• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: April 2019

Episode 364: Elisa Gabbert!

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in AWP, Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Black Ocean, Elisa Gabbert, The Word Pretty

Episode 364 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert about the excitement of short-form essays, the glories of book design, not reading Moby Dick, and other literary confessions.

Elisa Gabbert

Photo by John King

 

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Word Prettymoby dick bill sienkiewicz.jpg

NOTES

If you are into literary adventure stories, please pick up a copy of my debut novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 364 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #270: Billion Dollar Brain

26 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 2 Comments

The Curator of Schlock #270 by Jeff Shuster

Billion Dollar Brain

Michael Caine messes with Texas. 

Thumper once said, “If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.” Or was that his mother? Regardless, we need to talk about filmmakers in the 1960s. Someone or multiple people working on these productions were on dope. Haschisch,  Angel Dust, maybe a little bit of Mary Jane (the drug, not Spider-Man’s girlfriend). I’ve had a dandy of a time trying to follow these Harry Palmer films for the past couple of weeks. Tonight’s feature is Billion Dollar Brain, which has the most coherent plot of the three. And the movie isn’t a complete snooze fest, but this is a weird one.

billion1

Harry Palmer (Michael Caine) has decided to become a private investigator much to the chagrin of his former boss over at the Ministry of Defence. Harry isn’t making much of living as a P.I., surviving on Kellog’s Corn Flakes. One night, he gets a phone call, an automated message asking him to take a thermos full of eggs to Helsinki, Finland for a couple hundred pounds. There he meets an attractive woman named Anya (Françoise Dorléac) and an old friend from the United States, Leo Newbigen (Karl Malden). I guess Leo is Harry Palmer’s Felix Leiter, except he works for a mysterious organization and receives his espionage orders from a supercomputer in Texas that cost one billion dollars to build.

Yes, it’s the one billion dollar brain.

billion3

Now it’s obvious that the organization Leo is working for is nefarious since the eggs Harry was transporting are filled with deadly viruses. But to what end? Harry is drafted back into the Ministry of Defence, but told to stay with Leo and dig deeper into this mysterious organization. This organization has serious interest in Latvia.

Harry travels to Latvia to do something for this organization.

I’m not sure what. Attend a meeting?

While staying in hotel, he runs into his old Soviet friend, Colonel Stok (Oskar Homolka), who tells him to stay away from this meeting. It seems this organization Harry is involved in is interested starting an anti-Communist revolution in Latvia.

billion4

Harry and Leo end up in Texas where they run into General Winter, an oil tycoon played by Ed Begley. Hey, I bet that actor is the father of Ed Begley, Jr. Anyway, General Winter is a patriotic American and a proud Texan, but there’s something that really sticks in his craw and that’s communism. He goes on a megalomaniacal rant about how much he hates Godless communists and the chickens in Washington, D.C. who don’t want to drive it from the face of the earth. General Winters created a giant super computer to tell him how to do this. Leo was to carry out the machine’s orders, hire a bunch of men to infiltrate the military in Latvia, and unleash deadly viruses on the communist soldiers to pave the way for General Winters’ private army to invade.

Unfortunately, Leo pocketed the cash and never hired those secret agents. General Winters invades Latvia and there’s fear he may bring about World War III. General Winters’ convoy crosses a frozen Baltic Sea, but Colonel Stok is well aware the invasion plans. Stok drops bombs on the ice, cracking it and sending General Winters and his army of proud Texans into a watery grave. Harry survives to learn that the beautiful Anya was working for Stok all along.

billion2

Maybe she should have been the main character of this motion picture. How was this thing pitched? The Texans are the villains, the Soviets seem sort of reasonable, and the British spy is ineffectual. Thus closes the Harry Palmer trilogy.

Have a nice weekend!


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #21: I Am Wynwood

25 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Juggerknot Theatre Company, Miami, Wynwood, Wynwood Stories

Aesthetic Drift #21 by Rose Lopez

I Am Wynwood: Juggerknot Theater Company’s Wynwood Stories

I’ve never been to the Wynwood Yard before, though I’ve heard about it. So when I go there the evening of April 18th to see Juggerknot Theatre Company’s Wynwood Stories, I’m not sure what to expect.

I know it will be an outdoor space, and I know there will be food trucks. I’ve also been told to “go to the box office” prior to the show. Before I get there, though, I’m wondering, Where in the Yard is there a theater?

Answer: it’s tucked away in a corner, just as you pass into the Yard. The box office is like an old shipping container-turned-office.

Wynwood Stories metrorail route

Beside it is a small, tented courtyard.

I give my name and am handed a tag to clip some place visible. The tag reads, “Route 2.” I am also given two tickets like the kind you use for raffles—a red one gets me Coconut Cartel Rum and a white one, Drake’s Organic Vodka. I am advised to use one before the show, and save the other for when I get inside. I go with rum, wishing I’d had time to eat dinner before I came.

While I sip my drink, I talk to a girl named Rolanda, a model and actress who joined Juggerknot last year during their Miami Motel Stories. She’s not acting in Wynwood Stories, she tells me. “I’m just getting my foot in the door.” Instead, she spends the time pre-show chatting with everyone in the courtyard.

I ask Rolanda about the route tags and Metrorail route map above the theater doors. “There are two routes,” she says, both on the Metrorail and in the show. She doesn’t want to give anything away (and neither do I), but depending on which route your tag says determines which “route” you’ll take through the show.

At its most basic, the show tells the stories of different people who have helped make Wynwood what it is today. “They’re all real, too,” Rolanda said. “Some of them are here tonight.”

My husband and I used to perform at a bar just south of Wynwood all the time. I think of the bar’s owner, an old friend I haven’t seen in years. The bar is closed now. I wonder if he’s one of the “stories”represented. I wonder if I’ll see him here tonight. (Incidentally, I do, after the show.)

There are no seats in the theater. The theater is actually an extension of the courtyard. We are split into groups based on the route number on our tags, and led from space to space: an industrial kitchen, a clothing factory, a bar, the inside of a woman’s home.

Each character talks to us in their own space and tells us their own story. We learn some of the people were here before Wynwood was bars and restaurants, art galleries, curated graffiti walls. The other people are the ones who brought all that stuff in. Either way, there’s a common theme: “Wynwood would not be what it is without me. I am Wynwood.”

Wynwood Stories Opening

If it weren’t for the earpieces each actor is wearing, I would forget these people talking to us and to one another are actors. In the woman’s home, she offers coffee and folds her laundry. “Do you mind helping me with these?” she asks, handing a pair of clean underwear across her kitchen table to one of the show-goers. It’s not like any theater I’ve ever been to.

And there’s high drama. At one point, when we’re all gathered in the main courtyard, I step back to avoid getting pummeled.

“The one thing you don’t do is you don’t write over someone else’s name,” one actor says. But, it’s not just recognition everyone’s fighting over. They’re worried about being erased. “There’s a thing called progress and a thing called change,” says another actor. “I’m hip,”says another. “I’m relevant.”

As everyone’s arguing I realize, these aren’t just Wynwood gripes. These are universal gripes. How do you move forward while acknowledging the past?

And we, the spectators, aren’t ‘out there’in the audience. We’re part of the story, too.

Wynwood Stories runs through May 4th, which is also the Wynwood Yard’s last weekend in the neighborhood. After that, they’ll be moving to Doral, and a high-rise will go in its place.


Rose Lopez

Rose Lopez is working toward her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. She also contributes content for the Miami International Book Fair. Her first short story was published with Big Muddy earlier this year. She lives in Miami with her husband and two children.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #16: Green Galaxy

24 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Grant Morrison, Green Lantern, Kite Man, Liam Sharp

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #16 by Drew Barth

Green Galaxy

If modern superhero comics are good at anything, it’s amalgamating. Cape comics are already deeply entrenched in popular culture and, as a result, are equally influenced by popular culture around them. And this influence can have a fun echo effect. DC Comics, for instance, has a massive archive of everything they’ve ever published for creators to peruse when they need to pull from the past to better construct their new stories. Fans love a deep pull in superhero comics—one of those old villains that no one remembers, like Kite Man, or a villain so ridiculous that no one but the bravest creator would drag them into the modern era, like Kite Man.

But influences and echoes in comics goes beyond just characters and canon. The entire format of a series can be based on older series and how they handled telling stories on an issue-to-issue basis. This is where Grant Morrison and Liam Sharp’s The Green Lantern lies in the grand scheme of superhero comics.

green3

Green Lantern, as a character, is typically one of four people. While John Stewart is the most familiar Green Lantern to us who grew up on the Bruce Timm Justice League cartoons, Hal Jordan is the main focus here. And for good reason. The Green Lantern as a series has its narrative arc, its main and returning cast of characters, and a strong central villain. But what the series also has is a sense of compressed storytelling akin to some of the original Green Lantern stories by John Broome and Gil Kane. Nearly every issue has a sense of being self-contained. This kind of compressed storytelling is something Morrison worked with on his Batman & Robin series years ago with three issue story arcs, but with The Green Lantern he’s compressing that compression.

green1

This compression, with a constant movement of story and character throughout, is honestly refreshing. If there was any one thing to bring back from older superhero stories, it’s that idea of having a story that feels nearly complete with a single issue. Some of the most famous Green Lantern stories from the fifties and sixties like “Menace of the Runaway Missile” or “The Planet of Doomed Men” are roughly ten to fifteen pages, and that’s all you need from them. Each story is a narrative piece of the overall story of the Green Lantern and contributes in some way to showcasing the character of Hal Jordan. This compressed storytelling allows creators to get out as many good ideas as possible.

And it isn’t just narrative influences that are at work in The Green Lantern. Liam Sharp’s art is, well, sharp as all hell. To look at a splash page of Sharp’s is too look at some of the most intricate and erupting with detail pages in modern comics. Art like Sharp’s is almost expected in a series like The Green Lanterndue to its sci-fi comic roots. Influences of the past percolate to the top when looking at a page like the following,

green2

and comparing it to the work of Philippe Druillet in his Lone Sloane series.

lone1

Both series are pure science fiction and alien pulp at their roots, and it is that pedigree that runs through the veins and inks of The Green Lantern. From the intricate line work to the spectacular panelling, Sharp works with a vision of the universe that is strange and inspiring. Aliens burst from each page like supernovae and populate planets that feel like living, breathing ecosystems. Sharp’s work on The Green Lantern is nothing short of pure creation like the science fiction comics that came before.

One of the best things about Morrison and Sharp’s The Green Lantern is that it is a series that is always willing to wear these influences proudly. Some fans don’t enjoy the camp or the outright weirdness of Silver Age comics at times, but that era produced stories and iconography that has lasted decades. To fully embrace old science fiction titles like Mystery in Space, Tales of the Unexpected, and Challengers of the Unknown while staying committed to the core of Green Lantern’s character as an intergalactic lawman shows just how much thought and love Morrison and Sharp put into their series. They don’t reinvent the wheel, but they do make it better.

Get excited. Space is the place.


drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 363: John King?

20 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Beating Windward Press, David James Poissant, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame, John King

Episode 363 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, David James Poissant turns the tables on John King and interviews him about the miraculous release of his epic novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

1flip

TEXT DISCUSSED

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Here is the original Guy Psycho short story.


Episode 363 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #269: Funeral in Berlin

19 Friday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Michael Caine, The Curator of Schlock

≈ 3 Comments

The Curator of Schlock #269 by Jeff Shuster

Funeral In Berlin

Harry Palmer is like James Bond except totally different. 

I’m so excited! The Star Wars Episode 9 trailer dropped! I’m just so excited! And I just can’t hide it! It’s called The Rise of Skywalker. What could that mean? I mean I hate to say this, but Luke faded into star stuff at the end of the last movie. Luke died as he lived, a failure. Who cares? We got Billy Dee Williams reprising his role as Lando Calrissian. I can’t wait to watch him die the painful and humiliating death he deserves.

Speaking of painful and humiliating, Michael Caine returns as secret agent Harry Palmer in tonight’s movie, 1966’s Funeral In Berlin from director Guy Hamilton. Hey, he directed Diamonds Are Forever, the worst James Bond movie—I mean, the worst James Bond movie starring Sean Connery, which is still the worst Bond movie.

Diamonds are Forever Poster

I don’t count 1967’s Casino Royale, the comic atrocity starring Peter Sellers and Orson Welles. The 1967 Casino Royale barely counts as a movie. It’s more like a bunch of random scenes strung together by a coke fiend. Maybe I didn’t need the word like in that last sentence.

Berlin1

So how is Funeral in Berlin? It’s better than Casino Royale.

Better than Diamonds Are Forever?

Well, you can’t really compare Harry Palmer to James Bond. Harry Palmer wears glasses. James Bond does not. Harry Palmer can’t afford a car. James Bond drives an Aston Martin DB5. Beautiful women seduce Harry Palmer. James Bond seduces beautiful women. Harry Palmer enjoys gourmet food. James Bond enjoys gourmet food. Hey, they’ve got something in common.

Berlin2

The plot of Funeral in Berlin involves Harry Palmer taking a trip to Berlin so a Russian Colonel can defect to the United Kingdom because retirement isn’t looking so good for this old communist. He doesn’t want to defect to the United States because Americans are just another bunch of revolutionaries with better pants.

Let me tell you something, my Soviet friend. Those revolutionaries gave the world Skyline Chilli, Teddy Ruxpin, and seven seasons of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. What did England give the world? Mushy peas, the Crooked Man, and the cancellation of Wire in the Blood, the greatest crime drama to ever to grace—ah, never mind. Where was I?

Berlin3 (1)

This movie seems less eventful than The Ipcress File, which wasn’t all that eventful. Harry Palmer goes to Berlin pretending to be a lady’s underwear salesman. He meets a gorgeous Israeli spy played by Eva Renzi, and the actress dubbing her voice sounds pretty cute too. I think there’s a double cross. Someone gets shot. Twists and turns with as little action as possible. I know I’m not supposed to expect Tom-Cruise-attacking-a-helicopter-on-top-of-a-speeding-train kind of action, but we get nothing here.

I don’t know. Keep in mind that the second greatest Bond movie of all time, Thunderball, came out the previous year. I think I’m nearing to my five hundred-word count. Next week is Billion Dollar Brain, the final film in the Harry Palmer trilogy. I like the title. Lets hope this series goes out with a bang.


Jeffrey Shuster 1

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #20: Poetry in Pajamas

18 Thursday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift, O, Miami, Poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Aesthetic Drift #20 by Rose Lopez

O, Miami’s Poetry in Pajamas

As parents, my husband and I are constantly looking for things we can do with our kids. So when I first look over the calendar of events for the O, Miami Poetry Festival, I know right away we’ll check out their Poetry in Pajamas event at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens on Friday, April 12th.

Poetry in Pajamas sign

We arrive a little late (another symptom of parenting) and pass ponds and kids and parents in pajamas playing cornhole and giant Jenga in the grass. Toward the back of the garden is a large Banyan. A small stage strung with Edison bulbs and a hand-painted sign is set up underneath the tree. To the right of the stage, a band plays; the woman sings about the joy of mangoes. (Later, I will realize the band is Afrobeta, a local duo described by the Miami New Times as “a match in disco-house heaven.”)

People have blankets and chairs set up on the lawn in front of the stage. My three-year-old is immediately drawn to a bubble machine. We will return to the bubbles many times over the course of the evening.

Annie and Bubbles

Afrobeta takes a seat, and two young boys stand on stage to emcee. They recite poems. “You probably know this poem,”the younger boy says, and points to his brother. “Sam wrote it!”It is about a whale.

Simon, Sam and Frankie

“Whose kids are these?”my husband wonders aloud. “They’re great.”

A woman standing nearby overhears. “They’re hers,”she says, pointing to another woman in a halo of bubbles.

The woman is Sara Kaplan, the creator of Poetry in Pajamas, now in its second year.“My boys used to write poems together in their bunks when they were younger,”she tells me. “They submitted them to O, Miami, and the event just kind of grew from there.”

At 7 o’clock, Kaplan’s boys, Sam, 10, and Simon, 7, open the mic to the kids in the crowd. Shel Silverstein is a popular source for the participants. Some kids read off their phones. One girl introduces her poem by saying, “I just wrote this ten minutes ago.”The poem is about the courage it takes to get onstage and read aloud.

Little Girl Recites Poetry

The extra incentive to participate in the open mic is entrance into a raffle to win a Poetry in Pajamas backpack. I am sorry my three-year-old can’t yet read, nor has she memorized any poems, because she loves backpacks. But many of the kids who do get on stage are not much older than my daughter.

Near the lawn, there’s a patio with food and vendors. Some kids are selling friendship bracelets they braid themselves. A young woman is offering free manicures to children. There’s a cart selling peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bowls of cereal. Another selling crepes. Different kinds of fruit-infused water are free. Wine and beer is up for sale to the adults.

Pups in Pajamas

Apart from poetry and bubbles, the kids in the garden are drawn to the natural environment. My three-year-old spends a good portion of the night begging quarters off my husband to stick in a machine for a handful of fish food. She tosses it into the ponds where there are huge koi and a turtle.

My nine-month-old crawls in the grass, tries to follow the bigger kids onto a large rock. By the end, she is coated in a fine dirt. She is not the only one.

Lily Gets Muddy

Much of the time, the poetry functions as ambient noise. But I love how homegrown everything feels, like a lemonade stand. There’s a wonderful organized chaos to the evening that makes me nostalgic. It’s the kind of good, clean fun I remember as a kid. It’s the kind of good, clean fun I hope my kids will remember when they’re older, and then write poems about.


The O, Miami Poetry Festival has poetry springing up all over Miami in April. Learn more here.


Rose Lopez

Rose Lopez is working toward her MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. She also contributes content for the Miami International Book Fair. Her first short story was published with Big Muddy earlier this year. She lives in Miami with her husband and two children.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #15: Graphic Cannon

17 Wednesday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post, Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, Graphic Novels

≈ 1 Comment

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #15 by Drew Barth

Graphic Cannon

For this blog, I’ve mainly focused on the serialized comics since I’m in A Comic Shop every Wednesday. But graphic novels are a bit different.  Their releases are scheduled like books, typically on Tuesdays or Fridays, and are new, original works that have not been previously serialized. And that brings me to a graphic novel that is coming out on April 19thfrom Uncivilized Books: Cannonball by Kelsey Wroten.

Cannonball

You may recognize Wroten’s work from The New Yorker, The New York Times, or her Instagram. But with Cannonball, we’re getting her first long-form graphic work and already it’s one of the strongest graphic novels out this year. It’s top five for me, and it’s only March.

Basics: Cannonball is about Caroline Bertram, a recent art school graduate, queer, and a “self-proclaimed tortured genius” who rips up her thesis novel to use as cat litter for a stray she picks up outside her first apartment. Caroline and her best friend, Penelope, struggle to become adults with bills, rent, jobs, and the ever-encroaching sense of dread that comes with being a newly-minted adult. Throughout Cannonball, we see Caroline dealing with failure—personal and artistic—that permeates her new adult life. And although she draws some strength from a professional wrestler, the titular Cannonball, these feelings never truly leave.

CB_001_1600.jpg

Cannonball is a graphic novel about the crushing loneliness that follows us throughout our lives. From the first to the last panel, we see Caroline alone. Even if in both of these panels she’s either in bed with someone else or at a party celebrating her achievements, she is emotionally alone in both situations. Caroline goes forward with herself, slips backwards, picks herself up, stumbles again, continues to stumble, and stumbles into success. But her success never feels forced or cheapened. Through a constant struggle, she earns every achievement she receives, and yet is never satisfied or cured by these successes.

A great moment happens toward the end of the book where Caroline talks about not being able to get a story published in the same zines she’d had stories in after getting her own book. Caroline’s art has touched people in ways she hadn’t imagined, but because she didn’t imagine her work having that impact, such success is alienating.

What Wroten works with marvelously throughout Cannonball is this existential idea of identity. Midway through the book, Caroline has an argument with her father about being an adult, about her “lifestyle” and what she plans to do with her life. It’s the kind of argument that is familiar and devastating in equal measure. Wroten’s art only heightens this tense moment with stark backgrounds, darkened panels, and onomatopoeia that floats around Caroline’s father like nagging insects.

CB_005_1600

Her father’s words physically float and haunt Caroline even after she leaves the argument, and we can’t help but feel the bile and bitterness as though we just had the argument ourselves. But it brings up questions that the rest of the book hinges on: who is Caroline going to be and what does she even want to be?

She has a constant struggle throughout to answer that question.

With Cannonball, Wroten provides us with a staggering work that can act as a guide for creating a near perfect graphic novel. From its pitch-perfect art to a story that feels familiar and achievable to Caroline’s character living and breathing in a way that is perfectly flawed and human, Cannonball is a wondrous achievement in graphic storytelling. There are so many small moments and instances throughout the book that it’s hard to talk about all of the in the scope of one article, but I do hope all of what’s written above gets you just as excited for Cannonball as I am for it.

Get excited. The best stories are happening.


drew barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Announcement: World, Meet Guy Psycho

16 Tuesday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Publishing

≈ 2 Comments

Announcement by John King

Dear readers and listeners,

Today is not only my birthday, but also that of my first novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame, out with Beating Windward Press. For those of you who have listened to my podcast awhile, this is the book I went to NYU to write.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame

This is an epic literary adventure in which an alcoholic lounge singer must re-enact the epic of Gilgamesh inside a mountain in Tennessee. Indiana Jones and Alan Quartermain, eat your hearts out.

I first met Guy back in the early oughts, in a story called, “Guy Psycho: Savior of Pop?”—and he keeps showing up for work in my brain.

His confessions have appeared in Bachelor Pad Magazine.

If this might be your jam, please consider supporting a poor writer.

With gratitude,

John

P. S. If you want to review this novel for a literary magazine or media entity you are affiliated with, please do let me know.

Pensive Prowler #29: Lazy is as Lazy Does

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Pensive Prowler

≈ Leave a comment

Pensive Prowler #29 by DMETRI KAKMI

Lazy is as Lazy Does

Hello. We didn’t speak last month. I know you missed me. Strange as it may sound I didn’t miss you. Well, not much anyway. I wasn’t myself, you see, and I needed time out. Mine host John King kindly gave me leave and here we are again, back where we started, and I still feel pretty much the same. Shithouse, as we say in Australia.

Here’s the low-down. When the time came around for last month’s Pensive Prowler, I had so much on, I couldn’t find the time to sit down and write. Even if I had made the time to put finger to keyboard, my brain was so overloaded I couldn’t have found a topic on which to ruminate.

I had too much on my plate. Subsequently, my brain put down its foot and refused to go further with the constant hurly-burly I imposed on it since the start of the year. Instead of working with me, it sent me on a holiday.

Even though I felt guilty about letting you down, and then feeling like a lazy good for nothing for not enlivening your drab, uneventful lives with my extraordinary wit and eloquence, I threw my hands up in the air and went along with it.

No column? One less thing to do. What a relief!

I am by nature lazy. If I can get out of work, I will. But I’m not telling you anything new, right? You’re like that too. I can see it from here. Your indolence is visible to my all-seeing eye. That sluggish slothfulness, the listless torpor, that takes over the minute you’re alone and no one is looking.

Yes, I know, you’re annoyed because you’ve been exposed as a fainéant,for all the world to see. (Look it up you lazy bugger.) That’s okay, you needn’t feel bad. Like I say, I’m one too.

As dear Emily Dickinson so wisely wrote:

I’m Lazy! Who are you?
Are you – Lazy – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!

How dreary – to be – Industrious!
How public – like a Fart –
To tell one’s name – the livelong April –
To an admiring Blog!

My natural mode is reclining on a comfy couch with a dozen buttery croissant and a row of Hanky Panky cocktails (look them up) arrayed before me, dozing, eating, drinking, and watching horror movies.

I’d even have a servant who looks like Dirk Bogarde (look him up), fanning me with a palm frond and giving me inappropriate massages if I could.

Hey, calm down. There’s no need to get offended and all #mootoo on me. I’m being honest and open with you for the sake of furthering the human condition.

But really what is this thing called lazy? An unwillingness to work or use energy. That’s the definition on the online dictionary because I’m too lazy to reach across and open my excellent but really heavy Oxford English Dictionary.

Far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as a lazy person. There are only people who lack the motivation for specific tasks. Laziness is relative. Just as there is no person who works hard at everything, there is no person who is lazy at everything.

There is only a lack of drive, an absence of motivation. If we could motivate people by giving them tasks they love to perform, there would be an end to laziness.

That sounds like I’m saying I lacked the motivation to write last month’s Pensive Prowler. That’s not true at all.

It’s just that I had to finish the third draft of my novel (done), finalise the program for the second Greek Writers’ Festival (almost done), check the proofs for a forthcoming essay in Archermagazine (done), finish reading seventy-four shortlisted entries for the Ada Cambridge Writing Prize on which I’m a judge (done), check my students’ writing (ongoing) and pack my bags for Montreal (look it up), which by the way is where I will be speaking to you from next month.

If someone could start a Crowdfunding thing to get me to Canada business class I’d really appreciate it. Thanks. Bye.


dmetri-kakmi

Dmetri Kakmi (Episode 158) is a writer and editor based in Melbourne, Australia. The memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia; and is published in England and Turkey. His essays and short stories appear in anthologies and journals. You can find out more about him here.

← Older posts

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Film
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Episode 462: Denise Duhamel!
  • The Curator of Schlock #345: Pulp
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #112: I’m Talking About Isolation
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine #19: Silica Gel’s May Day
  • The Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #26

Archives

  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×