The TAO High Priest of Badass: Review of Raymond Embrack's STEEZ

Think of Andy Warhol's worst predictions come true, think Boris Vian, think Raymond Queneau, think of a 21st century version of Tod Browning's Freaks, but this time on Hollywood Boulevard, where the freaks torture themselves to attract nickels from tourists, think of an L.A. where the only worthwhile ambition in life is to have your own cult, think of a Eugene Ionesco allowed to run free in all the absurdity of the TMZ type attention-seeking  economy, where people no sooner do a thing than they figure out how to video themselves and upload it, think of how a badass Claude Levi Strauss would have turned his ethnographer's eye on the trending tribes of Los Angeles, and you may just come close to imagining Steez, the sort of novel that can be written by a man named Raymond Embrack.




Embrack's hero, former pro volleyballer and swimsuit model Gemma Steez (think Style and Ease) has been recruited by the 1FL new football league to be the first female quarterback in American pro football. When she is not playing 7-1/2 minutes per quarter, she is looking after her L.A. Business interests, including her Morning People/Night People spas, loyally aided by her faithful assistant Pepper Suzuki and responding to television and radio interviews about her sex life. Gemma Steez is hot, and in L.A. 'hot is hot'. She has become successful by mastering the game of how to trend in L.A., but then her life takes a turn for the worse. An enemy, named Red Candy, appears seemingly out of nowhere and decides to make Gemma's life hell.




I won't spoil the plot, or go into detail about how the two ladies, Gemma Steez and Red Candy, slug it out, or tell you how the story ends, except to say that much of the bad guy action involves two other unsavory characters, in addition to Red Candy, her psychopath sidekick Duane Seveille and an out-of-work actor cum rapist, Ryan Scorpio, who is taken on to stalk and terrify Gemma Steez. But after Scorpio has uploaded a couple of good stalking incidents to The Attention Jungle, Embrack's personal version of TMZ, Scorpio becomes hot himself. He decides to outsource his stalking business and pursue his 15 minutes of fame, by taking on other persona, such as that of Lee Harvey Ryan, in the attempt to trend even higher in The Attention Jungle. But, with his attention distracted, his lady and one of the stalkers he has franchised assume other personalities and undermine his actions against Gemma Steeet. The supreme achievement of The Attention Jungle is its survival minute, in which you get 10 bites in 60 seconds.




Embrack has started a group on Goodreads.com known as The Tao of Badass (the title may remind you of a book that was written to show geeks how to pick up girls). In Taoism there is an oft told tale, that of the Vinegar Tasters. Three men dip their fingers into a vat of vinegar and taste it. One man reacts with a sour expression, one reacts with a bitter expression and one reacts with a sweet expression. So far, that is how I have seen readers react to Embrack's Steez. Readers who seek a classical novel of rules, that will help people to be less degenerate may well react to Embrack's book with a sour expression. Other readers, who expect a classical novel of pain and suffering, and who look for how to seek redemption stoically, may look on Embrack's novel with a bitter expression.  Other people, among whom I count myself, who think life is fundamentally good, but who often wonder what the hell is going on, will react with a wide smile to Embrack's sophisticated, wisecracking and wild depiction of a celebrity-crazed world shoving its head up its own ass in The Attention Jungle. 




You can purchase STEEZ on Amazon.com