Found It: The Cover of My Autobiography

Not bad, eh? Looks like not only a great impulse buy at the grocery counter, but a real page-turner to boot.

Hitting shelves in fall 2039, after a relaxing summer of editing/swimming with my breathtaking ghostwriter up and down the Amalfi Coast.

Donations encouraged.

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The Most Difficult Gift to Buy This Christmas

Tickle-Me Elmo, eat your f***ing heart out--first Amazon pulls the book for some reason and now Phillip Greaves just sold his last copy of The Pedophile's Guide to Love & Pleasure to the Sheriff of Polk County, Florida.

How are all those lovers out there supposed to get their hands on what everybody wants this holiday season? Who the hell do they have to molest to get a self-published first-edition copy so they know what they should and should not be doing in the sack this winter? How can any substitute gift even approach the utility of this indispensable guide? Will the world drown itself in tears of disappointment this Christmas?

Stay tuned and put everything you value up on milk crates just to be on the safe side...

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Of Gilligans and Mary Ann

For those of you out there obsessed with Lost, Survivor, and Gilligan's Island (so many of you out there, I know--GET YOUR OWN WEBSITE ALREADY!), or who haven't been able to shake Lord of the Flies out of their head since high school (mostly because it's the only good book they ever finished), get ready for this fascinating (and true) tale as old as time, courtesy of this strange but informative website:

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June 30 1951 - Anatahan Island
A group of stranded survivors of a Japanese vessel sunk by the American military found their way to the island of Anatahan, 75 nautical miles north of Saipan. The island's coast line is precipitous with landing beaches on the northern and western shore and a small sandy beach on the southwest shore. It's steep slopes are furrowed by deep gorges covered by high grass. This brooding cone jutting from the sea floor is a large, extinct volcano with two peaks and a grass covered flat field, the final resting place for a B-29 Superfortress that crashed upon returning from a bombing mission over Nagoya, Japan on January 3, 1945 killing the aircraft's crew.

By 1951 the Japanese holdouts on the island refused to believe that the war was over and resisted every attempt by the Navy to remove them. This group was first discovered in February 1945, when several Chamorros from Saipan were sent to the island to recover the bodies of the Saipan based B-29, T square 42, from the 498th Bomb Group, 875th Squadron, 73rd Wing under the command of Richard Carlson Stickney, Jr. The Chamorros reported that there were about thirty Japanese survivors from three Japanese ships sunk in June 1944, one of which was an Okinawan woman.
Pamphlets had been dropped informing the holdouts that the war was over and that they should surrender, but these requests were ignored. They lived a sparse life, eating coconuts, taro, wild sugar cane, fish and lizards. They smoked crushed, dried papaya leaves wrapped in the leaves of bananas and made an intoxicating beverage known as "tuba", (coconut wine). They lived in palm frond huts with woven floor matting of pandanus. Their life improved after the crash of the aircraft . They used metal from the B-29 to fashion crude implements such as pots, knives and roofing for their hut. The oxygen tanks were used to store water, clothing was made from nylon parachutes, the cords used for fishing line. The springs from machine guns were fashioned into fish hooks. Several in the group also had machine guns and pistols recovered from the aircraft.

Personal aggravations developed as a result of being too long in close association within a small group on a small island and also because of tuba drinking. The presence of only one woman, Kazuko Higa, caused great difficulty as well. Six of eleven deaths that occurred among the holdouts were the result of violence. One man displayed thirteen knife wounds. Ms. Higa would, from time to time, transfer her affections between at least four of the men after each mysteriously disappeared as a result of "being swallowed by the waves while fishing." In July 1950, Ms. Higa went to the beach when an American vessel appeared off shore and asked to be removed from the island. She was taken to Saipan aboard the Miss Susie and, upon arrival, informed authorities that the men on the island did not believe the war was over.

Meanwhile, officials of the Japanese government became interested in the situation on Anatahan and asked the Navy for information "concerning the doomed and living Robinson Crusoes who were living a primitive life on an uninhabited island", and offered to send a ship to rescue them. The families of the Japanese holdouts on the island of Anatahan , were contacted in Japan and requested by the U. S. Navy to write letters advising them that the war was over and that they should surrender. In January 1951, a message from the Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture was delivered.

The letters were dropped by air on June 26 and finally convinced the holdouts that they should give themselves up. Thus, six years after the end of World War II, "Operation Removal" got underway from Saipan under the Command of James B. Johnson, USNR, aboard the Navy Tug USS Cocopa. Lt. Commander James B. Johnson and Mr. Ken Akatani, an interpreter, went ashore by rubber boat and formally accepted the last surrender of World War II on the morning of June 30, 1951 which also coincided with the last day of the Naval Administration of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

For more information, read Saipan Oral Histories of the Pacific War by Bruce Petty, page 78, 119-120.

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Wow, right? A formal surrender to a US Navy tugboat captain six years after the war ended? From 29 tattered, stir-crazy, deranged, horn-dog Japanese soldiers who had been chugging coconut moonshine and chasing some poor woman around a small uninhabited island with their dirty dicks for five years when not busy brutally murdering each other in order to increase the odds of getting her all to themselves for the rest of the interminable war they were so busy fighting (in spirit)?

War is such gentlemanly sport.

Hey, you know what? Somebody get Aaron Sorkin, J.J. Abrams, and Rip Torn on the phone like yesterday--I think we've got the next hit series here and we need to meet up in the Bahamas and start writing episodes immediately.

We'll shoot one version of the story for every country in the television world, simultaneously so that it's cheaper. It will be the biggest undertaking anyone in Hollywood has ever imagined (eat your heart out, Ron Howard).

Also, somebody track down that recipe for tuba--that coconut moonshine is the best chance I have of finally achieving my billionaire supervillain dreams.

Kazuko Higa with rescuers

Dessert:

Wondering what ever happened to Kazuko Higa? Well, naturally the comely lass joined a burlesque tour in 1952 and regaled audiences with tales of her sexytimes on the island. Moral of her story: "...and THAT is why you never move to a deserted island with your husband!"

Hollywood legend Josef von Sternberg became obsessed with her story and, as one does, wrote/directed/photographed/narrated a movie about her called Ana-ta-han (1953), which has since been remade twice. It was a financial bust and the last movie he ever made. He died of a heart attack 16 years later.

Incidentally, three years after that, Ayn Rand sold Von Sternberg's custom-built, architecturally-significant house (for seven times what she paid for it) to a developer who demolished it--one of her many vile offenses against art and philosophy.

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The Importance of Being Ernest

More proof that old men with beards have way more fun than you--photos from the Hemingway Lookalike Contest in Florida:

Not sure what the payout is, aside from a sexy little bust, but for my fans who may fit the bill, feel free to check out the official festival info here and gear up to participate in next year's lookalike contest--or the running of the bulls, marlin-fishing tournament ($25K top prize), arm-wrestling competition, or short-story competition.

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The Sad Truth About Kingsley Amis

His wikipedia entry is more interesting than his celebrated, supposedly-comic, first novel, Lucky Jim, which I read cover-to-cover yesterday while recovering from the bends after a particularly strenuous deep-sea recovery mission which took me to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

To wit:

Amis was by his own admission and as revealed by his biographers a serial adulterer for much of his life. Not surprisingly, this was one of the main contributory factors in the breakdown of his first marriage. A famous photograph of a sleeping Amis on a Yugoslav beach shows the slogan (written by wife Hilly) on his back "1 Fat Englishman - I fuck anything".

In one of his memoirs, Amis wrote: "Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time". He suggests that this is due to a naive tendency on the part of his readers to apply the behaviour of his characters to himself. This was disingenuous; the fact was that he enjoyed drink, and spent a good deal of his time in pubs. Hilary Rubinstein, who commissioned Lucky Jim, commented: "I doubted whether Jim Dixon would have gone to the pub and drunk ten pints of beer ... I didn't know Kingsley very well, you see. Clive James comments: "All on his own, he had the weekly drinks bill of a whole table at the Garrick Club even before he was elected. After he was, he would get so tight there that he could barely make it to the taxi."

Amis was, however, adamant in his belief that inspiration did not come from a bottle: "Whatever part drink may play in the writer's life, it must play none in his or her work. That this was certainly the case is attested to by Amis's highly disciplined approach to writing. For 'many years', Amis imposed a rigorous daily schedule upon himself in which writing and drinking were strictly segregated. Mornings were devoted to writing with a minimum daily output of 500 words. The drinking would only begin around lunchtime when this output had been achieved. Amis's prodigious output would not have been possible without this kind of self discipline.

Nevertheless, according to Clive James, Amis reached a turning point when his drinking ceased to be social, and became a way of dulling his remorse and regret at his behaviour toward Hilly. "Amis had turned against himself deliberately ... it seems fair to guess that the troubled grandee came to disapprove of his own conduct." His friend Christopher Hitchens said: "The booze got to him in the end, and robbed him of his wit and charm as well as of his health."

(courtesy wikipedia.org)

I will spare you a selection from his novel, as there is no point in boring you any more than I already have. Perhaps Take A Girl Like You or The Old Devils are better; perhaps I will never find out.

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OMFG! Finally!

My bated breath tactic finally paid off--the hotly-anticipated cover for the next Dan Brown instaclassic has finally been revealed!

Five grueling years of waiting over, I hardly know what to do with myself anymore. So I just stare at it. You should do the same. Come on--try it:


Isn't it the most fucking breathtaking beast you've ever seen? It is exactly what I thought it would be--and more better different at the same time!!! LOL!!!

I can't wait to read an advance copy once my mole at Doubleday earns his keep. But don't worry, secret web police--I would never cut into Mr. Brown's profits. I don't roll like that when the future of high art is on the line.

As soon as it's released on September 15th, I will buy 4 first-edition copies: one to covet, one to store in a vacuum-sealed bag in my safe-deposit box in the Cayman Islands (best investment ever!!), and two to give to all my friends!

Pre-order now from your favorite shit-schlocker.

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Somebody Needs to Learn the Meaning of the Word 'Exploitation'

David Foster Wallace is dead--but he has at least two books coming out soon.

One is the project he fretted over for years and expected to be published after his death.

Another is the commencement address he delivered to Kenyon College graduates in 2005. The transcribed address has been available online since...2005. For free. Now it is about to be published by Little, Brown and sold for $14.99.

This is exceedingly irritating to me and I read this review with clenched teeth. At one point, my teeth unclenched in an attempt to bite the head clean-off a man named named Tom Bissell.

It was at this point:

"While some may question the decision to publish Wallace’s address as a book — and its interior design of one sentence per page is not much of a rebuttal to that question — it would take a small, charred heart to find any impure motives here."

A 'small, charred heart?' Is you serious, Tom? You're trying to convince me that this is a pure endeavor? How exactly is this not exploitative and unnecessary? As you said in your own review, more people have read Wallace's Kenyon College commencement address than his magnum opus, Infinite Jest. For free.

Why start charging them now, if not out of greed?

--Small Charred Heart in Los Angeles

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Cinema is Dead

Sound the trumpets, lower the casket -- for the Flock shall soon descend upon a vapid multiplex near you.

Half-bird teenagers who escape from a lab when they learn to fly? Half-wolf people chasing after them? How did the wolves know they existed? How did the wolves get created? Was this really a hit book series? Or just 'a book series?'

All these questions...and yet, delightfully, I care not for the answers.

The book series was written by monolithic-douchebag James Patterson, also behind the laughably-bad, 13-episode-and-out TV series, Women's Murder Club, based on his book series of the same name. He executive produced both projects.

The movie--Maximum Ride--is being written by the guy who wrote The Rise of the Silver Surfer, which seems appropriate--he has experience in shit-shoveling.

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I'm Stupid -- The Nadya Suleman Story

Evidently the single mother with six kids who recently gave birth to octuplets is being deluged with book deals.

I don't find this terribly surprising, in light of the fact that anybody who is ever on the news for more than one night in this country is offered a lucrative book deal, since the only people who buy books anymore only do so if they recognize the author's face from Oprah or Fox News, but it does seem to set a new low in the world of literature.

What exactly would this completely worthless, deranged lunatic have to say to the ghostwriter hired by her recently-hired professional spokeswoman?

"So...I got a bunch of embryos put in my uterus and...then I had eight babies."
"Okay, well...I knew that... Is there anything else you'd like to say about your experience?"
"Uhmmm..."
"Well, what's it like having 14 kids under the age of seven?"
"Hard. Real hard."
"Do you have lots of diapers and formula and stuff?"
"Oh, yeah. Tons."
"You don't say...hmm..."
"Do I get my money now?"
"Well...I guess I can do the rest..."

Whoever does get that ghostwriting gig will have their work cut out for them--the veritable equivalent of asking a blind man to carve Mt. Rushmore with a spoon.

Is there even enough fluff in the infinite universe to fill this book out? Will they have to bring in Jimmy Carter as a consultant?

I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of copies of "I'm Stupid" will wind up at Half-Price Books, untouched. I wonder which fifteen people in the country will actually read the whole thing, how many of those who don't even finish it will still say they found it 'inspiring.' I wonder whether or not Oprah will bless the enterprise and make her a multi-millionaire overnight. I wonder how long it will be until the worthless film adaptation comes out on Lifetime or Oxygen.

I wonder how long it will be until all eight babies write their own mid-life memoirs.

The only photo yet released of the eight little miracles

Gag me with a dirty diaper! Sometimes this world we have created seems worse than a cauldron of flames raping my ass for eternity.

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