Photo by Walter Kundzicz

Look out, I’m about to spew words about recent things I’ve consumed.

Netflix movies

Death Race 2000: Pretty goddamn brilliant. Proto-Starship Troopers-style sci-fi exploitation with a nice satirical bite. There’s a lot of Roger Corman productions on Netflix these days and I’m eating em up. The Big Bird Cage was another good one, also Switchblade Sisters. I love exploitation’s total embrace of excess and feeling: it’s horror, sex and violence congealed and lobbed right at your face. Which doesn’t always make it palatable, but at least it doesn’t pull any punches.

Theater movies

Gone: I saw this with a friend who has a thing for Amanda Seyfried. Afterwards I totally got it, because Seyfried turned in a great peformance. She was crafty, intense and unreadable. The movie kept me entertained. Low expectations are always a good thing. I loved Amanda Seyfried’s blue car.

We Need to Talk About Kevin: What a weird-ass movie. In fact it was best in its most weird and abstract moments. The problem was it was so fucking looong. I loved the fact that it was a movie about a school massacre where we won’t supposed to give a shit about the victims, it was all about the mom. It was a maternal horror story, but the horror stuff, especially toward the end, wasn’t punchy enough, it dragged and groaned. The brutal office party scene sticks with me, as does the opening sequence.

Books

The Hunger Games: Clearly readable, an achievement that one shouldn’t gloss over (even though I just did). I’m sure a million amateur pundits have weighed in on this already, but it’s truly a testament to how far we’ve come as a nation that an exploitation story about teenagers killing one another (and not having sex, of course) is one of our most popular stories among kids and adults. The romance was weak, as was the fact that they changed the rules halfway in. On the fence as to whether I’ll read the next two.

Champion, Photographs by Walter Kundzicz: I haven’t said much about my trip to New York a couple weekends ago, but geez, it was kinda brilliant and I kinda kicked some ass. I sold copies of Backwoods at the Rainbow Book Fair, and my table happened to face that of photographer Reed Massengill. After I got over my jealousy of how many books he was selling we had an enjoyable time in one another’s company. He has several books of photography and they’re pretty brilliant, erotic and human. But before the day was over I traded him one of my collages for this book of photographs, which he edited. It’s fantastic not only for the brilliant Kodachrome colors and hot dudes. Kundzicz has a sense of humor and poses his dopey muscle men with all kinds of esoteric fetish objects: football helmets, pitchforks, dish racks, eye patches, binoculars, telephones…the list is endless. It’s absolutely hilarious and unique.

Shirtlifter by Steve MacIsaac: I picked up several issues of this comic when I was Chicago some time ago and I’ve been meaning to write about it since. Anybody who enjoys stories of modern gay white men (re: Weekend) would do themselves a service to check these comics out, which are unflinchingly honest and crisply told. Lots of sex, though whether it’s erotic or not is sort of up for grabs. I’m more a fan of the strong, melancholy narration.

Here ’tis: the original version of my most recent ebook, originally rejected by Amazon and now released in all its incest-laden glory. Includes fourteen of my best intergenerational fuck stories, plus a brand-new story (“Chuck and Skippy”), a preface and a section of annotations detailing story inspirations and other randomness.

**Buy it here via Queer Young Cowboys. The $3.99 download price includes .pdf, .epub and .mobi versions.

This is the best ebook I’ve put together so far, if I do say so myself. I’m grateful to my friend, fellow writer and publishing enthusiast Johnny Murdoc, who is releasing it under his Queer Young Cowboys micro-pub. I have to say, Mr. Murdoc has outdone himself with the cover and promotional aspects – he was the one who slapped the word ‘unexpurgated’ on there, which I love. It reminds me of one of my favorite writers, Anais Nin, whose unexpurgated diaries were released after her death. In fact, one of those volumes detailed her sexual relationship with her biological father – and that book is available on Amazon. Irony! Stupidity!

I exercised my constitutional right to disable my Facebook profile yesterday. I’m on Twitter so if you want to follow me feel free to do so: @nattysoltesz. Though I almost never post on Twitter because I don’t understand its purpose, beyond attempts to get the attention of people more famous than me. Am I missing something?

I’m feeling focused lately, which is one of the reasons I’m trying to minimize my distractions. Man, I read this great book yesterday – and I mean I really did read the entire thing in one day. Dream School by Blake Nelson. I got it from the library and I was holding off on reading it, because I knew it was going to be good. Finally I picked it up yesterday morning and I read it all day. It was so wonderful. I’d do something, take a break, then come right back into that world because I never wanted to leave.

Anyway it was inspiring because it’s about this college girl discovering that she’s a writer. And the voice is just effortless, and Nelson doesn’t waste any time on events, he just plows right through this girl’s life and goes on to the next thing that happens, then the next thing, then the next thing… It’s rare for me to get inspired by a book I admire, usually I just feel crippled by greatness that I’ll never live up to – bad books are typically more motivating.

I’m inspired to finish this novel I’m working on which – fuck it – is a sequel to 428 College St, and it’s called 691 Suburban Dr. I’m also working on a new ebook called Daddy/Boy, which is going to be a collection of my intergenerational/incest stories, most of which have already been published but I’m going to include at least one new story, plus an introduction, plus a section of annotations and notes on the stories which is painfully self-indulgent but fuck it, it’s my ebook and I can do whatevah I want.

So those are my two main projects at the moment. Daddy/Boy should be out around the beginning of February. ‘Suburban Dr,’ who knows, but I know I’ve found myself drawing out the process of writing it because I’m so happy to be working consistently on something, but I think it’s to the detriment of the book. So I don’t want to say too much about this but I am determined to tell the story a little faster and not worry about length so much and just tell the damn story and get it out. So hopefully that’s good news.

What else? By the way I should be leaving for work right now but I’m putting it off, because it’s my Monday (I work Tues-Sat) and I’m not looking forward to it. Basically, I’m trying to become a full-time writer. I haven’t mentioned it extensively on this blog, but Str8 but Curious has been successful beyond my wildest dreams, and it’s made me believe that I could actually support myself solely through writing, and that is an incredibly exciting prospect to me. So I’m optimistic about the future, and also pretty damn scared because there is so much to consider.

I dreamt last night that President Obama and I were in my backyard and he smoked me up with this incredible weed, and I was so stoked because I’d get to tell my grandchildren that President Obama got me high. Plus he was so cool and chill and we were just hanging out. I was disappointed when I woke up. He’s totally getting my vote this year.

Michael Kirwan’s recently-released book Just So Horny arrived in the mail today. You might remember that Michael Kirwan did the illustrations for my getting-closer-to-being-released (seriously! more on that later) book, Backwoods. Well the awesome news is that three of the illustrations Michael did for Backwoods are included in Just So Horny. They’re full-page illustrations and they look amazing!

And the entire book is really quite incredible. Impeccably designed and in full color. I didn’t know what I was expecting, but seeing Michael’s illustrations presented this way – when I’ve only ever seen them in miniature through the cold grey light of the computer screen – is a revelation. They’re bold, exuberant, hot. I got a boner looking through it and it’s only a matter of time till I’ll jerk off to it. Well worth the price – which is surprisingly low for such a well-produced book. Buy it!

Wanted to mention this earlier: my writer buddy Johnny Murdoc recently posted the introduction I wrote for his book Blowjob 3, titled “Why Sex?,” in full on his website. Read it here.

This cheered me up today – it’s a review of Blowjob 3 where the reviewer really liked my introduction:

The collection of stories starts out with a delightful introduction by Natty Soltesz and her great quote towards the end sums up the feeling of the stories so well. Introductions can be hit or miss and this one definitely hits all the high notes. Don’t skip it.

I suppose said praise would soften the awkwardness of the reviewer referring to me as a female if I were offended by such things, but as it is I’m totally NOT offended and I’m sort of embracing the idea that my name is weirdly gender neutral, or at least confusing. Cause gender is confusing PERIOD.

In other news, I’m going to make another (!) concerted effort to post more on here.  Truth be told, I’m just fucking busy, working close to sixty hours a week. It sucks nuts and I’m totally over it. But expect a new story posted to this site in the coming week and a special sorry-I’m-a-fuck-up-and-forgot-to-post-last-week Nifty update tomorrow.

Hey there, more later about what an absolute shit pile my life has been these past couple weeks, but first something good: my friend/colleague Johnny Murdoc recently released the latest issue of his zine, except this time it’s a real book.

I wrote an introduction for it, so you should definitely get it and tell me how good my introduction is, at least (har har).

Jon Raymond is an Oregon-based writer you should get to know and appreciate. He’s published a novel, which I haven’t read, and a short story collection, Livability, which I highly recommend. He’s most well known from his collaborations with the filmmaker Kelly Reichardt, in fact two stories from Livability were made into films directed by Reichardt:  ”Old Joy” and “Wendy and Lucy” (starring Michelle Williams).  Both of them are well worth your time and attention.

In fact I’d rank “Wendy and Lucy” easily in one of my top-ten movie-going experiences. The tone of it is singular, pitched low but humming with emotional intensity. When the credits came up I had the curious experience of being glued to my seat, wracked with emotion, all but sobbing, while one row ahead of me old ladies bitched and complained about how terrible it was, how nothing happened. The film, about a young woman in dire economic straights, almost acts as a moral litmus test: how much are we supposed to care about one another?

Now, Raymond and Reichardt’s third collaboration, “Meek’s Cutoff,” is in limited release. It’s going to take forever for it to get to Pittsburgh but I’m patient.

Also, Raymond wrote the script for Todd Haynes’ mini-series adaptation of “Mildred Pierce,” which is currently showing on HBO, to which I don’t subscribe, so I’m coveting that experience too.

Repost from old blog, 10/9/2006

“In countries like the U.S. and Great Britain, we exist in a wholly sexualized culture, where everything from cars to snack food are sold with a healthy slathering of sex to make them more commercially appealing. But if you’re using sex to sell sneakers, then you’re not just selling sneakers, you’re selling sex as well, and you’re contributing to the sexual temperature of society. You’re going to get people who, unsurprisingly, become overheated in that kind of sexual environment, and if they attempt to assuage their desires by resorting to the widely available medium of pornography, they’re going to have their moment of gratification, and then they’re going to have a much longer period of self-loathing, disgust, shame and embarrassment. It’s almost like a kind of a reverse Skinner-box experiment, where once the rat has pushed the lever and successfully received the food, then he gets the electric shock.”
–Alan Moore

I just finished reading Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s incredible graphic novel Lost Girls. I honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from this book, even though I was intrigued after reading interviews with Moore (the quote below is from a wonderful interview with the Onion AV Club, and I urge you to read it because it nearly blew my mind). Being somewhat of a [novice] student of erotica, though, I had to pick it up.

…more (more…)

The ACME Novelty Library Volume 20 by Chris Ware

Chris Ware’s already mind-blowing work continues to evolve by leaps and bounds. This book is part of his ongoing Rusty Brown narrative, and one gets the sense that Ware has largely abandoned his initial conception for the project and gone wherever his nutso-genius brain has led him. While the first couple Rusty Brown books were somewhat disappointing rehashes of Ware’s formal and thematic favorites (experimental design, loneliness), in subsequent volumes the narrative has become increasingly fragmented, focusing longer stretches on seemingly tangential characters. #20 takes this approach to its extreme, honing in on the high-school bully character from previous volumes and laying out his entire life, from birth to death – or, more precisely (this being Ware and all, precision is paramount), from nothing to nothing.

Visually it’s as gorgeous as anything he’s ever done, designed to within an inch of its life (and, as Matt Seneca points out, in some ways the book design is the narrative). It would be a shame for the casual reader to avoid this book just because it’s ostensibly part of an ongoing series (and for its generic/numeric title) – it works perfectly on its own. I couldn’t put it down, read it in one gulp, heart racing. It took my breath away.

A brand new driver’s license; a low-riding muscle car; an incandescent blaze of searing red light; “Stairway to Heaven” blaring from the AM/FM radio. These elements all dance and intermingle on the page, sweeping you inexorably forward with an emotional rather than narrative thrust. Ware treats comics like a hieroglyphic code, a language for unlocking some unspeakable truth.

– Joshua O’Neill, a much more capable reviewer than I.

X’ed Out by Charles Burns

I’m sorry to report that this book annoyed me before I even opened it.  Charles Burns’ last major project, Black Hole, is probably my favorite comic of all time – rich, strange, beautiful, nostalgic.  So I had high hopes for X’ed Out, but was bothered outright by the fact that it’s a hardcover book.  Whatever happened to alternative comics – like, actual, stapled comics that cost five to seven dollars?

Then there’s the back cover blurb:  ”From the creator of Black Hole comes the first volume of an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction in brilliant color.”  So that’s why I’m paying twenty bucks for it – because it isn’t a comic book, it’s an epic masterpiece of graphic fiction.  Give me a break – the fucking project isn’t even finished.

Okay, okay, I know that’s just marketing.  And it’s quite pretty, and Burns is apparently going for a Tintin homage (though those books are softcover, to the best of my knowledge).  But, because I bought both books at the same time, I can’t help but compare it to Ware’s Acme Novelty #20, which somehow seems justified as a complete work, between two hard covers (not that his earlier volumes, also hardcover, were always of the same caliber) .

The book itself was interesting enough, and seems to be going in a good direction.  I’ll save any final judgments for the completed work, when I’m sixty dollars lighter and one graphic-novel-that-coulda-fit-in-the-space-of-four-comic-books richer.

T.D. Jakes, minister, author of the supermarket book-aisle favorite He-Motions, has a perspective.

I came across it at a truck stop on my way to Thanksgiving.  It may be a little hard to understand, but here goes:

Proof that it’s not a typo:

Aaaand your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it has something to do with this?

Post-Google Update:  So it’s a quote from the bible.  It’s still fucking strange.