to share the link with you here The Unknown Show with Bud Smith

Thanks for tuning in. If you’d like to come on the show and be interviewed or read, hit me up. The show runs at 7pm est. on Tuesday evenings and we’d do the interview over the phone.

Reach out if so inclined.

Sincerely

Bud

The Bud Show

So, this Tuesday I am gonna start hosting a radio show. It’ll be streamed online and will feature a lot of the crazy writer and artist friends that I know. Mostly it will be an interview show where I shoot the shit with people that I’m intrigued by and want to learn  more about.

I’ll share the links here on this blog and if you don’t yet … you outta follow me on Twitter. That’s where most of my activity is anyway. A constant stream of delirious nonsense and sexy talk.

Some other updates for those following along at home:

Tollbooth is coming out in the spring. I’ve cut it down from 105,000 words down to 93,000. It’ll be carried by Piscataway Publishing, the marvelous peeps behind the Idiom.
The novel F-250 is looking for a home with a publishing house.
A collection of short stories Lighting Box, is almost ripe enough to be sent out for submission to some houses too.
Submissions are closing on my anthology Wasn’t That Special: How You Lost Your Virginity … so look for that in the early summer, I imagine.
Lots of wedding planning.
Lots of record playing.
We drank three bottles of pinot noir last week and it was great.
I just took my girl to an Italian dinner up at 181st street in NYC in some fancy brown shoes that I bought yesterday because now I’m 31 and I’m an adult.
I bought a bunch of books and haven’t read anything from any of them
played around on Rae’s Ipad editing Tollbooth. Kinda fun, kinda torture.
I threw away a metric ton of clothing from my youth.

That’s about it. Whew…

Sky Riot & Quick Teen Summary

two poems connected by mud

Quick Teen Summary

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

in the beginning we had mixtapes, the milky way didn’t yet exist

dinosaurs were the size of parakeets, your love for me was sand

and I covered my wounds with it

in time we grew adjusted to the light, in time we built the skyline

in time we talked slow and made our secrets underneath the telephone

those days you weren’t pure electric yet

you were a thundercat, but still we’d get tired of our thunder

and just want to be alone by the green fish tank

on the day it ended, all the wreckers were towing away the fires

the riots were winding down, your neck smelled like baby powder

your dark crystals swayed across the surface of the falling out

there wasn’t much left

but you and me and the mixtape and your tears falling in the sand

making me all muddy

sky riot

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////

just sold my soul for a spring mix salad

with carrot ginger dressing, who cares?

I’m just gonna ignore everything until God send a mandolin player.

cause when we die there will be a bird that chirps our name

to get the worms to crawl out of the mud.

and if you sing to me beautifully from the bottom of a lake,

I’ll make up new hymns for you

in the parking garage where I live

and say

Thank you dear,

for all of these packing peanuts,

I will build a nest in them and slumber until the rise of the machines.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////