When I Say "WRITING!", You Say "OBSESSION!"

Art is a weird obsession.  So much of what is done is interior, behind doors of houses or minds.  When I meet people I try to explain it.

"I write."  I say.

"Oh, cool. What do you write about?"  They say.

And I say, "I don't think you listened to the heavy and delicate and layered and manic emphasis I put on the word 'write'."

Sometimes I just want to shout everywhere, "I WRITE!  EVERY DAY!  THAT'S WHAT I DO!  THE ONLY THING I ONLY DO!"

Because it's like having a secret life.  Having an affair, cheating on everybody, the whole world. Preferring to live inside and to only use the outside to create more inside. Being a murderer and sometimes having to leave your secret to challenge a sun and air you haven't created. 

Creation as opposed to absorption.  That's not a delineation.  People are combinations of both.  It's just artists feel a need to tip the scales. To create more or if they don't create let it bug them.  Let that animal eat something else inside. 

What I'm saying is, I can share a couple of things with you.  A few evidences besides this blog that I do put stuff out there.

THE DRUNKEN ODYSSEY

First off, John King's Drunken Odyssey podcast.  John hosts a wonderful show talking to amazing writers about their process, their love of books, their successes and failures, their humanity stripmined for words.  John is a deft and interesting host who brings out the interesting angles of an interview.

I find it very inspiring to hear writers talk about the craft of writing.  I miss my MFA for that reason.  John interviews Rick Moody, author of the very good and famous book The Ice Storm.  After that is  me reading a humor noir piece called "Why I'm Not Afraid of Sharks". You can listen to it on iTunes.

Download here: http://thedrunkenodyssey.com/2013/03/06/episode-39-rick-moody/

I highly recommend the other episodes.

FIRE IN THE PASTURE SAMPLER

Over a year ago I was included in the anthology Fire in the Pasture.  It's an amazing collection of poets.   It's billed as Mormon Poets and that can mean a lot of things but suffice it to say all the poets have some tie to Mormonism.

I consider myself Mormon and a Poet but had never put those two together because I haven't yet started to include thoughts about my faith in my work.  At least not overtly.  My faith could be underpinning everything I've ever written.

But they've released a sampler of work from the anthology and I'm included.  It's an honor, there's a lot of great work in that anthology.  Even better, it's FREE.

Fire in the Pasture Sampler

You should download it and read through some.  My poem "Return" is a few poems in.

Reverse Bucket List

It's New Year's Resolution time and that means it's time to make lists of crap we will be passionate about for a brief period of time.

Instead of resolutions, I'm going to make a reverse bucket list.  For those of you who don't know what a bucket list is, it's a list of all the things you think you need to do before you die.  If you've ever made a bucket list, first off, why are you such a death obsessed psycho? Second, why can't you just let your life flow naturally, taking experiences as they come or as you pursue them?  Third, that movie The Bucket List sucked.  I already saw that movie and it was called Space Cowboys and it was way better because it was in space.

So a Reverse Bucket List is a list of things you NEVER EVER IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE WANT TO DO OR HAVE HAPPEN TO YOU.

Valerie and I both did this.  You should check out her list. VALERIE's Reverse Bucket List

JAMES BEST'S REVERSE BUCKET LIST

I Never Want To:

1. Watch Valerie fall out of a hot air balloon just past my grasp as I scream, "NOOOOOOOOO!!!"

2.  Be caught making fun of a T-Rex. By a T-Rex.

3.  Get gut shot out in the desert and be left by bad cowboys to die.

4.  Live through an ice cream shortage.

5.  Be forced by unforeseen future circumstances to have to hunt bunnies and kitties for food.

6.  Spend a night alone with a moo cow in a doorless, windowless room.

7.  Watch anything starring Miley Cyrus.

8.  Eat something living that is eating me at the same time.

9.  Take a road trip with the radio stuck on the Top 40s Station.

10.  Learn what the "that" is in the lyric "I would do anything for love but I won't do that".

11.  Have to pry live lobster claws off of my face or private parts.

12.  Attend any concert by any teen or child performer on the Disney channel.

13.  Ever be in the same country as this bug.

14.  Break down next to a cornfield in the middle of the night and walk through the corn to the farmhouse.

15.  Have to be in a war and be responsible for war-like activities.

16.  Pull a tapeworm out of my mouth or butt.

17.  Be awake for any kind of surgery where I'm going to see my own flesh meat.

18.  Find out that I, as I suspected, did not fit in very well at prison.

19.  Time travel to a time before deodorant or milkshakes.

20.  Discover I'm a terrible shot during a zombie apocalypse.

21.  Have some sort of nightmare surprise party where all my ex-girlfriends are waiting to tell Valerie how terrible I was to them.

22.  Be cursed to wear only European styles for the rest of my life.

23.  Somehow make it to the Star Wars universe and have Yoda tell me I have absolutely no Jedi aptitude. (There was so much sadness in my fingers as I wrote that.)

24.  Instead of a werewolf become a were-something that sucks.  Like a were-donkey.  Or a were-Michael Bay.

25.  Be in an eating contest of black licorice.

26.  Have my life turned into a movie and then find out it sucked.

27.  Wake up in some nightmare world where I have to play team sports everyday.

28.  Have the recipe to Coca-Cola destroyed or forgotten.

29.  Wake up and find out the only thing playing on tv for the rest of time is Two and a Half Men and Everybody Loves Raymond.

30.  Find out all my suspicions about horses being dirty murder hell creatures who just want to chomp off my mister parts is totally true.  In the most literal way.

31.  Have my whole life narrated in my head by Gilbert Gottfried.

32.  Live in some sort of police state where chocolate and peanut butter could not come together in holy matrimony like God intended.

33.  Die from anything I could get in the game Oregon Trail.

Joey Chestnut, The Competitive Eater, Giving Himself A Pep Talk

Come on, Joey Chestnut. You're almost there.  The finish line is so near your giant mouth you can feel it. Look at all these people. Cheering you on.  They're saying, "Hey, we're here because we want to see you make a pig of yourself."  Give the people what they want, Joey. Find that inner pig. He probably lives in your stomach.

See? There's barely any hotdogs left.  That was a mountain of wieners.   But you came in like one of those companies that remove mountains.  And you really de-wienered it. Well, maybe that's not the right word but you don't have time to learn all the words. Not when you're the Double Chocolate Chip Muffin Champ in ten states!

Remember when you first started? When you were just an amateur, taking bets at tailgate parties about much ketchup you could drink? Look at you now. People adore you. Food fears you.  Sure, sometimes it's lonely. Sometimes you push your celebrity on people who don't know you.  You walk into a McDonald's and say,"Hey, who doesn't think I can eat 200 McNuggets?"  Sometimes you go to the Sizzler and ask out loud to those dining in, "Hey, regular folks. Let's see how true All-You-Can-Eat Shrimp really is." And when the people are chanting around you, when everyone's laughing as you rain down the uneaten shrimp tails over their heads, it feels like a drug.  A drug that makes you very full and sleepy but also invigorates your ego.

You can do this, Joey.  Just three dozen more hotdogs and you're the new Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Champion.  What's that to you?  You ate a lifesize David made from mashed potatoes. On a dare, you ate three of those pool noodles. Don't think of this as three dozen hot dogs.  They're like little lincoln logs. You could build a small cabin from those weenies.  It's just a little house.  You can eat a little house, can't you?

Sure, you can.  Because you're Joey Chestnut.  You're the macaroni vacuum.  You're the Quadhafi of Corndogs. You're Attila the Honeybuns. You are the living blackhole.   If they bake it, you will come.

Give them what they want, Joey. Eat it all.  Eat the whole world.

How I Lost the Ability to Talk

Somewhere I found a work habit. It seemed all I needed was a schedule. And Valerie. And once I had both those things, I was able to sit down and write. Everyday. I now sit down and write whenever I can. Any free moment.

I've always had my fingers in too many honey pots. Always trying to tackle more than I can. Poetry, plays, songs, film, essays, children's lit. I find myself always wanting the thing I'm not writing currently. When I'm writing poetry, I'm thinking of comedy. When I'm writing laughs, I'm dreaming of metaphor.

It's not an unhappy thing. It's just the way I'm wired. Comedy and poetry are a lot closer than you think. I'll explain sometime.

But now that I spend so much time writing, and filming, I have nothing else on my mind. I fixate on the ephemeral, on the unwritten, the undone. My mind is a constant problem solving machine for my current writing projects.

This is my head on any given day:
"How do I write the story of Kevin's accident without being oversentimental?"
"How are math and death the same?"
"If I want this character to sound more noir, how do I keep this modern joke?"
"Why do I hate topical humor so much?"

And somewhere along the way, I've lost the ability to speak. About normal things. About things that are not my projects.

People ask me how I'm doing and I tell them WHAT I'm doing. People ask me banal questions like, "How was your weekend?" (Like someone just did three minutes ago.) And I answer, "Good. I met with this friend to direct a project and had this other screening thing to go to." (Like I just did two and a half minutes ago.) Not: "It was a good weekend. Kind of busy." Like normal people.

It's become bad. Valerie and I have talked about it. I'm so far inside my head that I really have to consciously make myself step out. I practiced at a party this saturday. Not talking about anything I'm doing. Chatting up random people about anything besides my projects.

Now I'm going to go edit this new web series I'm working on. And I'm planning to finish my 30 days project. Or start anew. Because I've started it twice and never finished. (Here's the funny thing. Even as I started writing this paragraph I realized that I'm essentially doing the same thing. But I wrote it anyway. Because this is what I am.)

Maybe I'll just go home and watch a movie. Tell someone what I liked about it. Like normal sauce.