Paroxysms of Caesars, the first chapter

Coming Attractions

December 1st will, finally, see the publication of the first issue of Flying Saucer zine. This is the culmination of nearly two years worth of writing, editing, re-writing, networking for submissions, photographing and, yes more re-writing. In it you will find some great short fiction by yours truly as well as Sam Slaughter, Steven Hunley, photography by yours truly and Kimberly Glatz, poetry by Sashia Dumont, the first chapter of the graphic novel 'Paroxysms of Caesars' written by Alan Lawless and illustrated by Camillus Peluso, and much, much more! But you don't have to wait till December first. Go on over to www.flyingsaucerproductions.blogspot.com, order your copy today and guarantee you'll have a copy as soon as it rolls off the presses. The first 25 orders get a special gift!

Punk Is...?

We all now the fashion, the look: lots of safety pins, mohawks, Doc Martens, plaid, fishnets, hand drawn band logos on any and every space and, of course, tattoos and piercings. But, besides the shallow, materialistic nature of it, what is punk? What do punks do? What makes doing something punk? What is the whole purpose behind the movement we all know and love as punk? I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I try to capture the energy, the feeling and-yes- the look that is punk in some form of art, whether it's the graphic novel I'm working on or a short story idea I have. But I honestly don't know what to say. 'People with lots of piercings sit around unbathed and look pissed off' does not make a very interesting story. Maybe it's the youthful anarchic energy of just breaking into places and tearing stuff apart, the spray painting art on walls, smashing windows with baseball bats and (anti)propaganding the public space. But is that really punk? People have been doing that in some form or other since at least 1850s Russia- whether it was the social democrats under Czar Alexander II, the labor movement of the Haymarket Square affair, 1920s dada and surrealist in Europe and the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s. So, do we then say that 'punk' is really just the latest incarnation of something that's been done, over and over, before? If so, then we can kiss the whole originality of punk good-bye. And I thought being original and doing something new and different and without fear or borders was the whole point behind punk in the first place. I guess not. What do you think?

The Object of..

So, recently I've become obsessed with nuclear bombs, crust punk, comic books/graphic novels, sci-fi, pulp fiction and mumblecore. I'm presently at work on a way to mix all of these together and I don't think it's going to be easy, but I'll get it done. Oh, and by the way, Flying Saucer Productions is now on facebook. So, go over there, search us and hit us up. Join the party.

Vote or Die?

George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the top one percent, as well as his spending nearly three trillion dollars on two wars, have combined to drive this country into financial ruin. But, let’s blame Barack Obama, the man who’s been in charge for less than two years. Of course this must all be Obama’s fault. In those two years he must have singlehandedly allowed millions of American jobs and corporate tax dollars to be shipped overseas. He must have overseen the deaths of nearly six thousand American troops, the biggest fiscal surplus in history turn into the single biggest deficit we’ve ever had as a country. Yes, after years of economic and social bliss during the 1990s, it must have been Barack Obama’s two years in office that retroactively caused three of the greatest financial recessions in the history of this country in seven years between 2001 and 2008. Don’t listen to the wackos on the right. Hell, don’t even listen to the wackos on the left. Don’t listen to anybody who works for a corporate-owned news outlet and has a financial, biased interest in the political arena. Just listen to your neighbors, listen to your co-workers (if you have a job), listen to your children and most importantly, listen to the facts. Letting Republicans take back Congress is almost guaranteeing that this financial crisis will never end.

Nerds Unite!

On this, the weekend of Comic Con, I thought it would be fitting to tease a project of mine a little bit. Some of you may know of my short film, 'Paroxysms of Caesars'. Below is a short snippet in case you haven't seen it. Well, I've been working on writing a feature length film and a graphic novel version. The story is set in New York city in the near future and involves a teenae girl as the main chracter. There are several story lines all occuring in the city at the same time and all held together by the fact they involve ths young girl. A fascist president has taken over power in the U.S. and shredded the Contitution. This is my reaction to the Bush, Patriot Act years. Look for the first chapter in the debut issue of Flying Saucer zine, coming this fall. Fans of 'V For Vendetta' '1984' 'Sin City' or any dystopian sci-fi story as well as film noir and pulp fiction will enjoy this story, as I am a huge fan of all these genres and attempting to blend them all together in this story.

chase scene from alan lawless on Vimeo.

Fall...

I love fall. The weather is cool enough that you can actually walk around town without sweating to death. The Simpsons come back tonight, the Jets have a game tonight and the Rangers are playing as well. It's almost perfect. The only problem is how to watch them all at the same time.

It's In the Mail

I took the first step towards selling one of my scripts to Hollywood today. Now we wait and see. Dribble and shoot, that's all you can do, right? Cross your fingers for me.

How Much Can Government Actually Do?

We’d all like to think that the President- whoever that may be at any particular moment- can come into office and singlehandedly fix all of our problems. We like to think this because it is easy, it gives us hope that with the simple pull of a switch in a voting booth on one November day we can effect the outcome of a game most of us aren’t actually playing.
The problem is that, though President’s can change every four years, their mistakes and problems have no such limits. The President can cajole, strong-arm or collaborate with Congress to pass a tax or repeal it, to lower it or raise it, but what then? We all got $300 checks in the mail a couple of years ago- yet Circuit City and many other retailers like it still shuttered their doors. How was that money spent? Mostly, paying the rent or mortgage we were behind on, or the credit card debt we rang up by spending money that we didn’t really have. This extra $300 had nearly zero effect on the economy, as we saw a year and a half later when the whole thing collapsed anyway.

Not long after that we elected a new President, one from the opposing party, yet unemployment is still near double digits, and underemployment is estimated to be twice as high, at 20%.

Obama’s spent a great deal of his political capital on health insurance, which is all fine and well. I guess if you’re one of the millions of people that’s working below their skill set, or not at all, you’ll need him to hand you health insurance. But does the best insurance in the world matter if you’re homeless because you can’t pay your rent? Doesn’t seem so. The stock market is back up after the bottom fell out, yet I don’t have any extra money in my pocket to show for it. Do you? The banks that caused this whole mess in the first place are handing out seven figure bonuses to their employees, yet I can’t piece together seven dollars some days. And we shouldn’t expect banks to start handing out loans to use any time soon. Why is this happening? Because this is all an illusion- the U.S. economy, our representatives in Washington- it’s all fake.
At this point all it seems the people we’ve elected can agree on is it’s not their fault, that they have a better plan or that we shouldn’t listen to the other guy. And this I agree with. Both sides have been equally as responsible for getting us here and neither seems to be capable of doing anything to get us out. So who will?

A Year in the Making

here's a clip from my short film, 'Paroxysms of Caesars',

Missing 'Superstition'

I just heard somebody across the street playing Stevie Wonder, and man do I miss listening to him. You see, I had two of his awesome cds on my laptop, but when it crashed earlier this year everything got wiped out. Thus, no more Stevie. I still have the actual physical copies of the cds-about 90 minutes north of where I'm currently residing in a box at my parents' house, but I don't get up there very much. And when I do, looking through my boxes of stuff I left behind is not high on the list of priorities. Usually I'm there for some family function or another and busy trying to make sure I spend as much time with my family as I possibly can. There are plenty of other cds, movies and books I left behind when I moved down here. Knowing that I was only going to have a small studio apartment and that space was going to be precious, I tried to minimize the amount of physical items I had as much as possible. And, in a way the loss of Stevie is just one more in a serious of things I miss about my 'old' life. I used to blast those songs loudly, early in the morning while drinking and writing, or after getting home late from a bar. I had a job which, at the time, bored me to tears, but I'd give anything to get back at the moment. I had stability in that job, a guaranteed paycheck every Friday, a routine of when to wake up, what time to catch the train, even the same guy handing me my amNewYork magazine as I walked out of the subway station every day. Now, as I'm freelancing and in a long term relationship, all that seems to have vanished. No more space all to myself. No more Stevie blaring through the speakers at 4am as I pull another all-nighter of writing before the boring desk job in the morning. No more eating really bad cooking and starving (might be a good thing) but most of all, the freedom to come home whenever I want from wherever I want. Now I have somebody waiting for me and always angry if I'm not home exactly when I said I would be. It feels like prison a lot of the time. A lot less time is spent on writing, and a lot more spent on 'quality time' with the least significant other. And to think, the whole time I was young and single I wanted a relationship and stability. I don't think I want it any more.

Anyways, on a far less depressing note, I've got a bunch of work up online that you should all check out. I'm at:

flyingsaucerproductions.wordpress.com, alanlawless.webs.com, scribd.com/alanlawless, myspace.com/flyingsaucerproductions and wemakezines.ning.com/profile/AlanLawless and vimeo.com/user3732873/videos So check it out and let your skull absorb the beauty-ness that lies there. And thanks in advance. I'm putting all this out there for you to enjoy. I hope it's working.

Bulls? Bears? What kinda place is this?

Ahh, the stock market. My favorite over-hyped false indicator. The place where imaginary money gets imaginarily lost one day just to be made again the next day (or week). Apparently, the Dow fell below 10,000 earlier today. 10,000 what? We don't really know exactly what this number actually represents.

Why is it important it's below or above 10,000? No real reason, it's just an 'indicator of the mindset' of traders and being below this imaginary line makes traders uncomfortable or lose confidence in the market.

Does the stock market actually affect the daily lives of you or me? Not really. It's not putting any real money into my pocket right now. It would if I sold the few shares I own, but then I wouldn't be in the stock market any more. So, let me get this straight- the only way to make money from the stock market is to sell the things you own that made you in it in the first place? Makes perfect sense to me.

On a daily basis we hear numbers about the stock market thrown around, but the impact they actually have on the average person is small to none. The only time we actually see this effect is when, during a crisis like the past 24 months, we hear about some poor, little old lady who's whole life savings was wiped out. And where did it go? We don't know. It just vanished.

To me the stock market is where greedy people who want to make money without actually having to do anything can go. And the sad thing is that most of the people in college nowadays see this daily lottery (which, I think, is the best way to look at it) as a viable career option. I call it a path to potential riches where little is actually produced and much is wasted.

Excuse me maam, are those loaded?

Sad but true, the greatest threat to our national security right now may reside in the 36D bra of a Middle Eastern woman. A news report out of England says that al-Qaeda has been looking for a way to put bombs inside of a woman's breasts implants. Crazy idea, right? Well, the plastic surgeon who this report quoted said it's really not all that difficult to do. Can we protect against this threat? Are we going to be able to detect bombs hidden inside of a part of a person's body?

Considering our astounding track record of success with catching other people who wanted to smuggle explosives or weapons aboard planes, I'd say it's a safe bet we're not going to be successful keeping these off a plane either. We have had two different attempts (if not more) to blow up planes made since September 11th and caught neither. This does not bode well for us. Besides, if al-Qaeda starts blowing up fake boobs, haven't they won this war already? I just hope they hire more security at LAX. That's a lot of fake boobs to inspect there.