This secret: I have discovered it. It’s all about third seasons. Black Books especially, but especially Arrested Development – the only way you could beat the jokes-per-second density of AD3 is by watching Airplane! on fast forward.
Which is not to say that writers should completely skip the first two seasons of a new show. Temporal logistics aside, that would be depriving us of some fine material. No. But on the other hand, why waste your A-game? And why keep us waiting?
Clearly the only solution is to hire a technically competent team of writers who nevertheless lack that certain spark, and task them with writing the first two seasons. The original creators and true creative minds can write the third season concurrently, with the lesser seasons being held back for release as a DVD extra.
I literally cannot conceive of any problems with this plan. Someone start writing cheques for me now, because I am on fire.
Spectacularly poor timing – I meant to post this much earlier – but I find myself in possession of a whole heap of blank postcards (for mysterious reasons!) and I’m looking for something to do with them. I’ve always felt bad when other people do mix CDs and whatnot because there’s very little I can give them in return. So here we are: send an email to post at emesq dot com with your postal address and maybe a word or a sentence on what you’re into and I’ll write a short story for you.
I’m hoping this is a thing that will be fun for all concerned. If it goes well enough we may even be able to throw some capital letters on there and make it a full-blown honest to god Thing. I would like that. And so would she.
I would post but my good LORD how is it so hot in here. Faces are not supposed to sweat. That is something I firmly believe. Surely this whole scenario should make sweet delicious cups of cheap nonsense coffee less attractive but no, I want them. I want them very badly. I haven’t slept in days. I have discovered that being on edge is a prerequisite of good writing. I have been doing some very, very good writing. Everyone should read some Roberto Bolaño. Where was I? Oh, right.
A group of us are visiting a friend in Galway this weekend. I neglected to mention this to him until something approaching the last minute. He was mildly resentful at having to change his plans – plans in the loosest sense, since he was just going to be sitting on his arse doing nothing. In his words, he’d been looking forward to not having to put pants on for the weekend.
You might say, I remarked, that we’re forcing you to move to PANTSCON 4.
I might, he said. In fact, I will.
We quickly realised what we were sitting on. An effective PANTSCON scale would do away with the footling awkwardness of “smart casual” and “work formal” and so on – after all, once you’re wearing the right trousers, everyone else falls into place automatically.
Twelve hours later, and here we are. The PANTSCON scale, revision 1:
5: Pantsless. The lowest condition of pants readiness.
4: Pyjamas or similar slouchypants.
3: Jeans. Cords, if you’re that way inclined.
2: Work-appropriate pants. Chinos. “Slacks”.
1: Fancy pants, with a crease you could lose a finger on. A condition of maximum pants alert.
Patent pending. Use it wisely.
Right. How do you write a poem? I mean, without feeling all self-conscious about it and worrying about what poems are supposed to sound like and getting your head stuck in some other century and ending up with at best a bad parody and at worst a limp imitation. Come on come on come on, deadlines to meet, I haven’t got all day.
It’s bizarre how messed up you can get simply by not sleeping. I’ve been completely useless for the last couple of weeks and I’m pretty sure I was seeing through time for a while. Plus the weird fascination with what my hair was doing: I woke up one morning with it stubbornly piled on one side of my head which, combined with the natrual eyeshadow afforded by my heroin-addict good looks, made me a shoe-in for a New Romantic. At least until it went all Dylan-Moran-in-an-explosion-factory and I started feeling all deranged postpunk nasty. This happened without me getting anywhere near a mirror, by the way. I was learning of my hair situation subconsciously, through some kind of barnet osmosis. This leads me to believe that my hair is essentially a more versatile, less vindictive Venom symbiote. Whatevs. The ladiezz still love it, yo.
This is the creepiest email I’ve ever received.
It doesn’t help that it was apparently sent from two minutes in the future.
Some battles you can’t win. I’m telling you this for your own peace of mind.
You think that because you’re here, because it got you here, that it’s your friend, that it’s the good guy. Or at least you think you can see a good guy somewhere in there. You think that, sure, right now it’s in a bad place, it’s done some things no one would be proud of, but hasn’t everyone? Wouldn’t everyone? You think you can reach in there and bring that good guy out.
But you don’t know the truth: this ticket is not redeemable.
Oh, there was a time when it was. The old days. But not anymore, not after everything it’s done. See, when you’ve come a certain distance you just have to keep going. Momentum. The devil has you as his own. Like the man said: you can run from a knife, but you have to charge a gun.
So you can try. You can try all you want. You can call down the armies of heaven, you can move mountains. But you should know: this ticket will not bend. It will not fold. It’s going straight to hell and brother, it will bring you with it.
Not the specific thing I mentioned last week, which is not strictly speaking in my hands, and I think maybe not entirely in the hands of the person I am led to believe it’s in the hands of, but that’s all right because I don’t think even he knows exactly what it is I’m talking about…
Ok, losing track. The thing in question, which is a secret project that I managed to not entirely realise I was part of until it turned into a public project, but courtesy of the estimable Billy here is a thing for you to read. Start there, read forward, enjoy.
Haven’t been doing much around here, have I? Lot of things going on the past week. For one I reckon I’m starting to get the most out of twitter. Like for instance the other night I found out that there were fireballs falling in Houston Texas, and the next day some guy I don’t know ate some meatballs in IKEA, and the cool thing is I knew about these events sooner than probably quite a few people. If you want to feel like a sci-fi supervillain just go to monitter.com, throw in some keywords and then imagine you’re absorbing crazy data streams out of people’s heads. It is not hard to do.
Secondly, there’s a project afoot. Uh. I’m not going to say anything about that yet.
Thirdly, I wanted to mention a nifty event I was at in Chapters on Tuesday – Neil Gaiman reading and Amanda Palmer ukelele-ing. Organisation was a bit dodgy, largely it seems because the staff were too busy shuffling awkwardly and going “Shucks, no one’s gonna turn up at our shop” to properly think it through, but it was a most enjoyable evening. Gaiman was reading from a book they worked on called Who Killed Amanda Palmer? and basically what you need to know is that his old school storytelling mixed with her gleeful sordidness makes for some top-notch material. Grimm fairytales but with hookers and crack, that kind of thing. You can see basically the whole show in five parts starting here.
And lastly, I’m off to Maastricht in… four hours. I’m typing fast here so I can stay awake. Exhilarating! There’s a carnival over there, you see, and I’ve been trawling Dublin’s various vintage shops (and River Island, and Tie Rack, which I don’t understand how they stay in business because surely cravats and cummerbunds aren’t exactly flying out the doors) so that I can bring the magic of Oscar Wilde’s Jakey Nephew to the streets of the Netherlands. On which note, either it’s bloody hard to get hold of a cane in Dublin or I’m just stupid.
Recent Comments