The offending driver jumped out, already crying, tears streaming down his young face, saying he was to be shipped to the Strait of Hormuz the next day; he’d enlisted because “I’ve fucked up my entire life” and he couldn’t take wrecking his parents’ car on top of everything else. “PLEASE GOD PLEASE DON’T TELL THEM.”

We started crying too because who doesn’t need a good cry at this point.

Don’t tell my mother, don’t tell my father; they’re buried here, right by my side.

Our car went to the body shop, but we shouldn’t have bothered. A body shouldn’t have been bothered.

We shouldn’t have bothered because the insurance man said we’d still have to pay $10,000.

“Well, that might as well be a million,” I said.

Well. I will not sully my poetry with Allstate’s rhetoric. As JD Vance says, the Insurance Man should be careful before he talks about matters of theology. Theirs is the language of Pilate. No matter how many times they wash their hands, the blood does not come off. “Whether it’s home, health, or auto.”

During my time without a car, I am walking around the neighborhood. My favorite fashion poet, Derek Guy, calls this experience a fast-disappearing luxury— the ability to walk around a neighborhood, where on foot you can find groceries, tacos, or cigarillos. Yes, I live walking distance from a place called CIGARS R US.

My town, Santa Cruz, is a city of 100,000– give or take a few thousand as the students ebb and flow. The summer tourists swell it to a million on the beach. It has Victorians and urban alleys and suburban blahs and wide rural fields— a mix of all things, sometimes on the same mile.

My favorite pretty blocks are closely-nested single family homes built between the two first world wars. The houses are small, and some claim the sidewalk. They are grown over with roses at the moment. Everything grows in our temperate climate. The desert plants and the artichokes, the crabgrass lawns, the fir trees and the magnolias.

On foot, I walk and walk each morning, but don’t call it fresh air and exercise. I think of my life on my feet as “street photography.” A flaneur, gently spying in the gardens and gutters. I will lie down in a muddy alley to get my shot of a towering palm sheltering owls, morning doves, and probably, rats.

I talk to people who come in and out of their cars and front porches.

One woman this morning, Judy, told me her home was built by a sea captain in 1900. “The Ghost and Mrs Muir!” I said. Her front steps were built with abalone shells pressed into the cement.

“That’s right,” she said.

“I get lots of Facebook messages,” I said, “from men who say they are lonely sea captains with full heads of silver hair and rippling tattoos of mermaids on their arms and shoulders.”

“I know;” Judy said, “me too.”

We wished they were real and would make us a drink.

I lived half my childhood around Los Angeles. The red bottle brush plant is planted all over Los Angeles, their beds flourishing the endless freeways. The plant used to fill me with dread in those years, like I was trapped forever, Catholic school punishments, the sprawling red and green hedges in the 60s thick smog that said nothing to eight-year-old me except “You are lonely and that’s the way it’s always going to be.” Their fallen bloody stringy flowers were a carpet on every sidewalk.

But now I’m grown up and the same red Callistemon in Santa Cruz looks quite innocent. The chucked mattress in the street cracks me up. I feel like calling up Zorhan Mamdani and asking for his advice.

The truth is, in Santa Cruz, we don’t have “311” like New York City, yet you still call up our mayor— they are required to answer the phone, they take shifts— and ask, where do I get rid of this street mattress and the mayor says, “Oh THAT again” and you laugh together because who is this busy mattress marauder?

The best thing I ate on my walk today was lychee fruit. They are yellow and ripe on the tree. You split the gold fruit open, but don’t eat the alkaline skin— suck out the juicy pulp inside; it’s so sweet. You can say to yourself, “Close our eyes and we are in Hawaii.”

We grow many tropicals in Santa Cruz. Fragrant ginger grows easily. Tall banana trees don’t properly fruit. It’s not hot or rainy enough. But there are lots of avocados and avocados are so expensive now that when my avocado tree bears fruit this summer I am going to sell $5 dollar avocados on the sidewalk and it will be a retirement plan like no other. Maybe $10,000 each, we shall see.

I have a new method to make neighbor friends. I admire their broken-down vintage cars stuck for years in the weeds, or tagged on the street.

—Take a gorgeous dark green Mercedes Benz for example, or the GMC El Camino. What year? I don’t know. The kind of years I like.

I wrote a note in my own handwriting — “I love your car. I don’t suppose you want to give it to me? I could spend all year fixing it with my shade-tree mechanic and then we could go for rides.”

Oh boy, did they respond.

They will never give that car up; they have plans. They’ve had plans for 40 years. They love to be flattered, the gearheads, and we sit down and smoke and juice a few oranges that are rolling around in the driveway and before you know it, I know who they’re voting for, in the next election.

I tell them, I can’t afford ten thousand for a new bumper/rear/whatever it is that’s broken, and they say FUCK ‘EM; CALL LUIGI!

I can’t get over that everyone wishes they had their own personal St. Luigi of Vengeance.

There is a new version of The Count of Monte Cristo on television right now, PBS. A French and Italian production. Remember, as I said, Hollywood, c’est fini.

If you know the story well, I suggest skipping to episode 2 of this version; the pace picks up.

Our hero Edmond Dantés is locked up to die in the Château d’If, a fate worse than death except that he meets his one other brother in this forsaken hell, the Abbé Faria, played by Jeremy Irons, who anchors the script.

The two men talk late into the night, all the knowledge of the world from the master to his protegée. They begin to dig out. The Abbé tragically dies before their final day, and he leaves Dantés a map to a 300-year-old cave of treasures: gold and rubies and diamonds.

I love the treasure scene. I could linger there. Treasure used to be a thing of beauty: jewels, carved coins and stones made by artists, even engraved parchment instead of . . . cryptocurrency.

This PBS Count of Monte Cristo is a low-key TV hit. I believe, I do believe, it is because Alexandre Dumas wrote a tale of justified and sweeping revenge.

Dantés’ life was destroyed by the corrupt and the profane, and he, in time, destroys his enemies with as much cruelty as is required.

The Abbé warns Edmond before he dies, he says, “Mon fils, if you want revenge, you must dig your own grave first.”

And we, the reader, who empathize with Edmond after his fifteen years going mad in solitary confinement, we say, “Yeah, yeah, fine. Hand me a shovel, et allons-y, motherfucker.” Our mercies were destroyed long ago.

Our impatience is because of our thirst for justice, at the price of abject loneliness.

I thirst for the same.

Yet.

I also want to eat gold fruit that falls to the ground, and lie on a dirty trampoline that someone left in the street, staring at the sky, eating lychees and spitting out the seeds with some guy who isn’t going to give me his Mercedes Benz. Not today. But what a pal. What a pal.

In Case You Missed It

Today, we find out, Trump’s Pentagon thugs threatened Pope Leo— yes, the Pope— with a murderous analogy to the 14th century Avignon Papacy.

Um.

“What is The Avignon Papacy?”

Here’s the short version: in the 1300s, the Vatican’s Roman Pope was kidnapped by French King Philip, and beaten and left to die in prison while a series of “new popes” were installed by the French Monarch.

It didn’t turn out very well, but you get the drift!

Here’s the scoop that just got unearthed by The Free Press and Letters from Leo:

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You self-published an e-book and want to promote it. How?

OR

You had an existing paperback, or hardcover, or audiobook, and now you finally have your ebook ready. How do you tell all your old readers? —and the new fans who might like it?

OR

You’re standing in the street screaming, “What the fuck is the difference between Kindle vs. Amazon vs. an Ebook vs LOSING MY MIND?”

. . . And, some of you wonder if it’s too late to promote an e-book, because you should have done it so long ago, it’s a disgrace and how are you suppose to rise like a phoenix at this late date.

Yes, I can help you, too.

Watch the video, and add any questions you have, in the comments! I will reply to all.

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McCarthy’s Blacklist, who can forget? Women in fear of losing their kids. Gay writers with good reason to know they could be prosecuted. People who smuggled their work out of the country with their lives on the line.

“But that’s not me!” you may say. Your apprehension may be closer to home.

Your family members— your parents or children— might not be pleased with the “unexpurgated you.” Do you really have to wait ‘til everyone dies before you can write your opinion, your observations?

Finally— a group I hear from a lot: academics and scholars, who see their university &/or government watching them like hawks to pounce if they so much as comment negatively about the weather. “Alw…

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I thought we might as well kill some time, before we kill anyone else.

Because the killing hasn’t stopped, whatever the poison.

Sometimes speeches fail me and I’d rather sing, or listen. I put together some songs for us to share, and you’re welcome to lend me yours.

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• The White House Didn’t Listen to Machiavelli: “Wars Begin When You Will, But They Do Not End When You Please.”

I have a couple tips for how to circumvent the rather-flailing American press. Persian strategy vs. Clown Car Continuum.

• For my birthday month, I went from “Cancer Sufferer” to “Cancer Survivor” in 2 weeks, thanks to an early-detection surgery. It’s my first existential procedure!

• How do you exhibit conflict-art in places where politeness is valued and aesthetic experience is sheltered? I got my eyes opened throwing my first “War At Home” show.

• “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the AI Juggernaut.” —If it hasn’t succeeded in porn, it can’t make it anywhere. No proof of concept. Let’s talk . .

Some Photos from the Sweeter Side of my Birthday Week.

Thank you for the flowers and the affection!

If you meant to bring me an ice cream or a pearl necklace for my birthday/cancer recovery/show debut— it’s not too late!

If you’d like purchase a small subscription to my blog, it would mean the world to me.

It’s cheaper than food, gas, or helium! - Susie

In Case You Missed It

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Good evening everyone, to the March 14 edition of Sage Lee’s “Storytime.”

My name is Susie Bright, and Sage asked me to guest-host for him while he and Ed are traveling overseas. I want to do him proud!

This is a dream come true, to continue Sage’s weekly poetry reads that have been our tradition for years.

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(See occasion details at end of today’s story).

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Do you realize what a hit this is?—10.6 million viewers per episode! That’s a lotta ice. I proceeded to read all the hot takes, of which Alexander Chee’s might be a classic.

For me, the show is a hot tub time machine. Make that two hot tubs, actually. I’m having deja vu from two different centuries.

Number 1

In the early 2000s, I was an editor at Audible who suggested we bring in independent romances, something different from Harlequin. The romances on audio at the time were tame, very “Forever Amber.”1

At the time, the “Reigning Hunk” of the Romance genre was the Navy S.E.A.L, à la Top Gun. This broody leading man had replaced the “Fabio Swarthy Bodice Ripper” fantasy years previously. Movies like An Officer and a Gentlemen kept the Navy hero going. I thought we’d never see an end to the military cosplay.

Then, one day in 2014, I got a comic manuscript from an author named Helena Hunting, about a libertine tomboy from a hardcore hockey family who hooks up with her stepbrother’s bad-boy team captain— an NHL team. Yes, she was Pucked— all the way down.

“This is going to be a bestseller,” I said. Her series made her a fortune.

BOOM— in one year, Navy S.E.A.L. was old socks, and it was hockey bad boy, center stage. We’re not even near the end of it.

In the same era, Romance fans were demanding, and producing, male/male storylines, or “fan fiction”— it dominated the indie ebook circuit. Mainstream publishers were bewildered until the money became undeniable. Whatever happened to Cathy and Heathcliff? What were straight women thinking?

I had a hunch . . . straight girls were thinking the same thing dykes had been thinking for awhile.

Number 2

In 1989, the topic of women voyeurizing gay men first came to my desk.

37 years ago, I was editing a lesbian magazine, On Our Backs, and it was the heyday of “video rentals”— ha!

Women, for the first time, were checking out porn tapes. Why not? You could sit privately at home and laugh, or grab your vibrator, or wonder what all the fuss was about.

Women had never talked, as a group, about what kind of sex movies they liked before. We had endured trite sociology like, “Women don’t like to look at sex, it’s too bracing for them.” Or, the classic, “Women aren’t visual.” They really said that.

It all came back to the chestnut that women didn’t have sexual appetites, period.

OOB began our erotica beat by reviewing the nascent lesbian-made erotic video scene. —Not the fake girl-girl stuff that came out of Hollywood and Times Square.

Then came a surprise: a small but ready stream of readers confided to us, that they enjoyed gay men’s porn.

Some dykes told us they liked it better than any other kind of erotica, while others remarked that it was something they got an occasional kick, or enlightenment, from.

I wanted to interview them further. I put out the word that On Our Backs was looking for lesbian’s detailed experiences with gay pornography. The answers I got were some of the most candid sex histories I’ve ever read.

1. What kind of gay porn/erotica do you like?

2. What’s one gay fantasy that gets you off?

3. Who do you identify with, when you fantasize about men together? The top, the bottom, the watcher?

4. How does a lesbian perceive gay porn differently than the intended audience?

5. If someone asked you, “How can you fantasize about men and not be straight?” —What would you say?

You’ll read their answers below, along with Honey Lee Cottrell’s 1970s and 80s, photographs of gay men in our erotic milieu.

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“We are up against an ideology that has given up— not only on the premise and promise of liberal democracy but on the livability of our shared world - on its beauty, on its people, on our children, on other species.

“The forces we are up against have made peace with mass death. They are treasonous to this world and its human and non-human inhabitants.”

— Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor, 2/28/26

On this afternoon’s podcast, Susie and Jon discuss US/Israel Strike on Tehran, and the Ensuing DeEvolution of WWE. World War Epstein, ammiright?

What say you? Some references are below, and I’d love to add yours.

What We’re Reading

‘W.W.FU,” as I’ve dubbed it, isn’t about regime change, it isn’t about an Axis of Evil, or “terrorism” — This is a monstrous act for redrawing the world map, and a massive market manipulation. - SB

Sarah Kendzior, Always

“I’ve said since 2017 that Kushner is my litmus test of whether the US is an entrenched mafia state, and we keep failing. He is not an official member of the US government, but we are not really ruled by the US government: we are ruled by a shadow government, and he is a reigning member.”

Shanaka Anslem Perera

I stumbled upon this market risk analyst the morning of the strike. I haven’t anyone else presenting and synthesizing military intelligence, shipping and air global events, and economic triggers — like Perera does. EYEOPENING.

It’s a little hard to follow because he makes ample use of acronyms, but I have my dictionary at the ready, and it’s worth it. And the fact that he actually names all the players, the multitude of countries, the languages involved— gives Americans a far more accurate picture of all that’s at stake.

Perera seems to be awake all hours . . . driven. I believe he’s Sri Lanken originally, based in Australia. He discusses the changing scene like a “market guy”— risk analysis for insurance, that sort of thing. My philosophical stakes in the world are not in the market. I bought his one book to figure out where he was coming from, and when I saw he listed Rebecca Solnit in his bibliography, I decided, okay, I’m game.

When You’ve Lost Erik Prince:

Jonathan Larsen

Larsen’s morning-after is the Swiftian-noir S.O.B. you need to read at times like this.His run down will set your oars straight. Big picture, people.

Johan

Keep your eye on this man’s column.

Johan (pseudonym, naturally) is retired a US Foreign Service diplomat, and offers a well-written primer to open up the discussion. He is one of the dying breed of those who champion diplomacy and democracy. As he calls it: “19th century imperialism with 21st century weapons.”

Lucian Truscutt:

“He opened his mouth and lies came out and bombs fell and people started dying”

And, It’s One Two Three, What Are We Fighting For?

Al Jazeera: What the Fuck is a Hexagon?

Netanyahu’s ‘hexagon’ alliance: Analysts call Bibi’s pitch a ‘fantasy world.‘

TMZ, of all pleces with the four-drunks-in-a-bar gossip ahead of the attack:

“I’m moving all of my gold out of Tehran…”

Max Kennerly on the WSJ story, “But We’re Almost Out of Bombs!”

Love how we spend >$850 billion annually on defense so that we can have a week’s worth of relevant munitions.

Bloomberg

“As US and Israeli bombs fell on Iran this weekend, bettors on Polymarket — where $529 million was traded on contracts tied to the timing of the strikes — were cashing in . . .”

Josh Gondelman: American innovation" now refers to making a kind of atrocity cronut by combining insider trading with war crimes.

You Can Take the Word “Courage” Out of Your Mouth

Death Toll Hits 148 - Israeli Strike, Iran Girls’ Elementary School

Not one British paper covered the Girls’ School Murders, a UK friend reported. Al-Jazeera is probably your best bet for on the ground coverage at the moment. I’m also reading Le Monde and the Guardian.

Tim Mak, just started an Iran War Dispatch. I’d keep Mak on speed dial. You know him from his Kiev, Ukraine reporting— was once an investigative correspondent for NPR, and a former U.S. Army combat medic.

And Your Additions? . . .

In Case You Missed It

I was a friend of Hunter’s, for two reasons. We were both fucked over by our publisher, Simon and Schuster — haha. Not unusual in the publishing world. Hunter’s first call to me on that occasion, “I will not be their Judas Goat.”

Secondly, we knew each other because he was the “Night Manager” of the Mitchell Brothers’ O’Farrell Theater, when I was one of the lesbians in the dancer locker room. Hunter managed nothing, but he played pool and was quite the charming Kentucky gentlemen

As the decades went on, we corresponded in his typical witches’ dawn phone calls. I always, ALWAYS appreciated our talks about our children. He loved his son Juan so dearly. An extraordinary life story.

Hunter and I talked, more than once, about elective suicide. The pain he was in, the lack of mobility. I told him about legends in my life, like Sally Binford, who chose checking out..

I knew it was coming, like everyone close to him.

I hope you’ll understand, listening to this conversation with Juan . His memoir, Stories I Tell Myself, is beautiful.

In Case You Missed It

I was an early adopter of audiobooks as an author, before they were digital and it was rather laborious to produce and listen to them!

Then, as you’ll see me describe below, a fellow reporter friend of mine from Rolling Stone, invited me to be part of the first digital audio company. What a ride. I’ve recorded thousands of titles since then, and advised many friends and students— so much history in my head.

Today, I’ll share my notes and two videos with you. I talk a lot about the financial and practical aspects— that’s what I mostly get asked about. For me, it’s an artistic movement first, and that will never change.

Shall we?

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I am reduced to endurance … I suffer without adjustment, I persist without intensity, always bewildered, never discouraged. I am a Daruma doll, a legless toy endlessly poked and pushed, but finally regaining its balance, assured by an inner balancing pin.

But WHAT is my balancing pin? The force of love?

…Such is life, falling over seven times and getting up eight.

—Lover’s Discourse: Fragments

I was fortunate in the depths of my greatest erotic humiliation, (some years ago), to seek solace in a cavernous bookstore. I spied a book, spine out, with a price sticker that said: “Lover’s Disco, $9.99.”

I snorted, and pulled the book out of its hidey-hole. The real title was Lover’s Discourse, by Roland Barthes, the greatest book ever written on love’s labors, and love lost.

I muttered whole chapters of “Lover’s Disco” to myself like prayers, my heartbreak bringing me to my knees.

I barely made it out alive and Barthes gets all the credit.

In homage to Barthes, I composed a musical meditation for the stages of love, from infatuation to contempt— and finally, to picking yourself up.

Stage 1:

Infatuation

“I Only Have Eyes for You,” The Flamingos

Someone scooped the starstruck right out of the sky and placed it in the cradle of these opening notes. Cupid’s arrow goes right through you. When my heart beats hard at the sight of my beloved, it’s these piano notes that spin. This is what true love is supposed to feel like.

Stage 2:

Declaration

“Not Fade Away,” Trout Fishing in America

I’m gonna tell you how it’s gonna be . . .

Pheromones don’t lie. We are destined to twine like a lover’s knot; we’re going to go splat in the middle of the night. We might fight and pout, but nothing can come between us. This. Is. Certainty. Now pass the bottle.

Stage 3:

Delirium

“Crosseyed and Painless,” Talking Heads

I feel like an accident.

People speak of orgasm as la petite mort, but that’s too easy. Falling in love, by comparison, is like a car wreck in which you never lose consciousness.

We vamped, didn’t we?

Stage 4:

So Fine

“You Make My Day Pretty,” Sweet Honey in the Rock

I love the part where I wake up in the morning, and turn to see that adorable face on the pillow next to me. Everything about my beloved is . . . perfect. It doesn’t matter what happens today, or tomorrow, or any day. A joy fills my heart, and this time it’s content.

Stage 5:

Do I Need To Remind You?

“Only Daddy That’ll Walk the Line,” John Doe

I’ve given my all to you. People look at us and say you’re the luckiest bastard alive.

One morning I looked over at your pillow and you weren’t there.

Stage 6:

Suspicion

“Who Is He and What Is He To You?”, Me’Shell Ndegeocello

I remember the night I couldn’t sleep, and there were no more “sleeping aids” in the cupboard.

I drove over to her house on Jones St. in the middle of the night and pounded on the door. She came out in the foyer in a white nightgown, you behind her. You looked like you planned it.

Stage 7:

Do-Over

“Littlest Things,” Lily Allen

I didn’t want to believe it. There’s no schedule for “moving on.” I can’t wash a dish or put on my clothes without every memory.

Stage 8:

Tore Down

“Why Am I Treated So Bad?,” Pops Staples

I used to hear this song as a political anthem, a gospel haunt, the last song Martin Luther King asked Pops Staple to sing for him before he was assassinated.

That was before my love put the screws in. Now it’s both.

Stage 9:

What Happened?

“Notturno,“ composed by Ottorino Respighi.

Nocturne: n. A pensive lyrical piece of music (especially for the piano).

I first heard this piece played by the son of a dear friend, and the tears poured down.

The piece segues from grief to “How could I be so stupid?”

How can the young know the resignation one feels, when there are no more tears?

They do.

Stage 10:

Contempt

“Why’d Ya Do It?,” Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull was a flaxen-haired aristocrat-turned-convent-girl who became Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the 60s and scored a couple of hits that sounded like pretty paper doilies. Then she disappeared for most of a decade.

When she re-emerged with “Broken English” (1979), the track “Why’d Ya Do It?” was the most obscene and vicious accusation ever cut on vinyl.

The betrayal absolute.

Stage 11:

Sometimes, I Wonder

“The Cuckoo,” Holy Modal Rounders

Sometimes I wonder what makes women love men
And I look back, and I wonder what makes men love them

I have to turn back to my Barthes for his last advice, the words that soothe even though I don’t want to admit it:

The sentiment of amorous suffering explodes in this cry: ‘I can’t go on…’

But you do.

Falling over seven times and getting up eight.

It’s better than sticking my head in, right?

I am planning a major televised escapist weekend today and tomorrow, in between a few subversive errands for the cause.

We gotta eat and we gotta dream, in order to fight another day.

So let’s roll this out:

Television is peaking this weekend. We have the Winter Olympics, Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl, and the new episode of Dunk and Egg. Not to mention a solid binge of The Lincoln Lawyer, Season 4.

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Believe me, it will have changed by the time you’re done with your first draft.

But in edits, as you’re closing in on your final draft, you’re correct to be thinking, “Where Do I Place This?”

Who’s the right editor, the publisher who will see its potential and quality?

This is the moment where you begin a pleasant and eye-opening bit of investigation for your new publishing partner. It IS kinda like getting hitched!

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I am so in love with your new Masterclass series. It couldn’t be timed more perfectly for me.

I wrote a book called ______ back in 2012. It was published by “Prominent Indie Press.”

The Founder loved it but her conservative colleague was “uncomfortable” with one of my chapters. They buried the book.

Post-pandemic, I pitched a new edition of this book to a “Big 5 Publisher” and they bought it. Not only did they buy it, but they helped me reimagine it into something more than a revised edition! It will be published this August.

I know I am asking an extremely busy person, but here goes: Is it possible for you to give me an endorsement? I’ve attached a galley so you can see it in its new version.

I am way behind in getting endorsements, so if you can send me an endorsement it would make my editor very happy if you could manage it by 15 Feb. I’d offer you an antique chastity belt as a reward but I just gave away my last one. 😂

Thank you for considering this and THANK YOU for the m…

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The basics are not hard. Not at all. You can learn the central issues in an hour, which is what we are going to do.

And, it will, if you don’t mind me saying, change your destiny as an author.

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I researched every film boycott and “bad review” in cinema history— there’s plenty— and it’s no contest. Box office poison has reinvented itself.

ETTD, indeed.1

I’ve been a film critic for 40 years; I’ve been a “trophy-wife-watcher” all my life. This débâcle takes the cake.

The movie-boycott is no Streisand Effect — and no one is bankrolling an ineffectual protest. The American public hate the fuck out of this movie and it’s entirely organic.

Never has so much money been spent on something so entirely unseen. The Empress Has No Clothes. Never has a political bribe been packaged as a “documentary” — HA!

The First Lady’s bomb has opened new vistas for the Bobbi Flekmans’ of the world.

“You don’t find this offensive? You don’t find this disgusting?”

Yeah, we do, Bobbi. We really do. If, like Spinal Tap’s ill-fated album cover, Melania’s biography had portrayed a subjugated woman on a dog leash, it would have least been . . . Honest.

Negative publicity has always been Hollywood’s prerogative: “Star pregnant and strung out on heroin!”— yeah, it sells tickets.

But Amazon-MGM’s publicists and distributors have been stymied by this zombie— a film whose production which was designed to break the movie business, not play along.

Instead of publicizing the film the past week, Amazon instead sent out a letter announcing the layoff of thousands of employees, “As part of an effort to reduce bureaucracy and strengthen the organization.”

Ha! I guess that IS the Melania press release. There’s only a lonely A.I.-Roomba left to handle media inquiries.

Let’s turn to the labor behind the movie. No one wants to be associated with such trash who isn’t dignity-wraithed to Trump. That’s saying something for Tinseltown. People typically crawl on their hands and knees to get a “production credit” on a project, and instead, with this movie, they’re running screaming in the opposite direction. Amazing.

According to Rolling Stone, ⅔ of the workers on the set refused to allow their names to be mentioned in the final cut. They describe the making of the film as “chaos,” which is what happens when the majority of the budget is sent to the Trumps themselves.

Look at the IMDB listing: Only one person is listed in the Music Department, one person in Production, one Editor with no assistants. Hohoho. A 75-million dollar film with only a handful of workers listed below the line? Two are listed as “Crew” including a man who did “translation management.”

Was that because the film was better in the original Russian?

Melania’s extraordinary lack of interest in learning English over the decades is in part because she reviles immersion. Her indifference to this country (I dont care, do you?) is a marvel. But, to be fair, the teenage Ms. Knauss from Slovenia was pimped out to immigrate before she knew the meaning of the word NO. That is her life story. Perhaps her disinterest in “communicating” is stoic revenge, against her family, her “handlers” in the Eastern Bloc and Paris, the entire Russian Ops-Epstein-Elite-Model brothel machine that brings Soviet girls to the States for arranged cruelties— I mean, marriages.

Trump did this all before, but without Jeff Bezos. He is a creature of habit, and the Melania 2.0 duplication of his marriage to Ivana Trump is startling unless you understand his compulsions. With Donald, it’s always the same burger, the same tie, the same tits. That’s how he sees it. Marla Maples, bustline aside, was an aberration, the mistake he’s erased from the board.

With Ivana, and then Melania, Trump was professionally matched to a suitable wife through a series of financial transactions handled by Girlie-Brokers like Jeff Epstein. Donald is a man who has never been kissed without a payment, in his entire life.

Think about that.

Ivana was systematically groomed to get out of Czechoslovakia, her Communist Party-savvy family greasing the right palms. She knew she had to get to America to cash in. Melania’s Slovenian parents did the same. The ethos is: “You will fuck anyone and surgically change your body in any way demanded” to get your family out of this hellhole.”

This migration philosophy is the directive; Stepford Wives are the result. Which golf-course will your bones be unceremoniously dumped?

Melania is reportedly “furious” that the Minneapolis ICE state-murders are overshadowing her star turn. Who knows if it’s true?— her optics make Marie Antoinette look like Joan of Arc.

Movie-lovers are chortling over screenshots they share of “zero seats sold” at local theaters, movie chains who were paid by the Amazon to host the screening. The only people I know attending, are the handful of working movie critics who are “required,” and they’re outraged to pay the ticket price.

When BoxOfficePro says they expect the movie to yield “$5mm” in ticket receipts on opening weekend, I’d like to know how they expect to see so much as five dollars. They must be counting global sales, where Melania Trump is more of a kink curiosity. (She ain’t everyone’s First Lady).

Here in the States, where overall theater attendance is plummeting, the reluctant movie fan is not shelling out for something that turns their stomach and delivers not a shred of humor. Later, it will be cut up into YouTube clips. Melania will be a film that triumphs in BitTorrent.

Might it be fun to attend as a campy heckle-party and throw popcorn at the screen?”

Nope. This isn’t Rocky Horror or The Valley of Gwangi.

It’s not fun. There is nothing fun about this movie, about this regime, or about the situation Americans find ourselves. We are living, as Chuck D. said, in the Terrordome.

My documentary is this: Out of the screens and onto the streets. Until this regime falls, there will be no respite, there will be no rest and there will be no waking up without a shudder. Culture— including the culture of shunning and shaming— does mean something. Let’s make this matter.

In Case You Missed It

But, as luck would have it, during the early ‘00s, I read a book about US history as seen through alcohol— its production, consumption, prohibition, regulation.1

The bent politics of libation aroused my curiosity. Why did people die for this? Just the money? The history of American intoxication is blizzarding. And women were at the forefront of its experiment in prohibition.

I composed a letter several years ago to tiki historian Jeff Beachbum Berry, with my admiration for what he’d contributed to the “people’s history” of the cocktail.

He and I had a great talk about the politics of drink. But he also told me to, you know, to “TRY ONE.”

The match was lit, and the ensuing years cast a warm gl…

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Today, in Part II, we learn how to ask both strangers and friends to consider your work— to buy it themselves, write a review, and yes, to treasure it in their library.

Okay— how is that magic trick performed?

First of all, you write a worthy book, which is no mean feat, but let’s assume you have!1

Here’s what we’ll cover in today’s video:

Writing a Book Announcement & Asking for Reviews

• Assemble your “assets” — defined in Marketing Class #1 — and be ready to deploy them.

• Assemble your contact list and their “whereabouts” on a spreadsheet, and sort them by category: Big Mouths, Friends and Family, etc.

• What must you ASK your contacts to do, precisely? The power of the question mark.

• How to offer …

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