The Bookhouse Boy is Dead ... Long Live the Bookhouse Boy

I've had a lot of fun with this blog over the past year (yes, I passed the one-year mark two weeks ago). However, I've gotten to a point in my life where I just can't dedicate myself to writing that isn't going anywhere, and this blog is prime suspect number one.

The best posts I did were the result of my sick mind taking over, and I'm trying to harness that bugger with fiction right now. I'm starting a novel tomorrow. Gulp. If you haven't read my story in issue #2 of thug lit, please check it out. Issue #3 came out today, so there's a whole new batch of stuff to read as well.

I'm hoping to be able to transfer the Bookhouse to my new website, taking it out of blog form, where it sucks.

My name is Jordan Harper, and I'm a freelance writer living in Brooklyn. While I'm having my homepage built, I'm going to use myspace as my online home. It's got a blog that I'm going to be using as a news service to let you know what's on my mind and new stories I've had published. Please come by and say hello.

I'd especially like to thank the true crime bloggers I've befriended since starting this blog: Laura, Steve and Trench. Keep up the good work, and don't hold me moving to fiction against me. Steve, I expect to see a book soon. Laura, soon after. Trench, just keep teasing the mutants.

So long, and thanks for all the blood!

???

Check back november first to see if this blog lives or dies. Email me at crime-spree@jordanharper.com if you'd like.

Name-dropping

Last Friday I went to the Thug Lit party to celebrate the second issue of the online magazine (see the post below). I got to meet some heavy-hitters in the crime fiction field, including Ken Bruen, Jason Starr and Charlie Stella. They were quite polite to this no-name one-story writer, and I'm going to be reviewing a lot of their work here in the future. I also met up and coming writer Pat Lambe, who was kind enough to provide me with a lot of reading material and links.

The crime fiction scene is growing here in America, as well it should be. The amount of our films that are crime-fiction severely outbalances the amount of literature that is available on the same subjects. I'm still learning, yo.

On a separate note, I didn't get a popcorn lunch this Friday as I was on a bus to DC to visit friends. But that night I did get to see Serenity, which is excellent. It's not really a crime film (although the main characters are bank robbers), so no full review. But it's very worth seeing, even if you've never watched the Joss Whedon show it's based on. Which I'm Netflixing now. This Friday I'm expecting to popcorn lunch Capote, unless something else catches my eye.

Johhny Cash is Dead

Here's a link to my alter-ego's short story "Johnny Cash is Dead," appearing in issue two of Thug Lit. It comes in a downloadable PDF format, which is not my favorite, but I'm thankful to Thug Lit for accepting it.

*

Yeah, I forgot to get to the asterik on the post below. "Crimeblogging" is an ugly word. "Crime-blogging" is ungainly. "Crogging" is stupid. "Cribbing" ... well, I like the double meaning of that one.

Anything better? And what about starting a crimeblog webring? (Okay, just look at that sentence ... we're turning German with all this cramming words together. Pretty soon it will be a crimeblogwebring.)

Oh, and I've fixed the comments so anyone can leave them as long as they answer the question one.

Big Up Huff

Allow me to come out of my movie-watching fit to give a big ups to Steve Huff for spreading from the world of crimeblogging* to writing for the Crime Library itself. Nice work, Steve ... I expect to hear about your book within the year. Seriously.

Popcorn for Dinner, Too! To Catch a Thief

Man, my life is good. After catching the excellent A History of Violence for lunch, I talked E into heading over to the BAM Rose Cinema about a mile from our place in Brooklyn to catch a showing of To Catch a Thief, the classic Grace Kelly/ Cary Grant Alfred Hitchcock film. Tomorrow night they're playing North By Northwest, which I may watch as well, as these two Grant/Hitchcock collaborations are the two great Hitchcock films missing from this incredible box set I got in the mail ... I'm reviewing it, so it was gratis. I rule.

Friday Popcorn Lunch: A History of Violence

Today's popcorn lunch, served at the lovely Loews multiplex near the Lincoln Center: David Cronenberg's A History of Violence (based on the graphic novel of the same name). This is a terrific film, full of both blood-pumping violence (literally) and meditations on the same. The less you know of the story, the better. Enough to say the Viggo Mortensen is pretty good as a small-town family man, Maria Bello is both effective and horribly sexy as his wife, and that Ed Harris and William Hurt are top-notch as very bad men. Both emotions and bodies are torn open in the film.

In classic Cronenberg style, the movie is that rarest of things: an intelligent potboiler. Which might just be the best kind of movie on earth.

The Best Bad Movies: The Boondock Saints

There are some movies that are so bad, they are good, although their numbers are not as great as we think. This GQ list is interesting, but they put Purple Rain on the list. Sure, Morris Day can't act, but that's some of the best "concert" footage of all time, man! Actually, that GQ list confirms that I love bad movies. Rocky III? Hells, yes. Point Break? Of course. Legend? Okay, that movie is truly bad, but Tim Curry is tits as the devil. Flash Gordon? Are they kidding me? "Flash! Aaaah-ah! He'll save every one of us!" New Jack City? How dare they. Road House, the best bad movie of all time? Brother, I own that film.

One of the best B-movies I've ever seen is the 2000 ode to vigilantism The Boondock Saints. Featuring two Boston Irish brothers with commando skills and proficiency in enough languages to work as UN interpreters, who start the movie working in a meat packing plant, the film is truly bad in many ways. It's ludicrous from start to finish, it's got some bad writing and worse acting (the guy who plays the Mafia don is hilariously bad). It features a performance from Wilem Defoe that bounces from brilliant to pure camp ... as does the movie as a whole. It features a few truly innovative action scenes (such as when Defoe, as an FBI agent hunting the brothers, explains how the gunfight took place as it rages around him ... a contemporaneous flashback. And the whole film exists in such a manic, fevered state that its practically punk rock. Basically, writer/director Troy Duffy made the exact movie I thought I would have made if someone had given me 10 million dollars when I was 13. If you've any interest in B-action, and you haven't seen it ... well, go see it.

Get inked, holmes

A tip of the hat to Will L., who hipped me to this list of popular inmate tattoos. Before you get too shocked at some of the entries, remember that women go to prison too.

It's all weak tea compared to the stuff in this book I picked up in the Village the other day on Russian prison tattoos. Russian people are crazy. Just frickin' nuts. I mean, they sit around and drink beet soup and vodka and kill millions of their countrymen and turn Tsarist and Communist and super-capitalist mafia and freeze to death in gulags while watching long, boring movies by Tarkovsky and watch their women turn from ravishing sex goddesses to malformed hags in two days and it makes them go out and get pornographic tattoos on their faces.

Crime, crime everywhere, but not a drop of blood ...

Sorry for the sporatic posting, but my attention is being dragged in about a dozen directions right now. Between my paying work as a DVD and film critic and my own lust for cinema, I'm averaging about two movies a day right now. And I'm averaging two books a week. (Speaking of both, I've got over 50 entries now at the Bookhouse. Which has only made me realize how many entries its going to take before the thing is even halfway worthwhile ... it might be a year before I'm really proud of it. But here are some new entries: The Italian Job, How to Stop Time, The Staircase, The Run of His Life.)

And I'm working on my fiction. I got "Johhny Cash is Dead" accepted at a crim fic website, I'll post the link when its up. Now I'm working on a story called "Canary in a Bosnian Bar." Fun titles. I start a mystery-writing class at the Gotham Writer's Workshop on Monday.

Blah, blah, blah ... none of this is bringing you the crime culture you crave. Sorry about that.

Nope, nothing fishy here

John Gotti Junior trial ends with a hung jury. Yup. Well, I guess that happens. Move along.

More on co-ed heroin

I can't find it on their on-line edition, but today's New York Post (whom my alter-ego writes for occasionally, I should mention) publishes some nasty innuendo from a parent of heroin OD victim Maria Pesantez. Juan Carlos, the father of the deceased, has taken it upon himself to blame Maria's friend Mellie Carballo for both of the teens' fatal drug usage.

Carlos insists, with no evidence, that Carballo was paid in narcotics to hook other teens, and that Maria was murdered by drug dealers to hide the fact of Carballo's overdose. This is obviously the words of a grieving person in denial, and it seems odd that the Post would find fit to publish totally unsubstantiated attacks against a dead person. Well, okay, maybe it isn't odd, but it doesn't sit right either.

(Note: I get a lot of hits for the name "Mellie Carballo," some I suspect from people in the same scene. I'm interested in learning more about the New York party scene for a possible story. If you're a part of the scene, please drop me a line at crime-spree "at" jordan.harper.com)

Not much to do with crime, but in more New York tabloid news, check out this story from the New York Daily News about a lawsuit filed against the producers of Extreme Makeover.

On the Lam

I'm going to take a one-week blogging break to work on some other stuff and to recharge. Check out the links on the side, I bet you'll find something you like. See you on Monday (although I might allow myself to pop in Friday after my popcorn lunch).

More Housekeeping

Man, I'll do anything to keep from working on my fiction. That's a great sign. Anyway, I added Junky Life to the sidebar since most of the Google searches these days are looking for info on Mellie Carballo and Maria Persantez. It's a collection of Livejournal-esque sites maintained by active and recovering junkies. Not a happy crowd, kids.

Also, new to the bookhouse: Crimes and Misdemeanors, Twin Peaks Season One, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, A Perfect Husband, Fresh Blood, A Rip in Heaven.

Housekeeping

I haven't updated the sidebar for a while, so today I added several new websites to the sidebar and updated the list of what I'm reading and watching. I've added some crime fiction websites, and several true crime sites I picked up from CLEWS.

Let's Hear it for the Headbutt!

I happened to catch Green Street Hooligans twice this weekend (some friends were going on Saturday, and I figured, why not). The second time I paid more attention to the details, and one thing I noticed was that the fistfight moments that got the biggest crowd reactions were the headbutts.

The reason for this is obvious: the headbutt is nature's greatest weapon. Like the fierce spikes of the Stegosaurus, a headbutt transforms the purely defensive evolutionary trait of a thick skull and turns it into your own personal cudgel. Your fists and those carrot-stick finger bones weren't meant to take hard blows. Your skull was.

I remember many years ago I was sitting at home watching one of those (lower case) after-school specials, this one about a girl who was raped and her family's attempts to deal with the aftermath when the assailant (another student) isn't prosecuted. I was only half-watching it with a friend, mostly making fun of how poorly the movie was done. We were having particular fun mocking the girl's boyfriend, a total wuss. Then came a scene when the girl and her boyfriend meet up with the evil date raper, who openly jokes about the rape. The boyfriend did nothing, until ...

HEADBUTT!

and suddenly my friend and I cheered and took back everything mean we'd said about the boyfriend. The entire two hour film was redeemed by that headbutt. I tried to find the film on the Internet, but "high school headbutt rape" was the best search term I could come up with, and that didn't work)

The headbutt:
A). Looks really cool.
B). Is best when it comes out of the blue like the one described above, or even better when the headbutter is being held by the arms by the headbuttee so that you think he's unable to fight until THWAP!
C). Can make a wet end like the dude described above come out looking like Vinnie fucking Jones. (side note: Jones has been cast to play the Juggernaut in the new X-Men flick, which is excellent casting) Jones delivers an excellent headbutt in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

The headbutt is sort of a Brit phenomenon (it even showed up at the Leeds festival last week), as you can tell from the film references above. My theory: soccer teaches it to you.

But is doesn't have to be that way. Folks, if you're looking for a way to drop some pure bad-ass into your fiction or film, have a headbutt. You're welcome.

(ps --I racked my brain for some other great headbutts in film, but came up dry. What's your favorite headbutt?)

Friday Popcorn Lunch: Green Street Hooligans

After having such a good time playing hooky last Friday with my trip to see Transporter 2, I decided to make my own tradition of the Friday Popcorn Lunch. This week, a movie I've been looking forward to for a while: Green Street Hooligans. Starring Elijah Woods as a down-on-his-luck Yank who stumbles into the West Ham football firm, Green Street is refreshingly sympathetic to the idea of brawling as a hobby. The film owes a certain debt to Fight Club, but where Fincher's film felt the need to condemn the violence by making a transitive step to fascism, Green Street keeps it simple. Violence is hardwired into men, we sublimate it (um, look at what I'm interested in) and at the right time a fistfight can be a re-affirming thing. Even at the inevitable downturn of the third act, the film refuses to totally repudiate the lads. Oh, and as every critic feels the need to point out, there is a certain tinge of homoeroticism involved in the whole thing (there's exactly one female character in the film). Okay, fine,we've mentioned it. Let's move on.

Oh, and to my soccer fan readers: yeah, about three minutes of film is set in the stadium. So don't get your hopes up.

Marvel Goes Too Far

As a geek, I've been really happy with all the superhero movies getting made. Even if The Hulk was horrible, and Daredevil and The Fantastic Four looked too bad to be seen, there've been enough good popcorn flicks to satisfy the nerd in me. But Marvel is going to blow it one way or another. Now that they've secured funds to produce films in-house, they're going nutzoid with it. From Ain't It Cool:

The home to such superheroes as Spider-Man and The Hulk has tweaked its name and raised the $525 million it needs to become a producer of movies based on some of its 5,000 characters. Marvel Entertainment -- previously Marvel Enterprises -- is set to announce Tuesday its name change and completion of its loan package, and also will divulge that superheroes Captain America, the Avengers, Nick Fury, Black Panther, Ant-Man, Cloak & Dagger, Dr. Strange, Hawkeye, Power Pack and Shang-Chi will get the feature-film treatment.

Okay, let's break this down. Captain America, Black Panther, Nick Cage: Could be good, but probably won't be (Captain America should be a period piece, period).

Dr. Strange, The Avengers & Hawkeye: Good comic book stuff, but no frickin' way.

Cloak & Dagger, Power Pack, Ant Man and Shang Chi: Saywhut? Huh? Power Pack? Why not just produce a Speedball flick, huh?

Ninja Dude

This really doesn't have anything to do with crime, but I just started goofing on blogger and ran into this site from Ninja Dude, a sixth grader from Canada who likes ninjas, Legos and the Matrix (which makes us %66 alike). I wonder what kind of blogs I would have had when I was a little kid.

Go say hi to Ninja Dude. He just got his own room, so life is pretty sweet.

Busy, busy, busy

I sit in an odd place in the blogosphere. Since I enjoy thinking about crime as a cultural item, I am attracted to sites about both the true crime that shapes our world and the false crime (or crime fiction) that it inspires. To my knowledge, there is no other blog like mine out there. This isn't always a good thing ... it probably keeps my readership down compared to a tightly focused blog like CLEWS.

But I simply cannot focus any tighter than I am, or I would have to run five or six blogs (instead of one with an annex). For instance, here are all of the things I have done this week relating to crime culture:

1). Re-watched the awesome crime film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

2). Followed up watching the enthralling true crime documentary The Staircase with reading the not-so-awesome but more honest Perfect Husband about the same case (more on this later).

3). Continued watching DVDs of the BBC crime drama Cracker. Have you watched this? Robbie Coltrane (above) is a damn fine actor.

4). Started and immediately stopped watching DVDs of the awful gambling drama Las Vegas.

5). Finished up a piece of short crime fiction, "Johnny Cash is Dead."

6). Scoured the web for places to submit said story, in other words crime fiction sites.

7). Worked on this damn blog.

8). Bought a t-shirt with Pablo Escobar on it, then wondered if it was in really bad taste.

9). Looked into signing up for a mystery writing class at the Gotham Writer's Workshop

10). Tried to decide if my long awaited next video game purchase would be Scarface, 25 to Life or something else

11). Wondered if maybe I shouldn't spend so much time thinking about crime.

12). Found myself exploring a lot of crime fiction writers' websites.

The Killer Inside of Me

The recent murder of two sex offenders by an apparent vigilante got me thinking of one of the most interesting pieces of writing I've ever seen. This article by David Holthouse (who used to be my boss), about planning the murder of the man who molested him as a child, will blow your mind.
Go read it.