Crazytown

MINDY KALING IS BAD BITCH

Why Mindy Kaling is a wonderful role model and everyone should want to be like her when they grow up.
By Annissa Omran (Writer/College Student)

This is the second installment in the "Bad Bitch" series I started in March with an ode to the wonderful Angela Lansbury. This series puts the spotlight on women with great talent you might have forgotten about or overlooked. 

(This woman is my spirit animal ^[source])

If you, like me, are a fan of the show The Mindy Project, you might be wondering how Mindy Kaling meets the "forgotten or overlooked" criteria. On the show she's plays a sassy partner in a gynecological practice dealing with the highs and lows of love and life in New York city. And while her character might be navigating daily ups and downs, you as the viewer will always be left sideways. On the couch. Laughing hysterically while concerned friends and family members in other rooms yell at you to remember to breathe.

Ok, that might just be my personal experience.

But even so, The Mindy Project is some seriously underrated TV. I place series creator Mindy Kaling in the "forgotten or overlooked" category simply because I don't hear people talking about her and I think they SHOULD.

 I know that some people aren't sure how they feel about her humor. I was originally one of those people. But then I actually paid attention to her work and now I'm definitely a Kaling-convert. 

THE GREAT WHO?

Jaye has a confession to make. 
By Jaye Hunt (Embarrassed literary nerd)

This week's release of The Great Gatsby movie has put me in an awkward situation because as a literary nerd who hangs out with other literary nerds, I've been surrounded by discussion of the book and excitement for the movie for a while now, but I always have to change the subject or remove myself from the conversation somehow. 

Yes, it's time for me to come clean: I have never read The Great Gatsby.

                                                        East and West Egg (I assume.)

ONE LESS LONELY GIRL

Never Say Never? How about Never Say Anything?
By Alisha Giampola (Actor) 

You guys. Since the news broke that Justin Bieber was getting his WWII history on in Amsterdam and wrote a slightly awkward entry in the guestbook at the Anne Frank House, I'm sure you've all been wondering sleeplessly if Anne Frank would, in fact, have been a 'belieber' as Justin hoped. If you have somehow missed this amazing moment in American pop culture, and have not yet become alarmed that possibly no one under the age of 20 knows anything about Anne Frank, or you know, World War II, please take a moment to catch yourself up.

(And I really cannot even discuss right now that Justin Bieber was born in 1994, because that just makes me feel HORRIFYINGLY OLD. I need to procure a lawn, so I can start yelling at people to stay off of it.)  

To the credit of pretty much everyone on the planet, most people reacted on a spectrum between outrage and irritated disbelief at Bieber's comment, although 50 Cent had the Beib's back. In all fairness, if we ever hoped to discover what was on the mind of a teenage Jewish girl during the Holocaust, 50 Cent's guess is probably as good as anyone's. Also, it's pretty clear that Bieber's comments were made in fairly profound ignorance, as he doesn't even know who the Germans are, let alone the Nazis.

And then, Anne's own posthumous stepsister, Eva Schloss, steps forward and makes the ultimate defense for Bieber's comment. Eva constructs this very scientific logical syllogism for us: all 15 year old girls love Justin Bieber, Anne Frank was (and will eternally be) a 15 year old girl, therefore Anne Frank would have loved Justin Bieber. 

“Tell me what you like girl, tell me what you don’t.
I could be your Buzz Lightyear, fly across the globe.”

BOOK TITLE NONSENSE

Don't judge a book by it's cover, but totally judge it by the title.
By Melissa Presti (Book Publisher)

There are rules to work places, I think. Human Resources people love adhering to rules, but at Penguin with have the People Department and they love telling me when I forget to fill out timesheets and won't be getting monies for rent. So I didn't ask if I'm allowed to essentially make fun of our books.

Specifically, the titles. The content is totally probably amazing, but the title maybe had me thinking of other things.

When I should be paying attention and making notes during book launches, I'm usually entertaining myself with snap judgements based completely on the title. These are legit titles on their way to publication...

Am I A Jew?
Do I appear confused? I feel like this is something you should know about yourself, like your birthday or the color of your eyes or the address on your fake ID. 

Experimenting With Babies
If this doesn't involve Coke, Mentos, and actual live babies, I'd rather not.

                            There could be a baby attached to that...

 

Cooking Comically
For poor people! When you only have pasta, eggs, and bbq sauce and payday is 4 days away.

Every Day Is An Atheist Holiday!
If this is about making the Cadbury egg the mascot of Easter, I already tried and it didn't catch on but there is potential. Also, this is written by the magician who can catch a bullet in his mouth when his partner shoots a gun at his face, so.

The Genius of Dogs
…is that they get to sleep all day and eat with zero regard to calories or food groups or judgement for eating things off the floor. What else would need to be written?

I’d Rather Be Short
Not going to read a single word as this author is clearly a lifelong nemesis intent on destroying every last shred of my emotional fragility.

Twentysomething
Live it, don't read it, cry, repeat.

HE HAD IT COMING

 How character deaths that occur before the house lights dim can be more effective than all the special effects and fake-gasp-chest-clutching in the world.
By Annissa Omran (Writer/College Student) 

Lately I’ve been working on a story in which one of my peripheral characters must meet his maker. It’s okay, he certainly deserves it. But as I continued to develop the story, I realized just how varied my options were.

(I understand Crazytown opinions of Ms. Zeta-Jones are mixed, but you can't tell me you don't scream-sing this song in the shower)

Think about it. When it comes to plot building, there are so many ways in which a character can bite the dust.

Being an extreme sucker for the usual methods of heartstring tugging, I’ve always been especially vulnerable to the killing of characters. I’ve spent many a night cursing a writer for his decision to send a favorite protagonist to an early grave.

That being said, I find a strange comfort in wielding that sword of mortality in my own work. It has something to do with the artistic power to create and destroy and all that jazz. As a writer, you hold the cards and the ultimate ax is yours to do with as you see fit. 

However I think the most interesting method of character killing is when you kill him/her before the curtain even goes up, before the title page is flipped, and before the beginning credits roll.

THE FAME MONSTER

Success < Happiness?
By Alisha Giampola (Actor) 

I think I was sipping on a fruity alcoholic beverage and sunning myself by a pool somewhere in Bali when I leaned over to Daniel and said: "Do you think we would be super famous right now if we just had really unsupportive families?" 

We were on our honeymoon, and my honeymoon reading completely consisted of comedian-autobiographies. This is a genre that seems limiting, but in fact has more than enough reading material for two 25-hour long flights and some intermittent pool-relaxation time. I had already finished Tina Fey's excellent Bossypants, as well as Are You There Vodka, It's Me Chelsea by Chelsea Handler (I know, I know, I'm basically the last person on earth to finish these books). I had moved on to Steve Martin's memoirs of his early career: Born Standing Up, and had realized that while neither Fey nor Handler experienced enormously detrimental parental influences (although one might argue that point in Chelsea's case), Steve Martin basically fueled his early success by attempting to get some kind, any kind, even the smallest bit, of positive attention from his emotionally absent father. 

Since my parents are, and have always been, essentially the total opposite of "emotionally absent", I was curious if my relatively easygoing career pace had something to do with this. Don't get me wrong, I am a motivated person, but I don't have the kind of motivation that is single-minded, desperate to succeed NOW, at any cost, to the detriment of health, finances and personal relationships, that often seems to accompany very very successful young people. Steve Martin didn't have time for anything but his career for years- neither did the Beatles, neither does Lady Gaga, and even if it wasn't originally their idea, neither did the Olsen twins. 

BOOKS ON THE BRAIN: PART 3

The grand finale of my 3-part literary series concludes in conversation with author Ron Currie Jr.
By Melissa Presti (Book Publisher)

If you knew when the world would end, would anything you do in life matter? By the time I turned the final page of the apocalyptic tour de force that is Everything Matters! by Ron Currie Jr. I was facedown in existential despair and ready to hurl the book at a wall. And I did.

That’s where we start. I was new to Twitter in 2009 (when I followed authors and kept things professional) and I followed Ron so I could tweet something like “I read EM and threw it at the wall” and he was like “umm…thanks?” We became Facebook friends, kept in touch, and most recently happy hour(s)ed together which is when I asked him to contribute to Crazytown. His latest book, Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is equally original in postmodern prose, and on sale February 7^th.

Melissa Presti: What motivated you to write Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles? Tell us your elevator pitch on what it's about in one sentence.

Ron Currie: I was motivated by events in my life at the time. Elevator pitch: It's about the impossibility of love, and the inevitability of grief, and also about sentient robots. 

MP: Short and direct. When I pitch it to friends I'd add the line from the book jacket copy, "why literal veracity mean more to us than deeper truths" because it carries such a huge weight.  

Also, sentient robots reminds me I have Ray Kurzweil's How to Create a Mind staring me down from the bookshelf that I failed to finish before my brain imploded. He makes my head hurt. But your references to the Singularity work in FLPM, probably because they're used in context that makes sense to me.

RC: Well thank you. And that's really the whole idea, as I understand it--taking something that might not make sense to, or have any significance for, another person, and shaping it in a way so that it suddenly and unmistakably does. Also, Kurzweil has a much deeper understanding of Singularity theory than I do, obviously--which means it's likely that you found my version of it easier to digest because it's not as smart or detailed. 

MP: How would you describe your writing style and your writing process?

RC: Haphazard, nicotine-fueled, occasionally exhilarating. 

                         Ron Currie Jr. in conversation with Ben Gibbard (video below)

MP: I remember seeing on Facebook that you were on some Caribbean island for quite awhile. Was that just for book research, or did you write a large chunk of the book?

RC: For a few years now I've spent the bulk of winter on a tiny Puerto Rican island called Vieques. For half a century a good portion of the island was used by the Navy as a bombing range, but now that they've stopped bombing and cleaned up most of the unexploded ordinance, the public has access to beaches as unsullied as they were the day Columbus showed up. It's a raw, feral place, and I wrote the bulk of the book there. 

MP: Did you face any challenges with FLPM? You can say no. Or "I ran out of whiskey during the twelfth chapter so things get shitty." (Just kidding. There are no chapters.)

RC: It was rum, actually...when in Rome, and so on. But yeah, there were plenty of challenges. There always are. One of the challenges unique to this book, though, was to figure out how to basically transcribe things that were happening in my life as they happened. As novelists, we require a certain emotional distance, a certain perspective, on our subjects in order to write about them well. So the challenge was to somehow manufacture that distance while in the very midst of what I was writing about. I think I managed it. 

BOOKS ON THE BRAIN: PART 2

For any creative type who has wondered about the "why?" behind their need to create.
By Melissa Presti (Book Publisher) 

Continuing this "Books on the Brain" series I've started, I wanted to take a look at the most basic question one could ask a writer: why do you write? Months ago I was excited to learn Plume (imprint of Penguin Group USA) would be publishing a collection of interviews with esteemed authors, titled Why We Write, on sale today.

The featured authors range from mystery thriller writer David Baldacci to Mary Karr the memoirist, to bestselling novelist Jodi Picoult to the controversial James Frey. Each of the 20 writers reveal their writing process, dwelling upon their worst fears and greatest successes, and how their writing endures. They remind aspiring writers we aren't alone in our frustrations and self-doubt. 

"It's terrifying, pouring time and energy into a project that's experimental and might fall through the cracks." - Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)

For myself and the many other writers of Crazytown, we write for so many different reasons. We are united by the idea that we have something important to share, by offering words of advice and motivation, and a behind-the-scenes type of insight to the areas of expertise in our respective industries. But why have we banded together? To prove our relevance?

"If writing were illegal, I'd be in prison. I can't not write. It's a compulsion." - David Baldacci (The Innocent)

It's a curious case as to what compels us to do what we do, or more often, why am I doing this to myself? 

BEHIND THE MADNESS: ADAM GWON, VOL. 1

Exploring all things craft and crazy/cool with the new mad geniuses of musical theater.
By Michael Ruby (Writer)

I learned how to write musicals by writing with Adam Gwon. Nigh on almost a decade ago (gulp!), I had never written a musical before, but had the incredibly great fortune of teaming up with Adam to adapt Edith Wharton’s timeless, tragic romance Ethan Frome. The result was a few small, but beautiful incarnations of the show – but what I walked away with was so much more than a piece of theater. I gained a craft, and a friend.

A LOT has happened since then. Independently and with a host of other great collaborators, Adam has achieved wonderful and well-deserved success with his musicals Ordinary Days (cast album on Ghostlight Records), The Boy Detective Fails (with Joe Meno), Cloudlands (with Octavio Solis), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (with Julia Jordan), and String (with Sarah Hammond) – which have been produced at Roundabout Theatre Company, Signature Theatre, South Coast Repertory, and many other theaters around the globe, including in London’s West End. 

Following a ridiculous length of time since we’d last seen each other, I was delighted when Adam joined me at the West Bank Café to catch up and talk shop over irresistible appetizers. Adam is as quick-witted and passionate as his art – which made for amazing banter and blog content…and tough typing. Here’s the first chapter of our conversation.

BOOKS ON THE BRAIN: PART 1

The first in a 3 part series where I focus on my book publishing "expertise" and exercise that English degree.
By Melissa Presti (Book Publisher) 

In recent months, one of the best books I've devoured is Rage is Back by Adam Mansbach, an author most known for his "children's book" Go the F*ck to Sleep. With a hint of Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao at every page turn, Rage is Back is a nostalgic reflection on the 1980s New York era of subway graffiti artists and Brooklyn drug dens.

I was so enthralled with his gritty New York narrative I wanted to meet the man behind the words. Unfortunately, I missed his event at Powerhouse Arena in DUMBO last week, which is why I was stunned to hear his thoughts on the matter.

In a Salon.com article last week, author Adam Mansbach calls his own book tour his version of hell, and chastens publishers for running out of fresh publicity ideas. 
As my friend tweeted: "I don't know who Adam Mansbach's publicist is, but I'm sure she could use a drink." He ticked off the following list of promotional grievances:

1) Send copies of the book to whatever newspapers still exist, along with a polite note asking them to start reviewing books again.
Ok I get this, we really only care about the New York Times and USA Today book rankings, the other newspapers (plenty do book reviews!) reach the weird margin of "we still buy newspapers in 2013" people. 

2) Encourage the author to capitalize on his social media network by hassling the shit out of nursery school friends of his parents on Facebook with constant, self-serving blather.
Dude. This is how you build a brand. Your name becomes a brand. I whore my blog post out on social media every week, and I'm actually going to include your twitter handle when I tweet this blog post out of spite.