Finch was once

the president of The Neal Pollack Fan Club, where he was sorry all he had to give was blood, sweat and tears. (Pollack wanted to hear The Blues Project, so they compromised and Finch played Blood Sweat and Tears's first album, but only the Al Kooper songs.)


At the McSweeney's 215

Festival in Philadelphia in 2003 Jaime Allen picked Finch's brain for a quote for his book How to Survive Your Marriage: by Hundreds of Happy Couples Who Did and Some Things to Avoid, From A Few Ex-Spouses Who Didn't (Hundreds of Heads Survival Guides). Finch was one of the "who didn't"'s.


A tweet

from Finch (yes, that's right) appears in tech writer for The New York Times David Pogue's book The World According To Twitter. It's about mushrooms.


Finch's belief

in his own existence was challenged when the previously mentioned Neal Pollack made him the teenaged Connecticut trust fund partier "J. Douglas Finch" in his novel Never Mind The Pollacks. Finch is attempting to secure the role in the film that will be made from Pollack's book, but considering he's 40 years older than the part calls for, his chances are best described as "slim." Iggy Pop will also appear in the scene set in 1969 (on Woodstock weekend), which shouldn't be a problem as Iggy has looked the same for the past 50 years.


Other stuff by Finch...

...can be found by digging around the Internet in the vicinity of McSweeney's ("Story Endings O. Henry Didn't Use"), Lee Klein's Eyeshot ("Study Guide For A Book In A Plain Brown Wrapper"), Hobart ("Afternoon Of The Babe"), Pindeldyboz ("A Tale Of Many Days Before") and The Rumpus ("J.D. Finch Spends Christmas With David Sedaris", 2008).


In the dark days

before the Internet Finch produced writing that appeared here and there, including in film magazines Cinefantastique, Fangoria, Fantastic Films and Filmfax. He paid his dues by working in the trenches of New Jersey weeklies writing columns, features and spot news stories, as well as writing for and editing collectors' journals, newspapers and newsletters. He also managed to sell a couple pieces of fiction to nationally distributed magazines. He now has his own regular column in The Journal Of Antiques And Collectibles.

Finch will have a collection of stories and mostly humorous short pieces -- as well as a novel with the current working title St. M -- coming out soon.

It would help to go Here for context.


jdfinch


The Bitchliker's Guide To My Gal's Ass, See?
Alas, Boobylon
Gather, Dickness
The Piddle Of My Tower
When The Wacker Sleeps
On The Bitch
Crotchhmen

The Old Fight

My boss here in Cape May thinks we Irish are a funny lot, still finding ourselves in a tizzy over things that happened 300 years ago. With all the beauty of the land, him and a big part of the world still believes we’re populated by bomb-mad crazies and that our highest goal is to get on the dole. I tell him, “Is Jersey a state-sized pollution spewing engine inhabited by mostly welfare mothers and factory workers pinning their life’s hopes on winning the state lottery?”

He chooses not to get the point: “Why can’t you people forgive, forget and get on with it? Six years after our civil war – and more blood was spilled there in a few years than has dampened your old sod in a hundred -- we were working side by side again to make things right.”

See, he doesn’t know how deep things go, how our sad history is of a people forever led up to the Golden Cup, only to have it snatched away before our lips can taste the wine of freedom. But still, he puts ideas in my head about our leaders.

Were they the ones who put us on that unending line from the past, that's lead the poorly informed to consider many of us just another terrorist, who’d as soon throw bricks, bottles and, at worst, bombs, as raise a pint to his mate’s health?

This anachronistic religious war is pretty much self contained, but it wears on one. Sure, many of my mates are on the dole. And many’s the time I’ve felt I should fall in line with them. Then again, I look at the new age travelers. That’s the media term for young tinkers, who are pretty much semi-organized homeless people. It’s a right laugh isn’t it? They haven’t found a way out of anything, just into more misery and poverty. No proper homes, excerpt for the lucky few crowded into their little trailers, going here and there with no goal, your da’s life floatin’ away on cheap poteen, your mum doing the unspeakable just to stay alive and feed the babies she shouldn’t be havin’ anyway. A right load of shite.

A lot of us like to escape into America’s old west. Run a John Wayne movie at the local flicker and we’ll be out in droves watchin’ men like him stride and ride across the country like giants; the only borders in the whole fargin’ country an occasional line of barbed wire to keep the soddin’ cows in and the rustlers out. Patrols or guarda, nonexistent. Eat, sleep, fuck where they want; do away with little impediments like indians they swat like flies; takin’ shite from no one.

They got what they wanted without bombing innocent people, didn’t they? But they could have. They were free and could do anything they wanted. Irish school books say that they got freedom from throwin’ some tea into Boston Harbor. I guess our problem is we never really had anything to throw away. But I think that maybe if we had dumped a few of our leaders in the Liffey years ago we’d be better off.

My boss says that if Michael Eisner woulda bought this country, we’d all be happy extras on Main Street Eire, sellin’ little Blarney Stones on chains to the tourists that they'd kiss when the going gets tough, us livin’ in magic castles with leprechauns that are really just my dwarf mates.

Shite, I say, kiss my ass. That's no way to win.

U.

So, it always amazes me when professional writers complain that they've "lost their work."

Can't blame one for trusting an autosave program I suppose, but still...

Although why anyone would trust an online entry field is beyond me.

Let's see, how many text entry/edit programs do you have on your computer? Perhaps you should start using one as a rule.

ZOMG!, if you're a pro, please act like one! Save your damn work yourself, don't trust any program.

I'm done.

"Well, through a series of events (unfortunate or not, depending upon your point of view) I am spending Christmas with David Sedaris. That is, the writing of David Sedaris, which I like to think..."  (Read More)

4e

I have named a tune and exterminated an earworm for my lit pal Ed. (Avoid creating a visual for my description -- you might give yourself an eyesnake. Or something.)

Gunman Arrested After Maine Students Held Hostage

Filed at 11:53 a.m. ET

STOCKTON SPRINGS, Maine (AP) -- A gunman who had been on the lam for a week held 11 fifth-graders hostage at a school Friday but was tackled outside a classroom without any harm to the children, police said.

Randall Hofland, 55, had released all the students and had turned over a gun to one of his former hostages before he was arrested at Stockton Springs Elementary School, authorities said.

He was taken to jail and the students were removed from the school in this small, coastal town.

The gunman walked into a fifth-grade classroom around the start of the day. State police were called at 8:42 a.m. and Hofland was arrested about 20 minutes later.

Hofland was the object of a manhunt that began on the night of Oct. 23 after he allegedly pointed a gun at a police officer who stopped him during a seat belt safety check in neighboring Searsport. Hofland drove off, eventually abandoning his car in a field.

A two-mile stretch of U.S. 1 was closed to traffic for a time during the search, which involved more than three dozen police officers, including the state police tactical team.

Schools in School Administrative District 56, including Stockton Springs Elementary School, were closed for the day after Hofland fled out of concern for students' safety.

The school 10 miles north of Belfast serves kindergarten through fifth grade. It has about 80 students.

Spanky, with a new gang

the worthless word for the day is: contortuplicate

[ad. L. contortuplicat-us < contortus, twisted together
+ plicatus, folded] //
Bot. : twisted back upon itself; also in extended use

""But it's all a bit... convoluted, isn't it, sir?"
"Convoluted?" echoed Dalziel. "It's [eff]ing contortuplicated!"
That sounded like a Dalziel original, but Pascoe had been
caught out before and made a note to look it up before making
comment."
- Reginald Hill, Dialogues of the Dead (2001)

this week: a glance at Reginald Hill

Credit (or blame if you will) where it is due:
-tsuwm
http://home.comcast.net/~wwftd

Fisher Z*


Say "zed", silly Americans.

The night the comedienne called me "bland"
Half a half-assed story

Interesting that she hasn't found an impressive man in so long. In my experience this means that she's up for five more years of therapy.

And while she might "be a bolster for a man", as she so quaintly put it, perhaps she also just naturally undercuts him (oh the type!) in not so obvious ways.

Again, in my experience with being a wannabe fan of (name your celeb comedy poison), I have to say I was at first a bit "put out" (don't you love that expression -- it can mean mildly pissed or giving sex (e.g., she really puts out): the English language, how imprecise, yes!?) when I saw that she was trying to goad the Suicide Girls folks to enter her contest by saying (and I paraphrase her post, because, who wants to get googled and found out? Ahhh, not me.): "All the entries have been bland bland bland. Come on -- hit me with your best shot."

I mean, talking trash about your beloved wannabe fans (like me) who took a good 10 minutes out of their day to fashion a photographic contest entry, while various likenesses of yourself (perhaps a bit too many -- ahem!) abound?

And then I realized, yes, of course, "bland". I live in Vermont. People actually settle here to become "bland". At least she (denizen of NYC, which constantly throbs with life, like a massive and tumescent spit of phallic real estate, ready to pop at any hour day or night if you whisper the right words in its gigantic ear, said to be located somewhere around 125th and 6th Ave) knows all about it but still...

I know I had a bigger point, but I'm spent. Smoke em if you've got em.

From an actual "Position Available" Ad:

"SALES MANAGERS… As a Sales Manager, you will sell our products to perspective customers and acquire new customers while..."

You know, "perspective customers." They're only six inches tall when they walk in the front door, but by the time they get to the counter they're 5'11".