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justholdinghandsok · 7 years

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David Duchovny exclusive interview by Craig Ferguson in Bucky F*cking Dent paperback.

to add to @youokay-mulder‘s post

(It’s not all of it, the end of the interview isn’t available if you don’t buy the book)

Craig Ferguson : What’s it like to write a novel about men writing novels?

David Duchovny : You mean as opposed to a novel about cows writing novels? Much of the philosophy or thinking ideas standing behind or underneath this book have to do with storytelling. As is, Who is telling the story – are the telling it in a way that makes them a hero, a goat, happy, sad? The idea being that all history in a story, so the character are on a journey to discover the best, healthiest, happiest, most truthful way of telling their intermingled stories. And just coincidentally, I read a paper yesterday written by my daughter for high school that addresses this question of who controls history in Hamilton – so be on the lookout for a rap musical of Bucky F*cking Dent. It’s coming and you can’t escape it. So anyway, with all this background noise of storytelling in the book, it made sense that the two main male characters, Ted and Marty would be storytellers, novelists of sorts – frustrated, maybe, blocked, maybe; but novelists. It made sense. But the book is also about how all of us who live conscious lives, or even semi-self-conscious lives, Mariana included, have not only a right to tell the story, but something approaching a duty, a responsibility – a sacred duty, even – to make personal sense of the lives we lead.

CF: How closely does Ted’s room in Brooklyn resemble your Childhood bedroom?

DD: Ted’s room looks nothing like mine did. I grew up in Manhattan, not Brooklyn (less space), with a brother and sister (less space still)—so I always shared a room. Didn’t go in for posters. Though for a while, we used to rip the advertising off buses back when they were cardboard—the advertising, not the buses. I remember I had a Peter Max ad on my wall that I’d pulled off a bus on Fourteenth Street. Psychedelic. The ‘70s city equivalent of big game hunting. I might’ve had a Minnesota Vikings poster too. I liked purple.

CF: You’ve said that the book’s inspiration came from overhearing a workman say “Buckyfuckingdent”, which was a new word for you because you weren’t from Boston. How much have the Yankees meant to you throughout your life? Did the original Yankee Stadium have supernatural powers?

DD: I was a big Yankee fan as a kid, but this will be hard to grasp for many: the Yankees sucked when I was a kid. I came of age right at the end of Mickey Mantle, before the great, crazy teams of the late ‘70s (one of which is in the novel), and long before the corporate behemoth Streinbrenner Yankee teams of the Jeter years. My heroes were very good players, but just shirt of the Hall of Fame – Mel Stottlemyre, Bobby Murcer. The Yankee team of my childhood never won anyting – so when I write about the way Red Sox fans felt before 2004, that’s how I felt. I grew up rooting for the losers. Even the lowly Mets won in ’69. Not my Yankees. And Mel Stottlemyre s a fantastic baseball name.

CF: Like Ted, you studied literature at an Ivy League university. Are English majors kinder, smarter, and generally better than other people? Are poets (especially Hart Crane and John Berryman) superior to fiction writers? Is Jerry Garcia superior to everyone?

DD: Yes. Yes. Yessssssss.

CF : Do you miss the 1970s version of New York City ? Why or why not?

DD: I think I miss it. It’s so long ago. It was celebrated in Patti Smith’s Just Kids, but I was really just a kid back then, so the city that I knew – broken-down, dirty, broke – was all I knew. I accepted it, didn’t want it to be better or worse, it was simply my home. And we lived on the Lower East Side, which was not a place where people were eager to live, like they are today. I would be careful of romanticizing the danger of it, but there was a sense of less structure than there is today, less hierarchy, surely less franchises. So yeah, it felt more free and it really did feel like it was wide-open and livable. Today’s New York feels more a like a New York theme park where people come to have New York-type experiences. New York is loved now in a way that perverts it, makes it an idea of New York. Back then it was just a weird, wild, slightly neglected place to be living, and that was that.

CF: When you’re a gray panther, what delusions will you want your kids to stage for you?

DD: I could always use a little rain.

CF: Illness (in children as well as parents) is a recurring thread in the novel. Do you believe the “bowling average of souls” described in chapter 18? What do you think it takes to be a survivor?

DD: I’m not sure. Everybody living has survived something. Some have a much tougher go than others. I think survival is a habit. If you’re lucky and strong, and if the tests aren’t too hard at too young age, you get good at it. It’s kind of the way sports functions for kids. Teaches them how to survive in a world where the stakes seem high but are actually zero. Or even when as adults we continue to take part in the illusion that the game means something. But it’s just a game.

CF: Marty’s career was made possible by Edward Bernays, who he says destroyed free will. Do you agree with Marty about the evils of advertising and publicity?

DD: I do agree with Marty. I think it was George Carlin who said, late in his life, that we think we have choices but we don’t, we have options. I may be misquoting Carling, but this is how I remember it.

CF: Ted and Marty have similar taste in women. Were you trying to deliver a symbolic message about the nature of love, or was this just a coincidence?

DD: That’s a coincidence. So I imagine it means more than if I’d planned it.

CF: What would your dad think of Marty Fullilove?

DD: My dad would be pretty pleased that I managed a novel. I’ve said many times, when I’ve talked about the book after its release, that Marty was nothing like my dad save for being the ace of a Puerto Rican softball team. My dad was gentle and quiet and loving. Like Marty, he was also a writer, a frustrated writer, who published his first novel at the sage of seventy-two. Which is remarkable. It’s called Coney and I recommend it.

#david duchovny #craig ferguson #bucky fucking dent

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theliterateape · 6 years

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American Shithole #18 — Moving and the Traveling Salesman

By Eric Wilson

I’d love to spare some time this week for Trump’s on-again, off-again (just kiss him already!) love affair with Li’l Kim, or the 1,475 missing migrant children or Rosanne's cancellation, but I’ve been distracted by my own triumvirate — a difficult household move, an incompetent painting crew, and a door-to-door salesman whose life must’ve depended on selling just one more security package.

Up until my forties I don’t think I ever paid for movers — at least not in the traditional sense of hiring professionals — I never felt I could afford it; probably because I couldn’t. For many Americans, moving day involves friends and family with trucks, to whom you provide pizza, beer, and your undying fucking gratitude.

Moving meant cuts, scrapes, bruises and broken toes.

Moving meant squeezing every square inch out of every available vehicle, all while scratching, denting and breaking as little of what you and your friends own as possible.

Moving meant telling your friends that you were renting a third-story walk-up after they've already shown up.

This time though, things were going to be different. We were moving into a beautiful new house, in a beautiful neighborhood, with the help of professionals who were going to make the transition so much easier for us — and they did, mostly.

In fact, they were so great — the movers, I mean — we had them come back and help us again, five days later. We had to, seeing as someone hired the world’s worst painting crew in America. Superlatives are usually ill-advised, but fuck me if these guys didn’t suck the worst kind of donkey balls as professional painters.

Yes, there is a worst kind.

I should have known when the owner of the company showed up in a “Team Jesus” t-shirt, with his wife and son as his only crew, that things were not going to go as planned.

Perhaps someone should have told “TJ” and his brood of holy rollers to roll it on back down the driveway, but you see, the new house had popcorn ceilings, and the popcorn ceilings had to go. Besides, at that point, there was precious little time for improvisation.

Unfortunately, “TJ” and family were hired using the time-tested formula of finding the cheapest quote, which they had provided. Note to self: when dealing with home renovation, take the second cheapest quote.

And then we really fucked up.

We asked them if they could paint the walls too (since they were already going to be there, and the tarps and whatnot would already be down) and still be done by Tuesday, before the movers got there.

They lied to us, and said “yes.”

Fucking sinners.

I don’t care how much thought you put into it, how well you organize, or how much money you throw at the problem — moving is a giant pain in the ass, and it always will be.

Changing plans mere days beforehand was just begging for disaster. Our mistake was a monkey wrench that brought the gears of our well-oiled moving machine to a grinding halt.

Come Tuesday, nothing had been painted and the house was still covered in popcorn ceiling dust from nook to cranny. Apparently their cleaning crew had no-called and no-showed, and Team Jesus didn’t have a backup plan (like get junior Jesus to do it?), so they just left it as it was.

The upstairs was completely unavailable, so all of our belongings had to be moved into the living rooms and the garage. Everything we owned was floor to ceiling in these three areas, without a single room in livable condition.

Come Thursday — after we were forced to stay elsewhere for two days — the house was still a disaster, and they had just packed up all their gear and left. As if the homeowners were going to clean the place from top to bottom, and then somehow magically lug a thousand pounds of beds and dressers up a flight of stairs.

I threw my back out leaning over for a pencil last week.

So, a second crew had to be expedited (from the same movers) to come back Saturday (on the busiest moving weekend of the year, Memorial Day Weekend) to get the heavy stuff upstairs — all of this with less than 24 hours before one of us (not me, thankfully) had to leave for Europe.

I mentioned to my partner in crime at some point, that a lifetime of last-second packing — for which I have relentlessly chided her — might actually pay off this weekend. It was 10 o'clock Saturday evening, and we hadn't even located the box that contained all of her underwear, and yet, she still managed to pack her bags like a champion by midnight, for an international flight leaving the following Sunday morning.

So, needless to say, I was a tad bit miffed when the doorbell rang Friday at the crack of dawn, as it was already a race against time to get the household in some sort of functioning order before she left, and we really needed a decent night's rest. We had probably only slept for four hours.

Friday Morning

(ding dong)

I awoke to the sounds of the new doorbell in the new house, and made my way down the new stairs to the new front door, stubbing my toe and cursing every hobbled step of the way. Remember, I had already spent half a week — a very difficult half a week — dealing with the fallout from a last minute painting change before the move, which had thrown the entire meticulously-planned effort into chaos.

I had cracked the door open ever-so-slightly in an effort to keep the dogs from escaping, and from allowing too much blinding morning light from pouring in, only to discover a tall, smartly-dressed gentleman with a clipboard and a box, smiling at me.

“Yes?” I asked, impatiently.

“Hello, I noticed you had just moved into the neighborhood, and we are offering a special deal on home security, just for you!” he said.

My struggle to keep the dogs from escaping continued with my face and body stuffed between the door and the jamb.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He mentioned who he was, and what company he worked for, and he welcomed me to the neighborhood with all the pleasantries of a politician. What I heard was “I represent the Shady Security Company, and we like to send representatives like me to your door at the crack of dawn, the first day after you’ve moved in — and yes, we suck the worst kind of donkey balls.”

The best I could muster was a disinterested, “Uh-huh.”

“We’d like to offer you a free door camera,” he continued, “Would it be alright if I installed the free door camera for you now?”

He literally took the camera out of the box and started looking for the best location.

“As you can see, we haven’t even settled in yet,” I said, as I feebly gestured to the stacks of boxes behind me.

“Could you come back Monday, perhaps?” I asked, hoping to defer the inconvenience until a later date.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to just sign up for this now, this is an amazing offer, just for you. Let me show you some numbers.”

“Um, no. I haven’t even had my coffee yet.”

Speaking of which, I would later discover I failed to indicate on my master list of where all things be, which of the 11 kitchen boxes contained the coffee; so I will leave it to you, dear reader, to guess how many boxes I opened before I found the coffee.

No guessing necessary really, it was the 11th box that contained the coffee.

We haggled a bit, the salesman and I, regarding which day would be better for him to return. He had thought that the very next day would be best, while I preferred something closer to never. We compromised and settled on Memorial Day — which I figured he would later realize was indeed a holiday, one that would service him better if he were doing literally anything other than spending it with me.

“Well, all right then, I’ll be back on Monday morning!”

As I closed the door, I remember thinking to myself, “How the hell did he know we were here?”

Then it hit me — home sales are public record. This will not be the last of this. This guy is the vanguard of the new door-to-door sales force. I thought this terribly outdated sales technique had died decades ago, but instead, they just focus on homeowners now.

No wonder I hadn’t encountered any of their species in years. I’d been renting.

I remember a time when as a nation we didn’t seem to mind people just showing up at our door. We politely listened to encyclopedia salesman as if they held the secrets of the entire world in their suitcases. We would look forward to Girl Scout cookies, or maybe just the neighbors dropping by to sell some Tupperware. Ding dong, its Avon calling! We didn’t even mind during election seasons if campaign volunteers made their cases for their candidates on our stoops and porches.

What do I know, I was a kid. We also didn’t have the internet, and our days were spent outside hitting each other with sticks.

Yeah, well that was then, and this is now. If you come to my fucking door in 2018, I better know you, and you better have fucking called, texted, emailed or messaged me first.

Usually, we just hide. When the doorbell would ring at the old apartment, or even at the house we rented for the last few years, we would look at each other and communicate in tactical hand signals. Don’t let them know that anyone is home — that’s the game we all play in America now.

Saturday Morning

(ding dong)

My bleary-eyed face was smooshed between the door and the jamb again, incredulous that this motherfucker came back the next day.

“Hi, again! I wante—”

“Listen up,” I interrupted, “I appreciate that you are trying to make a living — and you are obviously very aggressive about it, seeing as this isn’t the day we agreed on — but we are incredibly busy, and incredibly tired, and this is Saturday, not Monday, so… how about we give you a call if we decide we need your services?”

“There’s no time like the present to secure your new home!”

“Yes there is, and it will be the time of my choosing.”

Sensing my dismissal, his mood changed.

“Well I wish you would have told me that instead of me wasting my time coming over here,” he said, rather curtly.

I paused to consider my options. Did that motherfucker just diss me, on my doorstep, because I dared to be dismissive of his overly-aggressive, hopelessly outdated sales technique?

Now this is where a sane person would say something pleasant and send the overzealous door-to-door salesperson on their way.

“Let me see your ID,” I demanded.

“What?”

“Your driver’s license, let me see it.”

“What for?”

“I’m taking down you name and address.”

“Um, what for?”

“Well, since you asked so nicely, I plan on showing up to your house, unannounced and uninvited, and I’m going to sell you that couch behind me.”

The tall, well-dressed man peered over my shoulder.

“But… I don’t need a couch.”

“Well, you haven’t heard me sing its praises yet. I figure I could come over — at the time of my choosing — and tell you all about it. That’s fine with you, right? What time do you like to take your morning dump? That’s when I would like to show up. Is it OK if I bring a free pillow from the couch, as an incentive?”

“But… I don’t want you to come to my house.”

“Of course you don’t," I replied, "It’s the 21st century, not 1975. No one wants people to just show up at their door anymore. Look, I don’t even like it when my fucking friends show up at my door unannounced — wait, are we friends?”

“Well, no, but I’d like to be!” he said, as his eyes lit up at the prospect.

“Good, because I’ve got boxes and boxes of useless shit I need to move around for a week because the painters lied to me, so how about you help me do that — I’ll provide the beer and pizza, and then you can try to sell me your finest security package? I super-secret besties promise to listen to every word.”

“Well, I don’t think that…”

“Besties help each other, right? Besides, you need to get a feel for how heavy your new couch is going to be.”

As he turned to leave, I realized I probably didn’t want to put on any more of a show for the new neighbors than I already had — perhaps it was best that playtime was over.

The movers arrived later that morning along with their owner in tow, Chris. They listened to my game plan, knocked it out like champs, and then they were off to three other jobs they had to deliver on before sunset. Damn fine work, with a crew of professionals that knew exactly what they were doing.

Maybe I'm just hopelessly old-school in thinking that giving someone your word that you can get something done, actually still means something. I am definitely not old-school when it comes to traveling salesmen — for fook's sake, we need to finally be rid of that shit.

Saturday afternoon, the new Ring app and doorbell had been installed — one had already been purchased before the move — along with our brand new “no soliciting” sign.

If you haven’t checked out Ring, you might like it. It’s a doorbell, with a tiny camera, speaker, and mic that you can access from your phone. It also alerts you to any motion at your front entrance — which is great, because now I can heckle door-to-door salesman via my iPhone from anywhere in the world.

Author's Note: The heckling has already commenced. I successfully heckled another security salesman with Ring on Wednesday afternoon.

B.S. Report

I joked several months ago that we would need a school shooting every day before the NRA would release their stranglehold on congress, allowing for sensible gun laws to be legislated. I worry the joke is on us. We just may find out if that’s true, or if even then, they will do nothing. This year we are suffering through 1.1 school shootings per week, and even with fresh wind in our sails and mounting evidence that the NRA funneled Russian money to aid the Trump campaign — we still get no substantive change.

We may have witnessed a moment of humanity from Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Wednesday — she was visibly shaken — as she attempted to respond to a young boy's concerns about school shootings in America. She managed to tremble her way through a few lies, which I suppose is progress.

The free world watches us in horror. 4LWjr.

#moving woes #Team Jesus #home security for sale

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