BULLblog

BULLshot: Matt Mullins

2012-01-25T10:51:00.000-05:00

BULL: Bed frames, headboards, footboards: overrated?

MM:

What the Husband Would Tell His Single Self about the Importance of Headboards

The bachelor notches his conquests on the headboard, and believes the husband, not unlike the prisoner, wants a headboard only to carve out the dragging days. The bachelor plays his wild nights to the headboard's metronome as it meets the wall again and again, and is convinced the husband hears in that same struck rhythm the memory of a woman knocking after last call on an apartment door left slightly ajar. But here is a truth the husband knows: the bachelor, filled with himself, tears the headboard loose with his writhing, hacks it into bonfire wood, paints his body with all the time in the world and spits Wild Turkey onto the flames. While the husband stands just beyond the firelight's cast edge, watching the past burn down into ash before he steps to that place where singed ground meets green earth, where he joins with the wife, where they kneel together, digging beneath what is spent to make their future’s joy from the warmed clay.

BULL editors sound off

2012-01-24T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well, we did another interview, this time with the Review Review. Probably the deepest and most interesting we've done yet. This one's no softball—check it out and let us know if you're thinking what we were thinking.

New in the Horns: "The Bachelor's Last"

2012-01-23T15:08:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it last week, we've got a new one up in the horns by Matt Mullins—"The Bachelor's Last"—a bittersweet ditty about the scrape and squalor one gives up when getting hitched. Remember firecrackers? And floor mattresses? You will, and you'll miss 'em.

BULLshot: Aaron Burch

2012-01-12T12:15:00.001-05:00

BULL: You sure do like Nintendo, man. What's the attraction?

AB: I think nostalgia, largely. I grew up playing the NES, a lot, as I imagine most my generation did, and it looms large. And not only did I grow up in the age of Nintendo, but also in the age of Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and even Kevin Williamson. So: I'm a sucker for pop culture references, and I think Nintendo games are a good chunk of the pop culture of our youth, yeah?

Plus, this story, and the novel it's from, is trying to deal with nostalgia and memory, and it felt like both, so (hopefully) the repeated NES references aren't just thrown in for fun (though there's that, too), but are kind of the narrator looking back and feeling nostalgic.

BULL Bonus: Here's this "horn" guy—saw him a basketball halftime last weekend. -Ed.

New in the Horns: "Or" by Aaron Burch

2012-01-04T16:59:00.000-05:00

So the holidays are over, the hibernation has ended, we're all feeling fat and cold and there's three months more coming, how about curling up with the warm glow of a computer screen and checking out Aaron Burch's "Or", up now in the horns? Or else...

New in the Horns: "Charlie's"

2011-12-07T12:13:00.000-05:00

We've all been there—stuck next to the guy who won't stop talking to you, the bar, the bus, to anyone who'll listen. If you do listen, though, he may sound like our man in Jamey Gallagher's "Charlie's", and you may get an earful of grace or redemption, depending on what kind of man he is.

BULLshot: Lindsay Hunter

2011-11-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

BULL: What's your favorite car/travel game?

LH: Right now my favorite car/travel game is "how fast can I fall asleep?" I'm pretty good at it. When I was a kid our favorite game on family road trips was to see who my dad would yell at first / who my mom would reach behind her seat to swat at. One time my dad was so fed up, so apoplectic with us kids, that he sputtered, "Close your FAT EYES, KIDS!" So many levels of this make it amazing: 1. that he'd assume us closing our eyes would cause immediate sleep 2. that in his rage the insult that came out was how fat our eyes were 3. that he didn't understand that said insult would make our rambunctiousness way, way worse.

New in the Horns: "RV People"

2011-11-23T16:14:00.000-05:00

Before you stuff your face tomorrow you should feast your eyes today on Lindsay Hunter's "RV People", our newest addition to the horns. You'll never look at a drippings cup the same way again...

Ryan Ridge on American Lit

2011-11-22T16:04:00.001-05:00

If you haven't yet found our man Ryan Ridge talking American Literature at the Collagist, as I have just found, you are missing out. And if you're looking for a pithy line to relay at your next cocktail party, look no further.

Prison Reviews: The Wreckage by Michael Robotham

2011-11-18T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Wreckage

by Michael Robotham

Mulholland Books/Little, Brown

To be honest, I have not read a lot of thrillers**—which this book is. It says so right on the cover. In a blurb, under the author’s name, Nelson DeMille qualifies the book further by calling it “a high-octane thriller.”

I don’t care what you call the book, or what petroleum product you compare it to, just have a writer who can write, has a sense of humor (one of the reasons why Philip Roth is completely overrated), and characters that are believable. Put those three ingredients in a book and it doesn’t matter if the subject is as mundane as a man sitting on his porch watching the grass grow—you’ve got a very rare combination. The result is hard to explain. Like the Supreme Court’s definition of pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

It’s also a plus to learn something. In The Wreckage I learned about the day to day dangers of being a journalist in the current Baghdad, which everyone knows, but there’s no way to feel the danger unless you are there. After 100 pages of this book, every noise or pillar of dust seems to be a precursor to violence, which nicely carries over to alternating “London” chapters.

In reality, I associate daily with psychopathic criminals. There is a man everyone calls Opie, with whom I used to play softball, before 50 of us were moved to Ionia where there is no softball field. Opie was a serial killer who, rumor has it, murdered over 60 prostitutes all over the world during his tenure as a sailor. He was called the “Port-of-Call Killer,” and has apparently been profiled on The History Channel. I have never seen it. I’ve known half a dozen men profiled on Cold Case Files, but The History Channel is the big-time of notoriety, featuring the most infamous of psychopaths, such as Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, and Henry Lee Lucas.

Opie may be a bit moody, but he’s a decent guy. He played a pretty good first base, but I would not want to hang out with him outside these walls. Many of us in prison are decent people (I’m not referring to the pedophiles, who are in a completely different group of creep), but you get some liquor or drugs in us and we’re going to end up driving a stolen car through the front door of the police station. Or in Opie’s case, some poor working girl is going to meet an unfortunate end.

The point is: I do not want to climb Mount Everest. I don’t even want to get a headache from the low oxygen levels of base camp. I don’t want to interview the Vampire Lestat, or drink chianti with Hannibal Lecter, or write songs with Charles Manson. But part of me, and all of us who read, want to brush up against danger and strangeness.

The wonder of books is—if done right—you enter a world fascinating and dangerous and fun. If not done right, the work is forced and insulting. There is a delicate formula, like the making of whiskey, and no instructions for writing one. Good writing casts a spell, one I have always loved entering.

What more can a positive review say but that this book casts that spell and the reader’s life is better for having read it? The Wreckage has strong writing, great characters and fascinating events involving banks and missing Iraqi reconstruction funds. There is no pun intended when I say you will be richer after reading it.

**The most memorable thriller I ever read was Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October, given to me by my father when I was in rehab in Centralia, Illinois, in 1991. The first war with Iraq was raging, Valentine’s Day was approaching, and Iraq was sending SCUDs into Israel in the hopes of escalation. I was 23. The end of the world was a possibility. I needed a haircut and my legs would not stop vibrating.

Needless to say, reality and sobriety was a sensation that was not all that cool. It was a real treat to enter those dark and quiet submarines late at night. I could feel the impossible weight of the ocean trying to crush our submersible to a block of metal the size of a Matchbox car. I could feel the claustrophobia of the cramped quarters, hear the pinging of the sonar, feel the death that awaited us should the Reds find us out. All of this seemed like heaven compared to the hell of life straight-up.

We could smoke in the Stress Ward of St. Mary’s, and sometimes a helicopter would land in the field across the road. Through the window of our three-man room, I could watch the medical staff wheel patients on gurneys out to the waiting chopper. I would smoke my Salem Light, close my eyes and listen. Jason, the eighteen-year-old in the next bed over, listened to Metallica way too loudly through his earphones. He was trying to avoid jail by voluntarily getting clean before his court date, after he and a couple of buddies had stolen the change from vending machines all over the county. When they were arrested they had been making their way to Vegas, where they were going to parlay the coins into real riches. He needed to turn down the volume, otherwise the Russians were going to hear the thump of the double bass drum. He was going to get us all killed. It seems impossible, but you can hear for miles underwater.

BULLshot: Christopher Rosales

2011-11-16T10:00:00.001-05:00

BULL: What do you think makes this "Men's Fiction" -or- Why did you send it to us?

Rosales: We're all trying to write "People's Fiction" first, I think. To appeal to as many folks out there as possible—hoping they'll set the book down, take their beer bottle up, and think a bit. But my work, and this piece in particular, is also meant to investigate our ideas of manhood.

The boy's uncle, Kiko, is a kind of hero to him. He may be a hero within a value system some of us recoil from—a macho, insecure, aggressive and possessive one—but nonetheless a value system that brings with it a sense of ritual, of tradition, and clearly defined sets of behavior easy for a boy to observe, to admire, and so to follow. When the the boy's sister leaves Kiko—we get the sense that Kiko and his kind of neighborhood "criminal" conception of manhood will be exorcised from the boy's life—the boy mourns not so much the loss of a person, but of an identity, and is frightened by a suddenly nebulous image of self.

We live in interesting times for men. Unlike more rigid times in our past, we are free to define manhood as we wish. There is evidence all over today's pop culture that we enjoy an ironic distance from our past, while we remain nostalgic for the old hats men once wore, literally and figuratively.

We can't help but think of certain movies, certain stories, certain drinks, as being "for men". If I'd been brilliant enough to write a script like Tender Mercies, I'd have sent that. As soon as I wrote this humble story, I sent it to you. And if I could send you a drink, I'd send you the kind I'm drinking now-- Stranahan's, Colorado Whiskey. Neat.

New in the Horns: "A Missionary"

2011-11-09T12:23:00.000-05:00

We're back with regularly scheduled programming this week, a fine crop of fiction from our newest Forgotten issue, starting with "A Missionary" by Christopher Rosales, a primer on homemade tattooing. Some things are permanent, some things are not...

Prison Reviews: The Cut by George Pelecanos

2011-11-03T11:07:00.000-04:00

Fictional Showers/Real Crime

I honestly began this book with an open and hopeful mind. I figured a book by a writer involved with a TV show as highly touted as The Wire, and most recently the New Orleans HBO drama, Treme, had a lot of potential.

I have never seen The Wire. The show was syndicated a couple of years back on BET and I planned to watch it, but it was soon cancelled, probably in favor of some reality mess. There are only two other shows in recent years which have been as acclaimed as The Wire: The Sopranos and Mad Men, both of which I have seen and are rightly acclaimed as the pinnacle of what television can do. If Matthew Weiner, the creator and occasional writer of those two shows wrote a novel, I would read it enthusiastically. I would expect something dark and tragic, funny and brilliant.

I expected the same sort of high-quality writing and story from The Cut, but I knew I was in trouble when I saw that this was the 17th book Pelecanos had written. By his full-page (!) back cover photograph he doesn’t look to be much over fifty. How could such a relatively young man have written so much? Wasn’t he a cop or something in Baltimore first? So, say he was a cop for even ten years—from the age of 25 to 35, and he has been working on The Wire for the past ten years—how could he do all of that? The answer, if The Cut is any indicator, is: horribly.

In the past when I came across a poorly written book, where the characters are not characters drawn with any depth, I’ll leave it on a shelf somewhere in A-Ward where I am housed with 120 others, and it’ll be gone in a matter of minutes. The last two bad books like this were Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, a pretentious crap-fest with a child narrator who lost his father on 9/11, and The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. I had loved Ferris’ first book, Then We Came to the End, but The Unnamed was unreadable and I didn’t make it past the halfway point. In both cases I felt guilty for wasting so much time, and I’m in prison where I have nothing but time. As a matter of fact, that’s my job—doing time—and still, life is too short to spend it with a bad book, or any other bad art.

As for The Cut: Lucas Spero is an Iraqi war veteran of Greek ancestry whose only visible flaw is that women find him irresistible. He is a frequent excerciser and showerer (I have never seen a character take so many showers), an All-American boy who is apparently untroubled by the large amount of death he has brought to the opposing Iraqi army. He also sleeps soundly after killing a man in D.C. with a wrestling move he learned in high school. He showered afterwards, so maybe that helped.

Lucas doesn’t seem to think about much, but we are supposed to believe he is always reading both a fiction and a non-fiction book. He is also familiar with the film oevre of Sergio Leone. He spends a lot of time at the cemetery thoughtfully putting flowers on the grave of his dead father (brain cancer!); he visits his mother often, attends Greek Orthodox church every Sunday where he was, of course, an altar boy. But he never considers the morality of murder, that is, he doesn’t put flowers on his father’s grave and think, “Oh, I’ve probably killed someone’s father before.”

The titular “cut” is the amount of money Lucas is supposed to receive from the jailed drug dealer (who only deals in marijuana, which makes working for him palatable) when he recovers the bales of weed stolen from FedEx packages on unsuspecting homeowner’s doorsteps. One is a Stanford and Yale graduate/lawyer who Lucas has in bed within half an hour. We all know how loose those Ivy-Leaguers are.

The story goes on, unfortunately. Here are some representative sentences—I took the pain so you don’t have to: “The alcohol had given him a kiss”; “Her mouth was made for it”; “He came out of the shower and dried off with a large bath towel”—as opposed to, I imagine, the sheet of sandpaper he normally towels off with—and finally, “Lucas heard himself laugh.” This sentence, as bad as it is (no one really hears himself laugh, unless they're viewing themselves outside their body) actually gave me hope. I thought: okay, maybe the twenty showers up until now are a subconscious tic emblematic of some murderous PTSD, and Lucas is actually psychotic. This might get good.

But I abandoned all hope when I came to this doozy: “The sound was sonic.” Yes, sound is sonic, that’s why it’s sound and not, say, light. But the book was soon over and all that was left was the emptiness I felt at having read it.

I probably won’t do something like that again. Normally I would have stopped, but, in keeping with the spirit of revolution that seems to be growing in the U.S., and the world, I’ve simply had enough of these horribly written books that are put on the marketplace only to make money, while countless good, thoughtful, risk-taking authors can’t get a book deal to save their lives. How much was/is Pelecanos paid for this? I would guess at least 6, maybe 7 figures. That’s a crime. In fact, this might explain the showering: Pelecanos is guilty as hell, and like all of them, he knows it. The showering isn’t the character’s tic, it’s the author’s, and no amount of fictional showering is going to cleanse him.

* * *

BULL's book reviewer Curtis Dawkins graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and earned an M.F.A. from Western Michigan University. He is currently an inmate at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Michigan.

Editor's Note: The Forgotten Issue

2011-10-28T11:09:00.003-04:00

This latest issue of BULL was going to be a lot of things. Last April, after my daughter was born, I had in mind celebrating with a sort of "Feminissue": women writers doing whatever it is we're calling Men's Fiction. Some great stories came down the pike (including the one we have from Lindsay Hunter), but as time went on the prospect of an all-women release seemed too much like a gimmick—I did not want to make a big deal of featuring women writers in BULL because I'd rather that be a regular occurrence. And I'm happy to say that it will be for the near future, so please, let's continue hearing from you, ladies.

So it was back to collecting our best and seeing what themes came up, if any. Hunter's piece, along with work from Christopher Rosales and Jamey Gallagher, had a subtle, solemn desert-y feeling, so for a week at least things were heading in that direction. This may well have been "The Arid Issue," though I'm very thankful it is not.

Thankful for stories by Matt Mullins, Aaron Burch, and our new book reviewer, Curtis Dawkins (read his stuff yet?), stories that at first threw everything off and gave me a mind to make this the very anti-thematic "Motley Issue." Until I noticed that each piece in here works with an angle on memory, or better yet, faulty memory: things and people, heinous actions and entire histories are forgotten—either deliberately or regrettably—or both, in some cases. The theme is all capped off with our print bonus story, "Forbeirs" by Lloyd Phillips, which is as timely in its Halloween spookiness (swamps, g-g-g-ghosts?) as it is a departure from anything we've featured before, a near-fable almost—think Hansel and Gretel minus any hero huntsman.

This is all to be had in the print issue, which, it's worth noting, will be our last handmade ditty before "the new BULL" drops this winter. And here I find the "Forgotten" theme applies as well—as a reminder not to forget these humble beginnings, and the writers, readers, staff and submitters that have made BULL a worthwhile pursuit deserving of expansion. My thanks as always to you all, and if anything, I got these fold-and-staple calluses as a reminder.

—JH

PS. Copies of "The Forgotten Issue" are very limited, so if you want proof that you knew us way back when, better get on it!

Prison Reviews: Hunters & Gamblers

2011-10-26T16:39:00.002-04:00

by Ryan Ridge

Dark Sky Books

ISBN: 978-0-9830674-5-0

A BULL review by Curtis Dawkins

Ed. Note: Though Ryan Ridge is on the BULL staff, our reviewer, with no access to the internet, had no knowledge of such.

In these twenty-four very short stories—except for a novella, which at 34 pages doesn’t technically qualify as a novella, but compared to the others is practically War & Peace—something strange has happened, and is happening, west of the Mississippi. There are surly Girl Scouts armed with bullwhips selling the last of their cookies at black market prices, a war with armed hippies, a James Frey-esque plagiarist dreaming of the best-seller list again while wondering how to pay his hotel bill with past “greatness” (it doesn’t take a genius to see the metaphor for the U.S. here), and the city of Galveston swept away by a Category 1 hurricane while the only remaining man dies atop a treasure left by buccaneer Jean Lafitte. It gets weirder, but you’ll have to read the book.

Meanwhile, in “reality,” as I write this, Manhattan and a dozen other cities are being rightfully occupied by people sick of having their elected officials bought and sold by big business. Democracy has been taken hostage by capitalism, yet there are idiots on TV who continue to defend the hostage-taking. None of this is conducive to a peaceful outlook, and I wonder, after reading Hunters & Gamblers, how any writer worth the ink in their printer can write about anything using a traditional, straightforward narrative? The fractured style of this book fits its purpose. Things are broken, and that’s how these stories hit: brief, timely protests directed at the state of America today.

If things are broken, we may as well make art out of it. We may as well laugh about it. We may as well entertain ourselves while we sit waiting for Godot, because guess what—he ain’t coming. Some of us elected him in 2008 and have come to find he's not yet tough enough, not seasoned enough for the bullies on the right. Or he has yet to learn that sometimes bullies only listen after they’ve been punched in the nose.

Or perhaps politics and money are beside the point. These are only short stories, though most of them are too short to be considered actual stories. They seem more like crazed, angry jabs in the direction of people who rule the country. But stories or not, the great thing about fiction is that nothing is ever beside the point, and should it become so, it’s time to fit the tie around the neck and write ads for boner pills.

The writing in these stories is beautiful. Perfect. The author and editor(s) have a sharp ear for the rhythm and poetry of a sentence. For example, take this short paragraph from "Tomahawk Cuts Rain", featuring not only an admirable pitch and cadence, but a perfect summation of the book’s philosophical structure:

“Things get complicated quick, things can break. And the pieces never fit back together again, like an avant-garde narrative edited by tomahawks and scotched by historical drizzle.”

Yet perfect writing alone doesn’t save the novella, "The Holiest of Holies", from crossing the line from meaningful absurdism to pointless surrealism. It ends cheaply, too, in prison. Too many real lives tragically end up in here to put one's characters here nonchalantly.

These are small problems, and none of this is to say that these little letters from the revolutionary wasteland are soulless and inconsequential—they aren’t. Small publishers like Dark Sky Books are so important because they're doing something different. For instance, Hunters & Gamblers has a open-mindedness with regards to spiritual matters, which is refreshing, as so much fiction skips that part of our existence. There is an equally smart and playful sense of humor throughout as well, which suits it's irreverent theme. Comedy is often just as protestful as anger, because the people in charge—while they think they are funny—are not, never have been, and never will be.

“Christmas is coming. What are you going to get mom and dad?”

“Something nice,” I said. “Something gleaming.”

“What, like one of those phony certificates for a star?”

“Yes, exactly.”

The big New York publishers will be publishing things like Hunters & Gamblers in twenty years, but by then it will all be over. Things are starting now and, as usual, the adventure begins out west. With this book, it seems the revolution is already being written about.

* * *

The Case for a Kindle: Robert Coover's Noir

2011-10-12T15:25:00.000-04:00

A BULL review by Curtis Dawkins

I know three people who have Kindles, and while inmates such as myself are about as likely to gain access to Electronic Book Things as we are to have access to medical marijuana, the impossibility of an occurrence doesn’t mean I don’t waste time wondering whether or not, if given the chance, I would buy one. After studying Robert Coover’s author photograph every time I open his latest novel, Noir, I have decided that my decision to buy an E.B.T. would depend largely on whether the “books” come with author photographs.

99% of author photographs are absurd and as such, fun to ridicule. After six drinks, it’s how they fantasize others will think of them. The author looks pensively at the camera, or in the air, at some fixed point high or low, always tortured by their burden, by the things they have to say. ½% are straightforward records of what the person looks like, and these seem almost to say “I know, I can’t believe things finally worked out for me this once, either.” Robert Coover’s fits into another category altogether, the category I imagine Thomas Pynchon’s author portrait would fit into should he ever have one—the photo seems to be a construction of what Coover thinks someone like him might look like. The photo looks like a fiction. If I had to sink the photograph into something concrete and vaguely recognizable, I’d say: A sunglasses, toupee-wearing, anemic Burt Reynolds as a porn actor.

Before Noir, the only novel of Coover’s I’d read was Spanking the Maid, the story of which is explained perfectly by the title. I hadn’t thought about Coover in a long time until I recently read two amazingly, dizzyingly beautiful short stories in The New Yorker. The short stories are hard to explain, but worth seeking out for their almost magic ability to end up exactly where they began. They are far and away above the usual self-promoting vehicles masquerading as stories in most current fiction.

Noir is a detective story that is much more interested in itself as a homage to detective stories. Its private detective, Philip M. Noir, comes out only at night (invariably rainy), drinks and smokes constantly, and doesn’t mind when he has to wear his secretary Blanche’s panties. In an unnamed city in an unspecified year, a veiled widow comes to Noir wanting to find out who killed her husband. She has beautiful legs and ends up in the morgue. Or does she? When Noir goes to the morgue to investigate the body—naturally—the body’s gone.

There are dark forces at work: a vicious cop, Blue; an underworld puppet master, Mr. Big. There are bartenders, piano players and sexy lounge singers, shadowy characters that may be Noir’s friends or may be working for the other side. There are underground tunnels, hobos, and a donut shop that dispenses whiskey from the milk machine. These, of course, are stock characters used in all hard-boiled fiction, making every page of Noir drenched and sopping in the awareness that it is a detective novel.

The main criticisms of this, or any other postmodern work, is that there are no “real” characters to care about, nothing at stake in the way of a plot to hold the reader’s interest. It’s true of Noir: there is a care-bones claustrophobic feel to the atmosphere. The reason for this, or perhaps an explanation, is given by Blanche near the novel’s end: “I have found, Mr. Noir, that if you make up a story with gaps in it, people just step in to fill them up, they can’t handle themselves.”

But I like this book. I like seeing it on my little desk, as much for its spare aesthetics and physical presence as for the story inside. You can’t tell a book by the cover, or an author by his or her picture, but that is part of why we love them both. For some reason, I like looking at Coover’s picture. It’s oddly comforting, as if some dreamy idea of what I thought a writer would look like had been lured from his lonely cave, floor scattered with rodent skeletons, and captured forever on celluloid. Or maybe the author knew that a photographer was waiting outside, and sent someone else instead, someone invented.

Like people, books are more than the words inside. And I would miss that “more” if the book floated through the air to become a bunch of words on a hand-held screen. Does the Kindle weigh more after the book arrives? Could I give the book to someone else? For me these are futile questions, but still somehow relevant in my wonderings. Ultimately, I think if I even could change the way I read, I’d still stick with a good old book as I’ve always known it. Case of the not-even-remotely-possible Kindle closed.

Curtis Dawkins graduated from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and earned an M.F.A. from Western Michigan University. Since then, he has worked in sales selling Saturns to people and casings to the meat packing industry. He is currently an inmate at the Michigan Reformatory in Ionia, Michigan.

Introducing Curtis Dawkins and the Prison Book Review Program

2011-10-05T00:53:00.003-04:00

Update: BULL's Prison Reviews of Coover, Ridge, and Pelecanos can be found here!

Of all the projects we’re rolling out for the “New BULL” this winter, I’m most excited for our revamped book reviews, especially those to come out of our new Prison Review program. I hope we can lend a fresh perspective on book reviews, which I typically find off-putting—either egregious back-patting or inaccessible pedantry. What I want is real life, an honest assessment of a book and the experience of reading it. But first, I want to explain where this is coming from:

About a year ago I started receiving review copies of books from agencies and publishers, often 3 or 4 at a time. I am but one man here at BULL HQ, with two kids that leave slim opportunity to tend to my own reading interests, not to mention a steadily (and happily) growing submission queue. Naturally, the review books sat unread upon my desk, a reminder of all the time I’d never have for them. I sent a few to BULL staffers around the country, but they no doubt met a similar fate. It’s the 21st Century; everyone is busy.

At the same time I was reading the 10th issue of Hobart, and came across a few short pieces by this guy, Curtis Dawkins. The stories were frankly told, easy and casual, plainspoken and sneakily profound. I thought—goddamn, this is our man. This is the voice that I want telling me about current books. His bio said he had sold Saturn cars to people and casings to the meat packing industry. It also said he was an inmate in a correctional facility up in Michigan.

Which, for me, only sealed the deal. Because here was someone for whom those books would not be a symbol of the time he didn’t have, but the time he did—the time he was resigned to and now had to live with. And here was a perspective that may more accurately see each of those books for what it was: a printed and perfect-bound escape. In short, the value of those books would increase exponentially in his hands and behind those bars. I wrote Curtis, and I’m pleased to say his first review will be up on the site this season.

Depending on the response, I hope to expand our book review program to other incarcerated individuals. If you’re an agency, author, or publisher big or small, I hope you’ll take part. Find more details here.

The BULL Interview: Frank Bill

2011-09-29T12:09:00.001-04:00

It seems Frank Bill is everywhere—reading in Corydon, Indiana, drinking beers in St. Louis, chugging into Indianapolis to sell more books. In the hands of readers in airports, dimly-lit bars and break rooms around the country. I tracked him down to find out where his voice and interest in violence came from, and how readers should take his unsettling message.

—Jared Yates Sexton

BULL: How're things? How have the last two weeks been (since the release of Crimes In Southern Indiana)?

FB: I've had several interviews, different blogs, bookstores, stuff like that. It's just been crazy. It really has.

Were you expecting the response?

No, actually I wasn't. Not that I didn't believe in myself, but I didn't really know it was going to happen. If you go back to when I got an agent and I went through edits, she had this manuscript once everything got ready and it took six months. I expected maybe eight months or so before hearing if it was accepted, and it only took two weeks. So it happened fast. And I talked to FSG (Farrar Straus Giroux), I came home from work and we had a forty-five minute chat, and they'd read my novel, and they wanted to know if I had anything in the way of short stories, so I sent them that. We talked, and I didn't know how that worked, I didn't know that when an editor is interested, you talk to them, you hit it off, and they go back to the publisher. The whole thing was 50/50, whether it was going to happen. And they came back with an offer. My agent texted me, I was at work—I work in a warehouse—and I got it and was screaming, Son of a bitch! And I was like, I got a fucking book deal.

How do you feel about the book? I know I just got done with some edits on mine and I have sort of a love/hate relationship with it - there are still things I look at and feel like a different person wrote it. It's almost like looking at old pictures of myself. How do you feel looking at yours, now that it's been published and given so much attention? As a piece of art?

I think those stories, at the time I wrote them, are the best that I could. Being able to move on from it, because of being edited, I understand more about writing and can actually turn things up a notch. I learned more about character development, plot, all of those things, and I'm even more judgemental about what I write than I ever have been. The book is the best it could be, from that time. I gave it my best, so I feel really good about it. Could it have been better? Things can always be better, but it's the best it could be and I'm really happy about it. In my mind, it's a great book.

I've met a lot of people who're always worried how this or that was going to hurt their chance of publishing...

I think I did that for too long. I mean, I started writing in 2000, and in those first three years it was more about forming sentences and finding a flow, because I wasn't big into revision. And then I wrote "The Accident" story, the first short story I tried to write, and it got published. I was just writing about this accident I was involved with, this fucking explosion, and post-traumatic stress. I had six months there where I couldn't write because of medication. Actually, when you're talking about stories, I worked on that for twelve to eighteen hours. I basically started working on it in the morning and I worked on it all day and all night, and I'd sit down and write and then proof it and then get up and proof it again. You know, you get in that grain of writing, you get that high...

Yeah, I call it catching a seam, like tearing fabric and it keeps coming...

Yeah, you don't even want to quit. You just start shovelling in coffee, and you don't want to eat, it's like a rollercoaster ride.

What is your process like?

Sometimes everything comes out all at once. Like having a hangover. Other times I have to work and struggle and think or take a drive or listen to music and come back to it. It took me a long time to understand that, I kept thinking I'd sit down and write and it'd be right. And that's not where it's at—that's revision. That's where you build scenes and characters and fill in the gaps. You get a good rough draft and then I'll whittle it, put a sheen on it. Get it as perfect as I can, and it took me a long time to realize that but that's what an editor looks at. They want something that's not sixty or eighty percent, but they want something that's ninety-five or a hundred. Ninety-five you can publish, you can sit down and figure it out. It's a long process to get to that. You have to become your own judgment by reading and writing a lot and being able to critique yourself. I didn't go to writer's workshops or anything, I'd always heard horror stories from people who got there and people got jealous. And they critique the shit out of each other.

It seems like you taught yourself.

I've never taken a class, no.

So was it just because you loved reading? What brought this on? Have you been writing for awhile?

You know, when I was a kid I kept a journal but I lost touch with it. I was always writing but I never read fiction, just nonfiction. And when I went to see Fight Club I looked up the author, because I loved the movie, and I couldn't find that book but found Invisible Monsters, and I read the first line and I thought holy shit this guy can write. I read it in a day or two and I'd never done that before. And I read Fight Club and Survivor and I found out if I like this author I should check this guy out, and that's how I found Larry Brown and Tom Franklin and Brad Watson and I could relate to them. I never thought I could do that, write about my family and the crazy people my grandfather or dad ran around with. And it took a long time to understand how to tell a story, and my grandfather and father were great storytellers. My dad still tells stories. He'll tell you about who he's been running around with, the things they're up to, and it all turns into one big story. Two hours later you get off the phone with him.

My dad and grandpa are and were the same way. They never picked up pens, but they knew just how to tell a story.

Yeah, and that's the kind of thing you should treasure. I wished I would've written down a lot of things from when my grandpa was alive. I mean, he'd come home from work and the first thing he'd do was feed his dogs. He came in and had supper with my grandmother and then he'd call his coon hunting buddies and they'd talk about dogs for two or three hours. And they'd plan on hunting. I wish I would've paid more attention.

That's how my grandpa was. And looking back now, it's like he had a pitch-perfect understanding of narrative.

You know, you grow up in that era and you didn't have television. They went and hung out, it was family oriented, you bonded over stories and that was all you had. You had radio too, of course. Grandma loved Johnny Cash and Hank Williams Sr., and those guys were storytellers.

I get frustrated, as someone from that area, because I feel like those people might not have read as much literature or as many books because it almost feels like the market or culture has left them behind. There's even the term "flyover fiction," meaning this area isn't someplace you tell stories about. So what do you think this area has to offer in terms of literature or storytelling?

I mean, you still go down certain back roads and find people who aren't working or are living off social security and I still know other people who don't have that good a job, people just making it. And I mean it's still natural around here, you have hunting and fishing. And you have immigration. Along with immigration you've got drugs, and when I was doing research on the title story for the collection, and I did research on Latino gangs and my buddy's a cop and since 9/11 immigration's overflown. You've got people coming in illegally and there's nothing to do about it. We started looking at it, and these are people running away from poverty, and they're not all bad people, but you get gangbangers mixed up in that. And they're using some of the ones who aren't. You know, they say take this with you, a type of drug, and we'll help you. Smuggling. And they're in the same situation as some people are here, trying to get by. So you've got a lot of people mixed together.

I realized early on that there's a real voice, a focus with this book—where did that come from? What were you setting out to do when you wrote this?

Originally, I mean, I'd read a lot of authors like Chuck Pahlaniuk, people whose work I liked because they weren't boring. A lot of things I'd read I'd think a lot of people have done this and I couldn't relate to it, and I liked that he made really strong points about society in the things he was writing about, and the way it came across it got my mind going. It really got me thinking about things in a philosophical way. And he turned me onto other writers like Larry Brown and Tom Franklin. I didn't think I had the chops for it, to write that way, about the land and the people. I started focusing on where I was from and how I was brought up; I wanted to bring people into an environment and tell about peoples' struggles and get into the grain of people no one writes about. I wanted to get into why those people are the way they are. Like they're horrible, but you don't understand—yeah they're criminals, but there's a state of mind there because they're barely getting by.

UK Release

They're desperate as hell...

Right. Maybe they're awful people, but they're just trying to get by. They don't really care if someone gets hurt, because that's not their prerogative. They're just trying to get by.

But, to get back to your question, for me to write all that stuff, I didn't really have a general idea, or theme when I wrote. I just wrote what interested me about society and class as a whole. People who are still here, but you don't see them or hear about them anymore. You read about them in small town newspapers, people who are jobless, and they disappear all over the place. You don't read about people living in cars or camping spots in books.

I'm from that same area, Southern Indiana, and some of these people are like starving animals who're just trying to survive. Why do you think these people have been forgotten for so long and why is there so much attention on them right now in literature?

Well, one reason it was overlooked is because this generation is more about being glamorous, about trying to be movie stars, and it's like people no longer know the history of where they came from. What their grandparents did to get them to where they are today. They take things for granted. I guess people like myself, Donald Ray Pollock or Larry Brown or whoever, are writing about it and it took awhile for it to pick up steam. You know Larry Brown wrote great books and they're getting attention now. Gosh, a few generations back my grandparents lived this way and the way people are looking at it now is because of where society is going. People aren't raised to think for themselves anymore, to live off the land or garden or fish.

It's like people going fishing, you don't even get the worms out of the ground anymore. You go to the store and buy them. When I was a kid you went and got worms from under a fucking rock.

So why are people focused on this now? I don't know. I can understand why it's been overlooked. This is the Generation of Me, getting a job and a nice car and wearing certain clothes for status. And I can't stand that.

For me, a lot of fiction that's been popular has been escapist work. And then I look at this book, the one you wrote; I would say it's unflinching. It's the fact that the violence is rendered here and not just hinted at, that the violence has a purpose behind it. Maybe that doesn't work well for escapist readers because it's understandable in a way that might make people uncomfortable. How did your understanding of violence come from? Where you grew up?

A lot of it's come in the last five years from how my dad's told me more about his experiences in the Vietnam War. He was over there for a year. The other part would be stories my mom would tell me about my grandfather, who I never knew. A lot of these are stories I grew up with. And back in those days laws were different. You could get away with more. And I used to watch Clint Eastwood movies, crazy action movies like Deliverance or Taxi Driver or Deer Hunter.

You brought up the idea of culture changing, and I remember growing up and you could get away with beating the hell out of someone...

Yeah, you could. You could drink and drive and get away with it.

Sure. And you read Big Bad Love and you read all these stories about drinking and driving and you think my god, but even when I was sixteen there were road soadies, people doing that all the time. So, culture is moving away from that, but also moving toward materialistic things. So, in your opinion, what do you want to see? When you write a book you want to change culture, so what kind of change would you like to see develop?

I'd like to see more stories like the kind I write. Or Don Pollock or Tom Franklin. They're really great stories. With good storytelling. Or Larry Brown or Barry Hannah. William Gay's another one I like to read, who's got more of a gothic or southern gothic voice to him. But I'd like to see more active narratives, prose that really moves you. I don't read any commercial fiction at all. I've got nothing against it, I just don't read it. When I read, I read for language and story, and I don't want to be bored. I want writers that move. Chuck Pahlaniuk and Irvine Welsh are like that. Bret Easton Ellis too. Those are great writers. Aaron Morales's Drowning Tucson is great too.

On that note, and a formalistic one, I noticed in the book you have a lot of sentences where the proper noun or noun is dropped. Like, "John went into the room. Grabbed the gun. Pulled the trigger." And I noticed a lot of periods where the character drops out of the writing. Is that just a stylistic tic?

It's a rhythm. When I write it's a rhythm. I get it down and I break it apart, and I want to know what things look like and taste like. I try and describe things so you can feel them, so you can get involved while you're reading. And it's like, in boxing or martial arts, a pummeling. Or kind of like working the heavy bag with a rhythm. Skipping rope or jogging. You get a rhythm and your breath going and your lungs where you need them to be. You don't want to go too fast or too slow. You can slow down or speed up, but there's a rhythm to maintain.

So what's on the agenda for you now? Are you soaking this up?

I've got a two book deal, so I've got a novel coming out September next year. I've got another novel that I'm about 17,000 words into and another book after that that I'd like to get done and pitch it with the novel I've got now. It was something I came across research-wise about this family, and he said I should write about this, and I got all the details down about this case he'd worked. And I was like, I have to write about this. As crazy as this story is, it'd almost be crazier if it was nonfiction. And I've been working on essays about books that've influenced me, how I grew up, the crazy shit I did in the past. Things that I've drawn from in my writing.

What's the novel about?

It's actually about a meth cook and a boxer and a law enforcement officer who has some dark secrets and gets criss-crossed. And there's this big bare-knuckle boxing tournament called Donnybrook, which, if you read Cold Hard Love, that's kind of a prequel to the novel. It's kind of a wild ride, so much so that I've been told it needs to slow down in spots and that made me feel good. And I wrote that because I wanted attention, I got tired of being under the radar, and that's how I got where I am, writing with that fast pace.

Jared Yates Sexton is BULL's Managing Editor. Follow him @JYSexton

The Necessity of Despair: BULL at the Crimes In Southern Indiana Book Release

2011-09-12T16:10:00.000-04:00

BULL-at-large by Jared Yates Sexton

The morning of Frank Bill's book release in Corydon, Indiana, I got a call from back home. It seemed that my grandpa's cancer, recently diagnosed Stage 4 and aggressive, had taken a turn for the worse. His doctor had given him forty-eight hours to live and that was being generous. I grew up in Southern Indiana and my folks still reside in Linton, not a hundred miles from the Beef O’Brady’s where Bill’s reading would be held, but worlds apart in experience.

* * *

When I arrived that afternoon the staff was still setting up the venue, arranging stools and tables and adjusting mic levels in a back lot outside. As a professor, I’m happy to say it was unlike the academic venue I've grown used to, those reserved rooms of higher learning. Instead of punch we ordered beers in plastic cups and fought off gnats and mosquitoes. Country and western and hard rock music played and Bill arrived carrying a box full of Playboys that recently featured his work. Everywhere you turned writers and bookheads were talking shop, bullshitting about Larry Brown and Barry Hannah, Donald Ray Pollock's novel and how great it was that Bill was getting the attention and acclaim he deserved.

By the time the reading started night had rolled in and the gnats had given up. Someone rigged a work light onstage so that the reader was barely a silhouette before a fuzzy ball of white light. They told stories about crimes and criminals, desperate people speaking in desperate tones. Like Bill's debut collection, most pieces were grotesque—characters killed one another in depraved and sick ways, and treated each other with the importance of the insects we'd spent the last hours smashing.

Later, when I stumbled into the bar in search of another Jack on the rocks, I overheard two middle-aged women talking at the bar. They were watching Notre Dame lose to Michigan on a last-second-roll-of-the-dice play. Just as UM's quarterback flicked the winning pass into the corner of the end zone, a contingent of Irish fans at the bar howled in disbelief and pounded their fists. One of them, a burly fella clearly upset and wearing an aged Brady Quinn jersey, looked at another man nearby in a beat-up UM Wolverines hat, and shouted, loudly and plainly, Fuck you, motherfucker. The ladies, the ones I sat next to while waiting for my drink, had been outside for the majority of the reading.

Why do all those stories have to be so ugly? said one of them.

I don't know, the other said between sips of beer. And why do they have to cuss all the time?

* * *

My grandpa has lived a hell of a life. My first memories of him are right after he left the military and settled in the small town a few miles outside of my small town. He read books on Patton and the histories of war, veered hard right on the political spectrum, but wore a ponytail and raced through every book Stephen King ever penned. On his walls were portraits of him in fatigues, standing straight at attention as he was pinned with his latest award or medal. He hung flags from the various bases of his operations, from his time soldiering for the UN and NATO, the men he commanded having signed their names and well wishes from one end to the other. Under one of these flags, on top of a bookcase that gathered dust and held spent lighters and so many other knickknacks, sat a doll of Beavis, from Beavis and Butthead fame. The man was all over the place.

When I got to his house in Southern Indiana I found someone I hardly recognized. Cancer had stricken him to the point where between the pain and the medications meant to dampen the pain, he spent all of his time venturing from completely unalert to virtually unalert. Part of me wants to get into the details—the hard-edged, difficult to swallow details, because that's what this is all about. If there’s one thing I aim to describe here it’s the "can't I look away?" aspect of dying and suffering, but I am not so callous and the wound is still fresh. But I will say this: as someone who had yet to see someone in that state, it shook me to my foundations.

Seeing my grandpa like that, a man's man if there ever was one, I did look away. I made straight for his office, the only place in his house where I knew I could find solace, where the flags and portraits and books were. I took a seat in his chair and looked over his shelves. There was Stephen King of course, every novel he's put out, and illustrated encyclopedias and the like, but on the other shelf between some westerns and battle studies, was another genre of writing I hadn't noticed before. Here were the true crime volumes, noir rags like My Gun Is Quick that featured the kind of ratty and sensationalized covers that today's pulp magazines still try and emulate. I flipped through a few of them, read a line or chapter here and there, just feet away from the unspeakable things I'm already trying to forget, I read about more unspeakable things; I read of ugliness as entertainment.

* * *

Here's the thing of it—listening to Frank Bill read, and Donald Ray Pollock and Matthew McBride and Scott Phillips and Kyle Minor and Aaron Michael Morales, I was treated to hours of the most white-knuckle fiction I'd ever heard in public. I've travelled in those circles, have read the crime books and pulp books since I was a kid sneaking them into my bed with a flashlight, but I'd never been to one of these performances. Before, when I read the awful, grotesque things, it was always my voice that careened around in my head. Somehow that made it better, easier, safer. But there in Corydon, at the microphone on the back porch of a sports bar, the hits kept coming. Some were jabs and others haymakers, all of it life and disappointment careening out of control and intersecting to the point of malice.

I'm writing this two days later, while I sip morning coffee in the comfort of my own home. Corydon is about two hundred miles away, but I still feel a tinge of that unease. In the matter of a weekend I was confronted twice, in two very distinctly different ways, of the ugliness life is capable of. It's the same feeling I had when I first read Helter Skelter or Pollock's Knockemstiff, the full realization that what we call existence is not a journey or cruise, but oftentimes hard and unforgiving. Bad things happen. People are hurt.

This feeling isn't an altogether terrible one, though. In the wake of my grandpa's suffering I'm taking my days slower, speaking to the people I love in softer and more sincere tones, saying and doing the things that need to be said and done. Someday in the near future, I may wake up and that sort of necessity and urge may have softened or dulled. I'll be comfortable. Complacent. Start taking these things for granted again. And maybe that's when I'll pick up my copy of Crimes In Southern Indiana, or any of the other books that don't back away from the edge of heartbreak and strife. Maybe then I'll remember.

Jared Yates Sexton is BULL's Managing Editor. Follow him @JYSexton

Hoosier Lamentation: Frank Bill's Crimes in Southern Indiana

2011-09-02T11:21:00.000-04:00

A review by Aaron Michael Morales

It's a rare occasion when an unknown writer, some unassuming man from southern Indiana, bursts onto the literary scene and comes out swinging. Frank Bill is one such man, and he's coming out swinging harder and faster than any writer in years. With a set of literary brass knuckles, Bill pummels his readers with image after image, wastrel after miserable wastrel, and his own brand of backwoods revenge and redemption. Bluntly, Crimes in Southern Indiana is a brutal gem. And a very welcome one.

In an era when the vast majority of our popular male writers are a pack of navel-gazing hipsters intent on literary one-upmanship, whose masturbatory and self-referential prose does painfully little to disguise how clever they think they are, the words of Frank Bill are a breath of fresh air. There is no suburban political diatribe here. No preening men contemplating the woes of a stale marriage. In Bill, we have a man whose style gives a nod to Hemigway's brevity, while earning a spot within the ranks of our modern masculine American writers—Bukowski, Selby, Burroughs, Crews, McCarthy, Palahniuk, Ellis, Roth, Woodrell, Pollock, Thompson, and Larry Brown. In other words, Bill is the real deal. A writer with an eye for misery. A witness who doesn’t preach. A working class scribe.

Last year, Esquire lamented the lack of masculinity in modern writing. Frank Bill’s debut soundly proves that assertion to be false. Masculine fiction is alive and well—readers just have to know where to look. Crimes in Southern Indiana would be the perfect place to start.

The interconnected stories that make up Bill’s first collection are at once beautiful, dark, and troubling. A grandfather pimps out his granddaughter to the dismay of his ailing wife. Meth heads lurk everywhere—murdering, stealing, tweaking, defiling the landscape. Revenge and drug dealing. Rape. Biblical vengeance. Everything that is wrong with middle America at this moment is precisely what’s right about Crimes. It’s a timely book, a book that grabs its reader by the scruff of the neck and rubs his nose in the mess we’ve all helped make, whether by direct involvement or just a failure to act. From his first sentence, Bill clamps down on us like a bear trap and refuses to release until we turn the last page. And then we limp away.

Frank Bill, Crimes in Southern Indiana. New York, NY: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. 2011. 288pp. ISBN-13 9780374532888, $15.00 (pb).

Aaron Michael Morales is an associate professor of English & Gender Studies at Indiana State University. His first novel, Drowning Tucson (2010) was acclaimed by Esquire and named a “Top Five Fiction Debut” by Poets & Writers. Other books include a chapbook of short fiction, titled From Here You Can Almost See the End of the Desert (2008), and a textbook, The American Mashup (2011). Find him on Facebook or visit his website for more information.

The New BULL: A Prospectus

2011-08-24T13:12:00.001-04:00

Last weekend in the north of Michigan, on the back deck of a cabin around a square glass table, a few of us on the BULL staff convened to talk about the future of this magazine, website, the whole operation. There was much lawn and lake, much bourbon drunk, many notes taken and many more ideas discussed. Here, I took a picture:

It was a necessary summit, because BULL right now is at a watershed moment. We’ve grown as much as we can inside the framework I put together in a month at the beginning of 2009. This past weekend we drew up plans to take BULL to the next stage, as it’s proven to be a unique, appreciated, and all-around worthwhile endeavor. We see potential to change the stigma of “literature” and to reach out to those who may feel alienated by thoughtful fiction, who may think they don’t like reading or that it’s for someone other than them. The experiment of BULL and “Men’s Fiction” has succeeded at this small stage, and this makes us no longer an experiment. BULL is a thing, and it has come time to figure out what this thing is, how it can improve and grow and how far it can reach.

These are the general specifics: come the new year, we’ll be completely overhauling our website. It’ll have sharp style and improved functionality, allowing for much more content at a far greater frequency. We’re also planning for book reviews, multiple departments, and regular columns, so if you’ve got an idea on what to offer the thinking man in this next stage, let us know. And if you're a web/Wordpress designer, let us know doubly so.

Our print issue will become biannual and be perfect-bound—quality production to match the stories inside. We’ve made plans to illustrate our stories (and authors!) both on the web and in print. We’ll be doing more interviews too, in fact, our relaunch will feature Chuck Klosterman talking about his new novel out this fall. So if you want in, get in, ‘cause it’s goddamn good.

There are two underlying themes of our reconception: how can BULL best engage the public, both readers/writers and non-, and how can we distinguish ourselves equally from existing literary journals and men’s magazines. Our plan for now is to split the difference: mix the art and artistry from the latter with the fun and spirit of the former. It’s what we feel the new man deserves—a fiction venue that’s not boring, a men’s magazine that offers more. Brains and balls. That’s about the best I can put it.

Let us know what you think. About these plans, the state of fiction, magazines, men and manhood in general. It’s time to move forward, and time to sound off—

Summertime

2011-08-11T13:56:00.000-04:00

As you may have already noticed, BULL is on a sort-of summer break, collecting pieces for a new issue out later this month, and making big plans for a spectacular relaunch closer to the holidays. So hang in there and hold tight, just like this man's last suspender.

BULLshot: Gary Percesepe

2011-07-27T16:21:00.002-04:00

BULL: In "Wingman", Sam R is an eye surgeon and our guy is a house painter who finds a memorable way to quit his job; what's the best/worst job you've ever quit?

As for me and great jobs I have left, I walked away from a tenured position as a professor of philosophy. Philosophers occupy the top floor of the academic ivory tower (up there with the theoretical physicists), and in my case I was teaching social & political philosophy, waxing eloquent daily on the inherent contradictions and legitimation crises of late capitalism, and I kind of talked myself out of the academy, and went out onto the streets. I became a community organizer and a peace and justice activist, headed up an international peace organization, worked as a social justice minister in a progressive church supporting marriage equality and feeding the hungry--all things that I had talked a good game about, but had somehow neglected to do when I was an academic. I don't miss the terrible academic infighting and stultifying department meetings, but I sure as hell miss the students, and the way, sometimes, we would get launched into a conversation that opened up the room, lifted the roof and seemed to soar into the stratosphere, as questions were asked that opened onto the meanings of our lives, that put us into question, and that lull that came, the space of awe and silence, when we realized how far we had traveled, and how strange the familiar had become. Teaching was sexy. I'm saying I miss the students every day.

New in the Horns: "Wingman"

2011-07-21T09:24:00.000-04:00

Says Wikipedia: referring to the plane flying slightly behind the lead plane in aircraft formation. Says the Urban Dictionary: a guy you bring with you on singles outings (bars) to help you out with women. However you slice it, this week in our former print bonus, "Wingman" by Gary Percesepe, we see how quickly smooth skies can change to a straight-up (or down) tailspin.

More shots from BJC's Book Release

2011-07-14T10:07:00.000-04:00

Photographer Dando Mark was kind enough to pass along some snapshots of the festivities at Bell's Brewing last weekend. Thanks, Dando!!

Campbell had a four-hour, never-ending line of readers.
We got there early, still, note the near-empty beer.

Whispered in ear: "Sure, set up your table, but if you make
a scene, I'll take you down like I did Ben Percy."

Location, location, location.

This woman was a hoot. So much so, I don't
remember her name.

Good people with Asylum Lake (Press & Journal)

I like this picture a lot.

BULLshot: Josh Peterson

2011-07-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

BULL: Would you rather have a talking cat or a great neighbor who's a vampire?

JP: I'd definitely pick the vampire neighbor. I can't imagine that a cat would have anything interesting to say. Also, cats are narcissistic megalomaniacs. A cat would use its voice to constantly demand things. It would be similar to dating an actress. However, you could make some money on the state-fair circuit with a talking cat. On the other hand, having a vampire neighbor is a lot like having a vegan friend. There are a bunch of restrictions: Can't cross running water, no garlic, sunlight bad, can't go into places uninvited, crucifix allergy. But, ultimately, vampires seem to be a fun-loving bunch as long as they aren't trying to kill you. A lot of modern vampires adhere to a strict code of ethics, but I don't know if I could ever really trust a vampire. Maybe I'm just a racist.

Once Upon a River of Beer

2011-07-11T17:08:00.000-04:00

On Sunday BULL made a road trip to Kalamazoo, Michigan for the release party of Bonnie Jo Campbell’s “Once Upon a River.” We couldn’t pass up the opportunity to rub elbows with one of our favorite writers, or to hang out in the beer garden at Bell’s Brewing.

Bonnie Jo was kind enough to let us set up a table at the signing. We passed out plenty of magazines, sold a few T-shirts, and thoroughly enjoyed the Golden Rye Ale. Even more generous, after signing books for over four hours, Bonnie Jo started buying beers for people in line. Forget National Book Awards — buy us an Oberon and you have a fan for life.

The party featured multiple “Once Upon a River”-themed cakes, pin the tail on the donkey, books by local Michigan authors for sale by Kazoo Books, a dress like an author costume contest (Truman Capote won), “American Salvage” tattoos, music by Neon Tetra, including Nich Martin, and appearances by Bonnie Jo’s extensive network of family and friends, to say nothing of the literary elites, rogues, and “ne’er do wells from Michigan and beyond” roaming the bar.

I won a door prize, “As if We Were Prey,” stories by Michael Delp, part of the made in Michigan Writers Series. We enjoyed a good long chat with Kristina Riggle, author of “Things We Didn’t Say,” and we made friends with Andy Molina and other fine folks.

Best of all, we heard that at a party last week Bonnie Jo beat up Benjamin Percy. We'll have to ask about this in our next interview. When we named named her one of nine writers carrying the torch for men’s fiction at Art of Manliness, we had no idea she would wear the badge with such honor.

Keep kicking ass, Bonnie Jo.

New in the Horns: "Communication with Distant Life Forms"

2011-07-06T12:41:00.000-04:00

For all those who missed it in our last print issue, this week we've put Josh Peterson's "Communication with Distant Life Forms" online and in full heartbreaking form. Our new summer releases are coming soon, and plans are pending for a brand-new BULL starting later this fall. We'll have more on that as it comes; for now, make like our man Gerald in here and "keep looking up."

Got another hand? Lend it here.

2011-06-22T20:29:00.000-04:00

It may come as no surprise that I've got soft spot for book-minded people trying to get corporate cash to do grassroots good. So when I saw Chris Newgent of Vouched Books involved in a similar voting campaign to fund a literary/artistic-minded community center down in Indy, I knew just where he's coming from. If your clicking finger is still up to it, consider helping out my fellow Hoosier and sending him some votes over the next few days.

Do it here and feel good 'bout yourself:

http://www.refresheverything.com/servicecenter

PS. Big things in the BULL pipeline; stay tuned. Have you read our Ben Percy interview yet? That guy got me setting my alarm clock two hours earlier. And I must say, I am loving that dawning silence...

The BULL Interview: Benjamin Percy

2011-06-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

Let's be honest—Benjamin Percy is kicking a ton of ass right now. His collection of stories Refresh, Refresh was critically acclaimed, his debut novel The Wilding garnered him national attention, and he's already been called—by Peter Straub—"one of our most accomplished young writers." And not to mention, he writes like a fucking punch in the face. Percy's work is quickly becoming some of the most essential fiction on American bookshelves and it's only getting better. I got some of his time to discuss what he likes and loathes about contemporary writing, his evolution as an artist, and how in the hell he goes about terrifying his readers. — Jared Yates Sexton

BULL: What's it like to be you right now? How has success affected your art?

BP: I’ve always worked hard. Ten years ago, first year of grad school, before I had a publication to my name, the alarm screamed at 4:30 every morning and I went straight to the keyboard and hammered until afternoon. I did it because I loved the work, believed in it, and felt a deep-bellied hunger for readers. I’m the same guy now, only I’ve gone through the refiner’s fire (and become a stronger, cleaner writer) and then the publication gauntlet—but otherwise, no difference, head-over-heels for stories. Critical and commercial success is great—emboldening, sure—but it’s not why I got into this.

The background for your most well-known story, "Refresh, Refresh," is a beat-down Oregon town suffering the side-effects of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and The Wilding touches on the latter as well. What role do you think the writer has in commenting on current issues? Is there a responsibility for those like yourself who are more visible, to put our times into context? Do you feel that pressure?

Gardner calls fiction the vivid and continuous dream—and if the reader sees the author’s hand (for any number of reasons, politics among them), then the dream dissolves. I try to be political without being polemical. Try. So that when I’m writing about any hot-button issue—like the war—I’m not saying war is good or war is bad. Instead, I’m saying this is war, neither black nor white, written in shades of gray. If I feel like I’m reading an editorial, then the characters come across less organically, less like flesh-and-blood and more like puppets.

So yeah, writers should engage with current events, wrestle with political issues, but what I want to do, with my short stories and novels, is to make them think, not tell them how to think.

You mention Gardner's Art of Fiction and his concept of the story as a dream. What breaks that perception for you?

A visible author. A face peeking behind the curtain. Could be the politics are obvious, as I already mentioned. Could be something else. Could be the voice is showing off. I can’t tell you how often I’ve written in the margins of student manuscripts, “Sounds like writing.” Meaning, their sentences are trying too hard, choked with purple prose, and I’m paying too much attention to the special effects and not enough attention to the story and characters.

So, what is it you're reading now that's frustrating?

I’m an impatient reader these days. Which is not to say that I’m in a hurry or that I’m interested only in gripping stories or that I avoid work that is challenging and complex. What I mean is, I used to finish everything I started. But I’m too busy for that now. Kids, travel, deadlines, teaching. I’m realizing quickly that I’ll never live long enough to read all the books I hunger for. If an author lets me down, I’m not going to give them two weeks of my life. I don’t want to shit on anyone—this business is rough enough—so I’ll just say I’m growing increasingly bored with suburban malaise in fiction.

What excites you?

What excites me? Recently, Richard Matheson’s I am Legend, Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, and Shann Ray’s American Masculine.

What gets me about a Benjamin Percy story is the voice, that voice I don't hear anywhere else. Where'd that violence come from, where'd those words come from?

Not long ago I went to see True Grit. When Jeff Bridges first started talking, my buddy leaned over and said, “That’s the voice inside your head.” And he’s right. I am apparently possessed by the ghost of Rooster Cogburn and we séance through the keyboard.

I think with that voice comes the element of horror that everyone seems to use. In The Wilding there's a character, Brian, who is one of the most stirring and upsetting psychopaths rendered since Stephen King's heyday. In regards to horror, do you decide what's frightening for you and then project it for your audience?

Years ago, I was watching the DVD extras for the original Halloween, which included a short documentary about the film. John Carpenter said that before he began writing the the script, he jotted down "scares." Various images that creeped the hell out of him. A featureless white face emerging from the shadows. A car (presumed to be empty) with the windshield fogged up from the breath of someone hidden in the backseat. Etc. And then he built a story around them. I can't say that's my strategy, but after I heard that, every time I encountered—or imagined—something creepy, I would jot it down for later use. The folder on my computer is named SCARES. I've drawn from it extensively in the writing of Red Moon—and I drew from it when writing The Wilding as well. That's where I got the moment in the tent, when the canvas is pressing inward and darkening with saliva. And that's where I discovered some of Brian as well. My friend in northern Wisconsin comes from a 4,000-acre tree farm his family has owned for several generations. When he was a kid, he was obsessed with trapping. He once showed me the side room of his barn—and in it, hundreds of traps hung, all of them rusted and mud-caked and spiked, busy with chains, making the room appear like some torture chamber. He told me about what he used to do with the skins of the animals he trapped—mostly he sold them—but once he sewed a pair of pants out of several beaver pelts. That was the seed that gave rise to the hair suit idea, which naturally seemed like a metaphor for someone animalistic to the point of being a lycanthrope.

Do you read and adopt whoever you're digesting at the moment, or do you stay your course? I know, for me, John Updike gets into my writing whenever I'm reading the Rabbit novels. Is there any work that gets a hold of you?  

Used to. When I was an undergrad, when I was a grad student, everything I read affected me profoundly. I was reading Carver, I wrote like Carver. Or O’Connor. Or Munro. Or Marquez. That’s natural. That’s a good thing. Students shouldn’t feel the anxiety of influence. They should lay themselves bare to it. That’s why forms classes are so helpful—in which you study an author for a week and write a story that channels their voice and then a critical essay that explains every grammatical move and its rhetorical effect. Every author you encounter—as an intentional reader—supplies you with tools you will later employ. This never stops. The workbench in my garage is always busy with new ballpeen hammers, chainsaws, oil cans. But over time, tens of thousands of hours, you of course develop a more mature and consistent and polished voice.

You always mention your time as a student and what it has meant for you in regards to your development into the writer we see now. What teachers have influenced you and what have you gleaned from those relationships?

My undergraduate professors taught me little about craft, but their encouragement (and their syllabi) made me fall in love with reading and writing short stories. It wasn’t until I found myself (seemingly by accident—I had no idea that the MFA existed until a month before I applied) in grad school that I began to comprehend what I was up against (the odds of making it as a writer) and how little I knew. Beth Lordan taught me about metaphor and restraint and humility. Mike Magnuson taught me about how to put together and take apart sentences. Rodney Jones taught me about the right word. Brady Udall taught me about story. Jon Tribble and Allison Joseph taught me how you can’t be a good writer unless you’re a good editor. I’ve got all their ghosts on my shoulders today, whispering in my ear.

About editing—you've written a lot about the craft of writing. In Poets & Writers you likened it to refinishing a house and said the professional writer "lops off limbs, rips out innards like party streamers, and drains away gallons of blood..." It all sounds so violent, so severe. What's your process really look like? More specifically, if you could, take us through a day or a week in your process. When do you write? When do you revise? When do you read?

I begin every workday rereading what I have already written. If a short story, I mean from the beginning. If a novel, I mean from the beginning of the chapter in progress. This might take a few minutes or several hours, depending on how much material there is, depending on the refinishing that needs to take place. I’m cutting here, adding there, moving things around. I’m recognizing tropes and motivations and plot points that I initially didn’t know were there. So I warm up with revision and then move into imaginative/generative mode, filling up the white space.

I try to read every day, usually at night, when I’ve lost the impulse and venom to write. Sometimes, though, I’m sneaking reads while my kids play in the backyard or while my wife runs into the grocery store. I always have a book or literary journal within reach.

You're serving now as a professor at Iowa State's MFA program and at the low-resident program at Pacific. You've got a growing family to look after. How has that changed your approach? I know, for instance, that you used to spend obsessive amounts of time in the library, catching up on works you felt you'd missed. How have your responsibilities affected your production or approach?

My many, many responsibilities impact only my indulgences. I used to watch several movies a week, no longer. I used to go camping, go fishing, go hiking, biking. I used to go out to the bar. I used to watch television. I used to read more magazines. I used to sit on the porch and smoke cigars. I could go on. I don’t have time for indulgences right now. Because I have precious little time, and it’s dedicated exclusively to the writing. My production hasn’t gone down—it’s gone up. Everybody is busy, but I’m insanely busy, so I don’t have much tolerance for those who whine about not having the time to write. You make the time.

You sort of cut your teeth with short fiction and have found success with the novel form—do you see yourself going back to stories or are you primarily interested in longer works?

I love short stories, as a reader and writer. I’ll always be married to the form. But the audience for them is quite limited. I hope to hammer out a few every year, but from now on I’ll be working primarily as a novelist.

What other clubs do you have in your bag? You've tended toward masculine, literary fiction and have flirted with facets of genre. As you keep writing and developing, what else do you see yourself attempting?

Bodice-ripper romances with lots of hot, throbbing, damp euphemisms for genitalia.

In all seriousness, novel, screenplays. That’s my focus right now. I have in the hopper five ideas I’m really eager to write. All of them supernatural (approached, of course, through a literary lens). One of them YA.

How's the screenwriting shaping up?

When James Ponsoldt wrote the “Refresh, Refresh” screenplay, he gave me amazing access, passing along the acts, the drafts, asking for editorial feedback. That’s how I figured out the form. We collaborated recently on a horror comedy concept that’s under consideration as a television series—and we’re finishing up a comedy script that we hope to shop before the summer is out. A producer has also asked me to write the screenplay for my novel, The Wilding—I haven’t made up my mind on that one—I only have so much time—but it’s an attractive possibility.

How do you feel about that method of storytelling?

I’m a film junkie. Before I had children, I subscribed to Premiere, I plugged in to two or three films a week, I read a handful of reviews for every new release. I don’t have that kind of time anymore, but I’m just as in love with movies.

One of the most comfortable feelings in the world, for me, is settling into a darkened theater with a bucket of popcorn. Good cinema has as much to teach the storyteller as good writing, and ultimately that might be my interest, telling stories, no matter the medium. I tend to think of the screen and the page interchangeably.

Is there anything writers can learn from the form?

What can writers learn from film? The importance of sensory detail, particularly image. The importance of causality and momentum, one thing leading to another. When I teach novel-writing, I draw liberally from screenwriting texts.

I'd be remiss if I didn't ask—what'll we be seeing from you in the near future?

Late summer of 2010, I handed over sixty-five pages to my agent, just to get her feedback. She seemed more excited about it than anything I have ever written, said she wanted to write a twenty-five page “pitch” (that summarized the plot and character arcs) and then she planned to go out with the partial manuscript after Labor Day. She did. Submitted it on a Thursday and by Sunday the pre-empts started coming in. By Wednesday, when it went to auction, my life had taken a surreal turn. Red Moon is the tentative title and Grand Central/Hachette is the publisher. The novel (a supernatural story with a political allegory at its heart) is more or less my sole focus right now. I took the spring and fall off from teaching. I have a December 2011 deadline I’m chasing and I’m hammering the keyboard every day to meet it.

New in the Horns: “Barnacles”

2011-06-08T12:15:00.001-04:00

This week we've put our print bonus from last summer up in full on the web: "Barnacles" by Kurt Mueller, a story equal parts friendship and frostbite to cool down these sultry days. If you're like me and have never heard of apotemnophilia, consider this a primer. Just watch yourself with the dry ice...

(Belated) BULLshot: Jacob White

2011-06-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

BULL: If you could, like our man in "Maintenance", make a residence out of a former commercial building, what would it be?

JW: My fantasy of retiring to a former commercial building is now more complicated since it carries with it the precondition that my wife and son disown me. Should this occur, however, I am hopping a mail boat to Nassau, where I recently walked through a condemned, half-demolished, seemingly bombed-out airport—a quarter-mile ruin of concrete and linoleum that for some reason every visitor must traverse on the way from the tarmac to the adjacent, newly constructed airport’s customs.

Among the plywood partitions that corralled us through this tropical interregnum, one caught glimpses of the old Kmart-sized departures waiting area, once a chaos of sunburned white children with cornrows that now held only window-lit acres of blue vinyl chairs covered with concrete dust, some of the rows toppled aside for equipment. A thatch-roofed kiosk that once sold rum and rum cakes was now piled with Sawzalls and extension cord. At the back of the room were various food vendors, stripped and gutted save for their pastel counters and molding. The cooling was off, of course, the bay windows tapped out, and the swelling humidity alone was enough to cast the place out of time. Birds flitted through the rafters, as they always had, only now the entire building seemed to quaver with their flapping.

Out the right side of our open-air corral lay flimsy terminals that had been knocked off their stilts and literally wadded on the tarmac, like smashed cigarette butts.

All I had to do, I thought during my quarter-mile slog to customs, diaper bag slipping from my shoulder, car seat banging against the back of my knee, was slip through the wooden partitions and stroll into the yawning, window-lit stillness and there drowse away a cowardly life: strolling hallways and backways and climbing about like a monkey as the tranquil tropical depression gradually queered my mind, marking time by the soothing rumble of jets, occasionally crawling under any number of counters where one could lie down with a thrilling certainty of never being found.

Them's Our Boys

2011-06-01T10:10:00.001-04:00

If you get a second today, go take a look at all the good stuff attending our man Ryan Ridge's new book, Hunters & Gamblers, out soon from Dark Sky. The video is a gem.

And if you got a few minutes, you can check out this live wire of a story by Jared Yates Sexton, too.

BULLshot: Todd McKie

2011-05-25T13:21:00.002-04:00

BULL: So—which one of these in "Sweet Revenge" is real? Or closest to it? Or if none, why not?

TM: My favorite beverage these days is half orange juice, half seltzer, no ice. I traded in the glass of red wine—Glass? Hell, let’s have six!—for this concoction a couple of years back. Figured I’d run enough alcohol, in one form or another, through my system to last a lifetime. I still love the smell of wine and often ask my wife if I can, please, smell her wine. It sounds like I’m asking for a sexual favor.

Can I still be a real man if I drink sissy drinks? I never acquired a taste for whiskey and, except for a brief infatuation with gin and tonics, never liked the taste of the hard stuff. Never was nuts for beer, neither.

Focus. BULL wants to know about the writing of “Sweet Revenge,” not your whole tedious alcoholic history. They have a BULLshot tradition wherein you mention what you’re drinking while you’re answering the question about the story they just published, then you move on.

Okay, it’s late morning here in damp and dreary, when-is-springtime-coming Boston and I’m drinking my third cup of coffee. Maybe I’m avoiding answering the question. My shrink told me recently that I’m an avoider. I told her I didn’t want to talk about it.

I swear I never performed any of the vengeful deeds depicted in the story. There were, in an earlier draft, a couple of sections that came closer to actual experience than the ones I kept. For instance, there was a section about getting dumped by a woman named Carole and then calling up her sister for a date. The sister says, “What, are you nuts? Wait’ll I tell Carole!”

That almost happened, but it’s tangled in my brainpan with a memory from when I was sixteen and my girlfriend Sandy—who didn’t, for some reason, want to make out every single second we were together—caught me necking with her younger, prettier sister in the basement of their home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I’ll bet that taught Sandy a valuable life lesson, but I hope she hasn’t become a strung-out prostitute with bad skin sitting on a sad and filthy bed somewhere. That would be really ~~satisfying~~ unfortunate.

But, whoa, I’m telling about something that isn’t even in the story!

What in the story is real? My wife is not Louise or Carla, but she is an avid gardener. She’s out in her garden pruning and fertilizing things night and day. Call me a racist, but I’m not crazy about cats. I’ve never understood, either, why someone would advertise their alma mater on clothing or bumper stickers—Be Here Now, for christ’s sake! I once found a long-abandoned pair of panties under a sofa cushion. When I had a dog I talked to him. A lot. Macramé gives me the creeps. I really do have a friend named Jerry. I never drank infected monkey blood, but I was bitten by a monkey at the Philadelphia Zoo.

One of the things I enjoy about writing is the chance to be someone else. I can, slapping away at the keyboard, be a disturbed vet with an unfortunate tattoo, a teenage girl who wishes she were Fiona Apple, a cheerful dead man, a single mom in a tornado. Or a clueless guy with a fear of commitment and a real knack for revenge. I try to find a true voice and then lie like crazy.

Is it time for a glass of orange juice and seltzer? Maybe just one. Oh, and make it a double. I can stop anytime I want.

New in the Horns: “Sweet Revenge”

2011-05-18T13:20:00.001-04:00

There might be 50 ways to leave your lover, but Todd McKie has nailed it down to the 9 most memorable. To continue our Lonesome Issue, this week BULL brings you “Sweet Revenge”, a story about slamming the door on failed relationships, and a man who acts on what others dare to dream, for better or worse.

New in the Horns: “Maintenance”

2011-05-04T09:21:00.000-04:00

Publishing men's fiction comes much more naturally than stumping for votes. So today we’re glad to be back in the business of sharing the stories of our Lonesome Issue. In “Maintenance” by Jacob White we know the house is flooded and we know there’s a job to be done—what we don’t know is who exactly is in charge here. Even the dog seems concerned. Now if we could just remember where we left those wrenches...

BULL Salutes You!

2011-05-03T17:12:00.002-04:00

I'd like to send our deepest thanks to all who voted and promoted BULL in the Dockers "Wear the Pants" Contest last week. Thanks to our loyal fanbase and a number of new supporters we finished a strong, solid second with close to 3,000 votes. We received goodwill and endorsements from proud men's concerns like Art of Manliness and the Good Men Project, lit and culture outlets like HTML Giant and Impose, and a number of damn fine authors like Mr. Chuck Palahniuk and Matt Bell among others, as well as our main man in the trenches, Mel Bosworth.

Thanks to all for showing your support for Men's Fiction. We may not have the money, but we still have the drive. And we always will.

VOTE BULL! Final Week for 100K in Funding!

2011-04-25T14:02:00.001-04:00

BULL is now one of five finalists up to win 100K in funding through Dockers' (Levi's) "Wear the Pants" Contest. It's an unprecedented sum for a lit journal, and an unprecedented chance for the literary community to show its strength in numbers.

WE NEED YOUR VOTES—one a day, every day this week. Here's why you should care about this and take action:

Your votes are a statement—that reading and writing matter, that journals and small presses are deserving of funding, that stories are important to people and their authors should be compensated.
The money will go straight to writers. No one's getting a salary out of this. All funds go towards expanding BULL as a journal and small press. This funding will go into the pocket of artists like you.
The exposure will bolster independent and online fiction, engaging and informing the public of what's happening on all these pages, on all these sites. Independent literature is too good to be kept a secret. We want to make more readers in the world, and we're starting with men.

This is not a handout, not a Kickstarter campaign, and we're not asking for a dime. All you have to do is click a button on Facebook. Those clicks alone can create a paying fiction magazine, one with a proven commitment to working closely with writers and building editor/author relationships.

The opportunity is unprecedented! This is the first time a journal and small press can be founded and well-funded simply by enough people clicking their mouse.

If this is your first time voting, you'll have to "allow" the voting app and "like" Dockers. There will be boilerplate permission notices, but I assure you it's legit. Dockers sees only your most basic profile info—what's already public, what any old stranger can see. They won't use it for evil and they won't bombard with you ads. It's a legitimate contest through a legitimate company.

Dockers is Levi's, and Levi's is Levi's. If '49ers trusted it during the Gold Rush, so can you today. Do not let skepticism keep you from this opportunity.

A chance like this comes along never. BULL wants to win this with, and for, the literary community. We can't do it without YOU. Just one click a day and you'll have done your part. Vote today, and every day through Sunday:

And don't forget to sign up for our brand-new BULL newsletter:

BULLshot: Paul Weidknecht

2011-04-20T12:45:00.002-04:00

BULL: Have you ever felt like Mor(t)on, and what is the worst job you’ve ever had?

PW: As I write this, the drinking situation is embarrassingly tame: iced tea. Diet iced tea. However, I will almost certainly graduate to coffee as the night progresses (caffeine = staying up to maybe 2 or 3 in the morning writing). Still, if a story is really working, then there is the distinct possibility of draining some homemade blackberry wine I procured while in the mountains of western North Carolina from an entrepreneurial fellow who must remain nameless, of course.

For sure, I’ve felt like Morton, and I think anyone who has had a handful of jobs on a resume and several decades of living has as well. Becoming a ‘Morton’ is easy when an employee is new, and it can be one swift movement from new worker to idiot-worker-who-will-never-get-this-job-right with a mistake early in the learning curve of any job. This, of course, disappears the moment someone is hired after you. To say the least, the perception of peers plays a big part in a new employee’s labeling process. The boss can be your guarantor for so long, but in time it will come down to your coworker’s opinions, and they will eventually get to your boss. Sorry to be so uplifting. Perhaps this is why I write—alone.

I think mortonization can also occur when the employee doesn’t see a future in what he/she is doing, as the constant dreaming of being somewhere else or of pursuing something else will inevitably affect the job at hand. Years back, I worked for a car rental company. I didn’t want to rent cars and didn’t see a future in it, but I needed the scratch. My job performance suffered because I was always thinking of something else and I got written up three times. So while almost every other person in the office was discussing the last time the oil had been changed in the Plymouth Reliant-K (yeah, it was that long ago), I was thinking of the best way to get over the fence without the towers seeing me. If caught in this situation yourself, you might find the reaction from coworkers to be (either said or unsaid) the ever-popular, "So, you think you’re better than us?" And to this you can answer, "No, but I’d like to try to be better."

The worst job. Let me choose between the rack and the breaking wheel. I have had some frustrating jobs—mason’s laborer, insurance salesman, supervisor for a contract security company—and they all have spawned moments that would qualify as worst. Tarring a foundation on a ninety-five degree day; closing a twelve hundred dollar sale at night only to have the person back out the next morning with a 9 AM call to the office; and too many with the security company to even narrow it down to the twenty worst. I guess all jobs have that one task that makes a person reconsider why they filled out an application in the first place. Not long ago I was driving on the interstate in a cold pouring rain, on the way back home from another state. I saw a line of about thirty tractor trailers backed up in the weigh station and extended onto the interstate. In the downpour, a saturated state trooper stood at the driver’s side window logging the trucks on a clipboard. The computer must have gone down. He probably hadn’t thought that was going to be part of the job.

Anyway, I write now. It can be frustrating and the mass of rejections can be avalanche-like, but when the creative process is pumping, it is truly satisfying in a way I imagine very few vocations can claim. By the way, if you’re in need of a writer, feel free visit my website, www.paulweidknecht.com, and shoot me an email. I promise that if you hire me I’ll never write an article about how bad the job was—just make sure the check clears and that if the time ever comes to fire me, it’s well past 9 AM when you call.

BULL Calls for Stories with a Woman's Touch

2011-04-18T10:17:00.000-04:00

Last week my wife and I had our second child, a daughter. This is the biggest of deals for me, coming from a family where men outnumber women four to one, and my mother being a pretty rugged broad herself.

So to celebrate our brand new addition—Charlotte Kapena Ku Haley (my wife's part Hawaiian)—I plan to give the next issue of BULL a feminine angle. This means men's stories by woman authors (it has been done, here and here), stories told or informed from a woman's point of view (like this here—one of my favorites), and of course, fathers and daughters (but try not to scare me too much).

There's plenty of other ways to spin it, and it's always nice to be surprised. So ladies, be in touch. And fellas, get in touch too—with your feminine side.

New in the Horns: “Mor(t)on”

2011-04-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

Sales aren’t great, the team doesn’t much care for him, and the workplace chairs are rickety. “Mor(t)on” by Paul Weidknecht is a story about one man tormented by office gossip and groupthink, and doomed to attend PowerPoint conferences -- but just you try to keep Morton down.

Will Write for Tobacco

2011-04-08T09:06:00.000-04:00

A BULL guest post by Caleb J. Ross

Below is a letter I wrote to Drew Estate cigars in hopes that they would sponsor me as a writer. I received no response.

Dear Mr. Estate,

When I was a child, my grandfather showed me a magazine photograph of Hemingway reading a newspaper. A cigar pierced his beard, framed by an easy, unassuming grin. The photo charmed me even then. My youth allowed a strange captivation with the gray, hazy smoke; I remember the way it overlaid Hemingway’s beard and hair, becoming as much a part of the man as the man himself.

The association would return years later. College writing courses brought back the name, and with it, the cigar. You were there with me, Drew Estate, when I first adopted the pen in my early college days, channeling Hemingway, adding that remembered posture to my growing bank of guises. I discovered a few of my own supporting poses as well: the ‘legs-crossed slow-drag’ when reading impressive-looking novels, the ‘quick pull prior to delivering insight’ when arguing with other, equally green freshmen. And of course, the ‘lonely man slouched on his front steps at 3 am’ posture, most commonly practiced after heavy nights of drinking, having exhausted poses one and two.

I was an awkward, unpolished freshman and Drew Estate played an integral role in sculpting my identity. Though as I matured, so did my reasons for keeping you lit. You became a staple: paper, check; pen, check; cigar, check. That first draw and sweet smell became less a social badge and more of a Pavlovian appetizer en route my current personality: aficionado willing to write for free cigars.

Therefore, Mr. Estate, if you are still reading this, you must either 1) assume I am an idiot for thinking the ‘Estate’ in Drew Estate is a last name, or 2) are intrigued enough not to care. So where does this leave us? Though you surely don’t need me to craft your good name (my voice is meek, your reputation huge), I feel we could still enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship wherein a few social crannies, as well as my mouth, are filled with your product.

I propose this: in exchange for free cigars (at a frequency to be determined) I will 1) continue to spread the gospel of Drew Estate among the literary community and 2) devote select future writings, and perhaps an entire collection, to cigars, with a specific focus on Drew Estate.

An icon of cigar culture such as Drew Estate supporting an up-and-coming writer such as myself would surely make for good publicity, a noble melding of the intellectual act of letters with the intellectual appeal of the cigar. I look forward to your response.

If I do not hear from you within the month, I will send a similar letter to Swisher Sweets. They also taste good.

Thanks for all,

Caleb J. Ross

This is a guest post by Caleb J Ross as part of his Stranger Will Tour for Strange blog tour. His goal is to post at a different blog every few days beginning with the release of his novel, Stranger Will, in March 2011 to the release of his second novel, I Didn’t Mean to Be Kevin, in November 2011. If you have connections to any type of lit blog, professional journal or personal site, please contact him. To follow this tour, subscribe to the Caleb J Ross blog RSS feed. Follow Caleb on Twitter @calebjross or friend him on Facebook: Facebook.com/rosscaleb

BULLshot: Chad Simpson

2011-04-06T09:41:00.000-04:00

BULL: In "Potential", why did you make the Number One Draft Pick a catcher?

CS: It’s late, BULL. I taught a fiction workshop tonight from 7:30 until midnight, and after I got home, I cleaned the kitchen. It’s just after one now. I’ve poured myself a Maker’s Mark on the rocks. The bottle was almost gone, so I made it a double and stuffed the empty in the recycling bin.

I played baseball from the time I was five until the end of my freshman year of college. I played other sports in the off-season, but baseball was always on my mind, even throughout those terrible Indiana winters, when it was hard to remember what the field looked like beneath so much mud and snow. I gave up baseball when I was nineteen, and then three or four years later I was talking to the woman I would end up marrying about her sister, who had also been good at sports. My wife said something about how her sister was a very creative person but that she spent that creativity on the basketball court. Even though I had been writing daily since giving up baseball, it had never occurred to me that I had been doing something “creative” all those years I’d spent out at shortstop, or roaming centerfield, or standing atop the pitcher’s mound.

I’d always claimed that baseball players were the smartest athletes, even though I doubted it was true, and after I started thinking about things, I realized just how much creativity I’d put toward baseball before I’d given it up. I thought about all the little routines I’d employed, about all of the visualizing I’d done. People who prefer basketball or football like to claim that baseball is boring, but it’s never really boring if you’re engaged with it on a pitch-by-pitch basis, as a fan or when you’re out there on the field. There are just so many things going on. Each half inning, each game, is a story, however slowly or quickly it unfolds.

Which brings me to that question you asked: I made the Number One Draft Pick a catcher because catchers usually know more than anybody outside the manager what’s going on in a game at any given time. When the clean-up hitter steps into the batter’s box with a runner on first, the catcher knows what happened the last time he was at the plate, and they’re already kind of anticipating what might happen the next time he comes up in another inning or two. In short, catchers are smart. They are never not thinking.

This character of mine doesn’t necessarily come off as smart, at least off the field, but he’s starting to make the right kinds of connections. He’s starting to see the way there are threads running through everything, connecting event to event the way those seams on a baseball stitch two ordinary pieces of leather into something amazing.

New in the Horns: "Potential"

2011-03-30T10:20:00.000-04:00

The Major League Baseball season has just about arrived, which means summer can’t be far off. While you’re waiting for the chilly spring air to give way to warm breezes at the ballpark, we offer a preamble to that first pitch -- Chad Simpson’s “Potential” -- a story about baseball’s Number One Draft Pick.

On Pant-Wearing

2011-03-23T17:50:00.000-04:00

No post this week, gang. We're too busy wearing our pants, or at least assembling an essay for the contest, and wearing pants while doing so. Back next week for baseball season. See you then.

BULL is moving on!

2011-03-21T14:02:00.000-04:00

BULL has made it through to Round Two of the Dockers "Wear the Pants"Contest! Your votes put us among the Top 50 who now have to make a case by essay to be chosen as a Top 5 finalist. Cheers to all who voted, and to those who for some reason didn't, we'll be counting on you in the finals...

Thanks again!

New in the Horns: "Communication with Distant Life Forms"

2011-03-17T09:52:00.000-04:00

You know how it is with aliens--sometimes you get abducted, sometimes you just wish you were. We'll let you decide the case in Josh Peterson's "Communication with Distant Life Forms", our print bonus in the new Lonesome Issue. Single issues are available here, and subscribers should have it by the weekend. And in the words of our Alien Encounter Support Group moderator: keep looking up.

Editor's Note: On Loneliness

2011-03-09T14:03:00.008-05:00

When I first thought of adding editor’s notes to BULL I anticipated that writing this intro to our upcoming "Lonesome Issue" would be easy. It is not. Most worthwhile writing is never easy, though the same could be said for that which is not worthwhile too, and as to where this falls on the spectrum… we’ll see. But composing this note on loneliness is made especially difficult now, given that the past two weeks have brought me more daily interaction with people than I’ve had in the past two years.

You may know that BULL is currently in the throes of a contest, one that takes place on everyone’s favorite social network. It is there that I’ve been living and lobbying for support and votes throughout much of every day. While it has been a welcome means of procrastinating this essay, now that the time has come I must say it's hard to write on loneliness while exchanging daily messages with thirty some-odd people. Granted, these messages are brief and contest-based: a vote here, a vote there, everyone watching and willing their ticker to go up. But there is an almost subliminal effect in receiving these notes and seeing these familiar faces every day, even if that note is really just a number, and even though that face is just a profile picture. Because the fact is that there are people behind those pictures, and they are people I would never have had the occasion to “meet” if not for this strange, addictive, and overall infectious effort we’re all involved in.

I’ve never really understood how relationships can be made online, but over the course of this Facebook fiasco I think I’m starting to. It begins with repetition, which gives way to a slightly more sincere familiarity, and finally lends an odd sense that you can really count on someone to be there, wherever there may be on the web. The whole thing has even made me question the scare-quotes I tend to put around the concept of “meeting” someone online. I give ‘em a year more, at the most.

Ah, forget it. They’re ugly. They’re gone.

BULL was begun in large part as a means of meeting people, and as such, preventing loneliness. There were other, more professional reasons touched on here, but personally, in January of 2009 I was facing a protracted period of solitude in which nearly everyone I knew had left town, my neighbor and closest remaining friend had died, and I was expecting my first child, who I would care for while my wife started a new job. I knew some kind of interactive outlet would be necessary or I’d go off my homebound, bottle-feeding rocker. What I sought to do was meet other writers, read and respond thoughtfully to their writing, work closely with them on their stories and present those stories to a kindred audience.

Looking back, well, it worked. 2 years, 8 generous volunteers, 57 authors, a few thousand submissions and all you readers later, we’ve come to this: the first time I feel compelled to get as sappy as I can in an editor’s note. All I really want to say here is this: I do appreciate everyone BULL has ever put me in contact with. It’s because of you that I’ve managed to keep more marbles than I’ve lost.

Not so for some of these fellas in the Lonesome Issue. Our offering this season is populated by men going it alone, and examines how they deal with it and what it drives them to. Next week we’re privileged to kick it off with a fine story by BULL’s very first author and perennial movie reviewer, Josh Peterson. From there we’ll see the springtime horns full of work by Chad Simpson, Paul Weidknecht, Jacob White, and Todd McKie. As this is the first issue prepared in advance, and arranged with a concrete theme in mind, I'm happy to feature a broad span of sentiment—stories wry and comic, abstract, heartbreaking as well as heartwarming. It all starts next week. We’ll see you then.

— JH

BULLshot: John Warner

2011-03-02T10:41:00.001-05:00

BULL: Have you ever been attracted to a monkey? Or vice-versa?

 JW: The Tim Burton version of Planet of Apes is a pretty terrible movie, probably one of the worst ever when weighed against the potential to be good, but I will admit that Helena Bonham Carter, as Ari, doesn’t look half bad, mostly because the chimp version of Helena Bonham Carter looks a lot like Helena Bonham Carter. On the vice-versa, I’ve never had a monkey attracted to me, but I have had one who was attracted to my stuff. My wife and I honeymooned in Kenya, and at one of our stops, the camp was essentially run by vervet monkeys who would sneak into your tent and ransack your things if you didn’t make sure to zip the opening completely closed. When we returned after dinner one night, the tent flap was open and once inside I saw one of the vervets holding my Discman (pre iPod days) above his head, shaking it like he was trying to jar something loose. When he saw us, he dashed it to the ground and sprinted from the tent. I think that incident probably became an inspiration for this particular story.

A Salute to Arnošt Lustig

2011-03-01T12:39:00.000-05:00

by Tim Chilcote

Czech author Arnošt Lustig died last week. Lustig was a renowned Jewish writer, teacher, friend of Czech authors and dignitaries, and a Holocaust survivor. During his 84 years, Arnošt witnessed the worst of men, yet chose to defy sadness and anger by living as happily and humbly as he could. His fiction and his life teach us to live better. I recommend his books Lovely Green Eyes and Darkness Casts No Shadow, and Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary film, “The Fighter”, about Arnošt and his friend Jan Weiner.

I had the good fortune to study with Arnošt in Prague, and serve as his teaching assistant during the summer of 2002. Arnošt’s spirit and positive outlook completely altered my worldview. He tackled life with a pleasure and vigor I had never witnessed and have not seen since. Arnošt appreciated life’s beautiful details, and he looked for the good in all people and situations. If he couldn’t find good, he’d invent it in his fiction.

Arnošt considered a good dirty joke to be the highest of narrative forms, and told wildly inappropriate jokes to anyone who would listen. He methodically stacked and shaped his food into square piles and cleaned every last crumb from his plates, a habit he picked up in the camps. Arnošt tenderly held hands with old friends as they walked together for coffee and pastries, and he flirted with girls young and old on subway rides. His spirit and humor put everyone at ease. He was at once a genius and a ham.

Arnošt took great pride in his ability to assess people quickly, a skill he learned out of necessity in the camps. He knew as soon as he met someone whether he would have liked to have been imprisoned with them. Arnošt gave me the greatest compliment of my life when he told me he knew on the first day of class that he would have liked to be with me in Auschwitz. That’s a lot to live up to. I intend to do so—happily.

Na zdravi, Arnošt, and thank you.

Tim Chilcote is BULL's Managing Editor.

BULL Calls to Action! VOTE!!

2011-02-24T17:46:00.003-05:00

This month begins BULL’s third year of operation. In those years we’ve grown considerably as a site, a journal, and as a community. To help keep up that growth, and to give it a massive shot in the arm, I’ve entered BULL into Dockers Facebook contest—where our success will depend on the mass support of our following, as well as the independent literary community at large.

Dockers pants is giving away 100K to fund a plan. BULL’s plan is and always has been this: to get men reading, and thinking about what words and stories can mean to their lives. As this is a male-oriented competition, and given the nature of what BULL does and hopes to do, I think we’re uniquely suited to throw our hat in the running.

So—I hope that we can count on you to vote for BULL, today, hell, every day, until March 15th. I ask for your help also in spreading the word about the effort: if you have a blog, blog it. If you tweet, tweet it. Re-Facebook it all you and your friends can stand, and use any and all other tech avenues that are out there nowadays.

Think: if word can catch on among our online/independent writing community, the result would be exponential. If enough people vote and promote, a very real and public message could be sent that reading and writing matters to people.

Maybe this kind of grassroots promotion is how you’ve found this letter, but for some reason you view BULL and this overall project with skepticism or cynicism. I only ask that you consider this: someone will win this contest, with a plan that has some kind of male-oriented angle. If you want to see this funding go toward the promotion of small presses, of readers and writers, of books and stories—if you care about fiction, you can make that sentiment known by casting a vote for us and spreading the word.

Of course I recognize the odds at play in a national competition like this, and I’m not blind to the outright commerciality of it either. To vote, one has to “like” Dockers and share information on Facebook. There’s always a catch. If you have reservations about that, I don’t blame you; I tend to be of that mind myself. But I think our managing editor best puts it in perspective: If someone doesn't trust khaki pants with their information, why in the world would they trust it to Facebook in the first place?

Any growth BULL has seen so far has been based largely on the good faith of our followers and the camaraderie of the independent writing community. Hopefully with your help we can achieve some resources, make a statement, and gain exposure for this community we’re proud to be a part of. We’re not asking for a handout, just support. All BULL needs is your clicks—as many of them as we can get.

Your vote for BULL is a vote for reading, a vote for writing, and a vote for this community. I hope we can count on it.

Thanks, as always,

Jarrett Haley

PS. Those subscribers to our social networking channels may see a marked push for this effort in the next two weeks. We’ll do our best not to annoy, and rest assured, it will end March 15th. Now go VOTE!

New in the Horns: "Monkey and Man"

2011-02-23T10:40:00.001-05:00

I think we can all agree that most murder mysteries lack one crucial element: talking monkeys. Not so in this week's "Monkey and Man" by John Warner, editor of everyone's favorite source for online satire, McSweeney's Internet Tendency. This story was last winter's print issue bonus, and if you caught it then you know how much an erudite monkey can open your mind, as well as your wallet.

BULLshot: David Ewald

2011-02-16T09:38:00.000-05:00

BULL: Now that Hosni Mubarak has ceded power to the military, what are your thoughts on the situation in Egypt?

DE: I don’t pretend to be any kind of expert on Egypt, but I can speak from personal experience. When I was there in Februrary of 2006, what struck me as odd was the intersection of tourism and dictatorship—a subtle tension. From the bus especially, it was impossible not to see these large mural-like portraits of Mubarak everywhere. At one point I remember a line of them on the side of the road, one followed by another, all identical. These portrait-murals made me think of Saddam Hussein and Kim Jong-il, two definite dictators who did not have the good fortune of a multi-billion dollar tourism industry aiding their countries’ economies.

On the bus I thought it strange that I was witnessing a dictator’s personality cult, and yet I was a tourist. I couldn’t be a tourist in Iraq or North Korea—at least not in the way I could in Egypt.

I felt guilty then, guilty for what I saw as essentially giving money to a dictatorship. I felt partly responsible for and complicit in the people's oppression I felt on the streets and in the cabs. I thought, If this is the way we give money to Egypt…. Of course the U.S. government gives plenty of money to Egypt that’s not through tourism. Still, the pyramids aren’t going away any time soon, and it’ll be interesting to see how the U.S. responds to Egypt’s new leadership. Will tourism continue as it has? I wonder if it may be curtailed. Certainly those portraits of Mubarak will have to come down.

I strongly believe that if Mubarak had not given up control the military would have done to him what they did to Sadat in 1981. Thirty years is a long time. I’m happy for the Egyptian people, those who took to the streets to force this outcome.

New in the Horns: 500 Kilometers to Cairo, Pt. 2

2011-02-02T12:53:00.002-05:00

This week we finish up David Ewald's "500 Kilometers to Cairo" with Part 2, here. We last left our touring couple with a relationship headed for the rocks, and this week the culture clash meets a gross case of American hubris before everything finally shakes down. More unrest on the streets of Egypt, as the political turns personal.

New in the Horns: "500 Kilometers to Cairo"

2011-01-26T10:05:00.001-05:00

A year ago we capped off BULL's first International Series with a bonus story of love and tourism by David Ewald, "500 Kilometers to Cairo". This week we're posting that story online, and given the protests and general unrest going on there in the past days, it seems all the more appropriate. Part 2 comes next week, we'll see you then.

Goosed: The TSA Patdown Experience

2011-01-19T11:04:00.003-05:00

A BULL review by Max Campbell

I have heard that in this post 9-11 world the most dangerous thing to a nation’s security is a young man from the ages of 20 to 35, unkempt, unmarried, and thereby unanchored to anything that might make him think twice about blowing himself up for a cause. Outwardly, I look the part—I am of those ages; I am unkempt and I certainly don’t look anchored to anything. I also like to go out at night, which means that when I fly somewhere I do so with dark circles under my eyes and a four-day beard on my profile-fitting face.

Needless to say, I’m pretty familiar with airport security procedures. My bags have often been subject to the high-tech Q-Tip that swabs for bomb residue, and I’m definitely no stranger to the good ol’ pat-downs of the past—a light brushing and squeezing of the extremities—nothing disagreeable, maybe even a little bit agreeable.

But over this past holiday season I got a taste of the new TSA measures, the ones causing so much uproar. I'm sure everyone knows the choice travelers are now given: either stand in an X-ray box that purportedly takes X-rated pictures beneath your clothes, or submit to a body search that stops just short of the major cavities.

As fate would have it, on the day of my flight the X-ray machines were broken. Given my track record with airport security, I knew I was destined for a pat-down like none I’ve ever experienced. I took it in stride as I stepped beltless and sock-footed through the metal detectors, and was thereupon diverted to the saddest-looking corner of LAX security, manned by two equally downtrodden officials wearing latex gloves.

"Sir, you have been selected to participate in our enhanced pat-down."

It was a nice spin on it, I thought: selected to participate. Like I had won something. Or as if Rod Roddy had just invited me to Come on down!

"We will be searching every part of your body. Please spread your legs and hold your arms out at your sides."

Hearing this, I was at least thankful he wasn’t wielding anything like Bob Barker’s sinister, painfully probe-shaped microphone.

It began as a pat-down pretty much like any other: up and down the arms, in the pit, around the collar and down the chest, up the flanks and back down the back. But these are all areas I’d be hard-pressed to hide anything; I was surprised he didn’t check my belly button—the body’s built-in stash hole.

Then he knelt and things got serious. Down each leg, front and back. As I was left alone up top, I couldn’t help notice other travelers watching my new TSA paramour, a few of them wearing looks of disgust, as if witnessing something illicit going on in this sad corner. My man was now rounding the ankles, where he paused. Like any gentleman, he was saving the sensitive areas for the end.

Classically, there are two professions in which a man is granted access to another man’s undercarriage: doctors and tailors. TSA officials now make it a reluctant trifecta. My inspector traveled swiftly up the inseam—a path many tailors have trod—then the upper thigh, then the upper-upper thigh. We were approaching doctor territory, yet before he went any higher, he glanced up to catch my gaze. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. It was a noticeable "I'm sorry" look, a silent apology with the eyes, which is something that I am sure they are forbidden from doing verbally. The look was just enough to distract me from the main moment—an efficient testicle-swipe with one hand, and with the other, a wedge of pressure down my backside. Two seconds and it was over, and when all was said and done, it’s fair to say that the look I noticed was more uncomfortable than the procedure itself.

When someone becomes a doctor, they know in advance they’re going to be performing bodily maintenance on people, and they get paid handsomely for it. Tailors, likewise, know what’s required of their job. And that's the million-dollar difference that comes with these new TSA procedures: the people who are now obliged to explore your crevasses are the same people getting the same paycheck that they did before all these new procedures were enforced. We didn’t sign up for a fondle, but they didn’t sign up for it either. They aren't some new batch of depraved feel-up artists; they probably hate this more than we do.

And that’s why when it was all over for me, when I had put on my belt and shoes and was headed to the airport bar for a calming pint, I looked back at my pat-down man in that sad corner, and I felt sympathy. Most likely that man took his TSA job years ago intending to touch forearms and swab bags and wave a metal detector around, all while keeping his distance. Now he’s on his knees grabbing groins so we can all fly safely.

I say give ‘em a break. Like it or not, this is what’s required in the modern age, and we should learn to deal with it, just like the TSA has to. So I got goosed by a stranger. It lasted a moment and at least I was on my way home afterwards with a beer in me to make it all right. As I walked out of the bar and looked back towards security, I knew there stood a man who had a thousand more crotches to grapple with before he was able clock out and do the same.

Contributing Editor Max Campbell lives in Montreal, Quebec, and while airport security thinks he has something to hide, he's actually a pretty nice and open guy.

Don Draper and the Perils of the 21st Century

2011-01-12T10:13:00.001-05:00

A BULL editorial by Jared Yates Sexton

I think about Don Draper a lot. This is something common to men of my generation, the twenty and thirty-somethings of this country. We talk about Don Draper, about his conquests and how he seemingly bends the world to his will, how we wish we were him and how sweet it'd be to live in the ‘60s and watch the times a-changin'.

All this fixation on Draper makes me wonder why it is he's become so important to men in the present day. For one, there are very few instances when popular culture really engages and captivates the thinking man. We've long been offered television and music and movies that celebrate the mediocre and uninspiring: the insipid action-blockbusters, most all of pop music, the brainless, bumbling sitcoms and so many permutations of criminal procedurals.

But there's something different about Mad Men. There's hope to be found there and in a handful of other shows like Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, and The Walking Dead. These programs have something important to say and do so in a thought-provoking manner, but their strength is not only in compelling storytelling or unflinching aesthetics. These shows, and Mad Men particularly, are appealing to modern men because they feature dynamic male protagonists who are confident, forceful, and ultimately, effective.

Let's look at Don. He has a somewhat classic American mythology: the son of an alcoholic and a prostitute, who pulled himself up by the proverbial bootstraps and sculpted himself into an affluent, stylish icon. He has flaws to go around--a philanderer, a drunk for all intents and purposes, and a chronic liar, but these vices do little to hold him back from what he aspires to. While the world transforms around him, and culture continually evolves, he adapts to the changing times and ultimately overcomes them.

Here in the present things are no less changing and uncertain. The economy is at a slow crawl, the country is saddled by debt, and the environment is wilting as we stand by and watch. We have two wars going on halfway around the world, and back home the threat of terrorism obliges us to choose which civil liberties we’re most willing to cede. And if all this weren't enough, the men and women elected to deal with the big issues instead engage in daily scraps that would shame a child in their pettiness. Each week the polls tell us what we already know--we have no confidence in these people to make the huge and sweeping decisions necessary to pull us out of our tailspin.

There's no denying life is hard, but that's always been the case. The ‘60s were no better, of course. We picture it as a decade of dreaming and experimentation, when the Beatles and Dylan floated through the air and stale mores were challenged and discarded. We see men dressed in suits and fedoras, smoking and drinking as if the party would never end. The reality, of course, is different. Women and minorities struggled for their seat at the table, civil unrest threatened cities and homes, and an even more blatantly unjust conflict raged in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Still we build up the past and glorify it, reminisce blindly about a time we never experienced because that era, in retrospect, had purpose and direction. Likewise, maybe we lionize Don Draper because he is serious in a way that we, and more importantly--our culture, is not. Where others bicker over trivialities, Don is focused on whatever the goal is at the moment. While we wring our hands and dread the repercussions of drawing any hard line in the dirt, Don is self-assured in a way that enables progress.

But we men of this age aren't ready, or willing, perhaps, to do this. We prefer our decisions and sacrifices to be handled by others more suited to the task. It’s as if we're waiting for Don Draper to come and save us from the 21st century. We're waiting for him to pay our debt like it's a round of drinks at a smoky Manhattan bar. We need him there, smiling that composed grin of his, while everything crumbles behind him. And, most of all, we need him to tell us--in a voice that commands attention--that everything is all right. That he's going to get on the phone and make some calls. Not emails, not texts. Calls.

But Don isn't real. He's a silhouette, forever slung back on that office couch of his. We are the descendants of those nervous souls who knocked on his door seeking direction, only there isn't a door to knock on and there never has been. There is only a hard world of challenges and concession and the considerably softer escape of childishness. God help us if we can't step up to the bar. God help us if we can't all be Don Draper.

Contributing Editor Jared Yates Sexton is an Assistant Professor at Ball State University.

BULLshot: Gary Percesepe

2011-01-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

BULL: In "Wingman", Sam R is an eye surgeon and our guy is a house painter who finds a memorable way to quit his job; what's the best/worst job you've ever quit?

GP: I made Sam R an eye surgeon in this story because I'm interested in the inner life of doctors, especially surgeons, who sit at the top of the heap in the medical profession. I am fascinated by surgeons. What do they do? They cut things. They saw and sever and burn and laser human flesh and condition themselves to not feel the pain they inflict on others, because, ironically, to feel the pain and damage they inflict would make them poor at what they do. Thus, they put themselves at risk every day of becoming unfeeling for the sake of the "greater good," even as their profession tears at their own humanity. They are beasts, in a way. The same qualities that make them "the good doctor" make them poor at being human. Wives of surgeons deserve their own Pantheon of Honor. Ann Beattie is a good friend and I love the story she published in The New Yorker a while back called "Coping Stones". The story is about an aging Dr. Cahill who is clueless about his own life and marriage, though it is continually signifying. I loved the idea of Sam R as an eye surgeon who is blind (a trope as old as Oedipus Rex or the gospel of John), particularly when it comes to women.

As for me and great jobs I have left, I walked away from a tenured position as a professor of philosophy. Philosophers occupy the top floor of the academic ivory tower (up there with the theoretical physicists), and in my case I was teaching social & political philosophy, waxing eloquent daily on the inherent contradictions and legitimation crises of late capitalism, and I kind of talked myself out of the academy, and went out onto the streets. I became a community organizer and a peace and justice activist, headed up an international peace organization, worked as a social justice minister in a progressive church supporting marriage equality and feeding the hungry--all things that I had talked a good game about, but had somehow neglected to do when I was an academic. I don't miss the terrible academic infighting and stultifying department meetings, but I sure as hell miss the students, and the way, sometimes, we would get launched into a conversation that opened up the room, lifted the roof and seemed to soar into the stratosphere, as questions were asked that opened onto the meanings of our lives, that put us into question, and that lull that came, the space of awe and silence, when we realized how far we had traveled, and how strange the familiar had become. Teaching was sexy. I'm saying I miss the students every day.

We're Hibernating

2010-12-29T11:45:00.000-05:00

See you next week.

The Living and the Dead (Writers)

2010-12-17T13:54:00.000-05:00

Tim and I wrote an article recently about some live authors that are picking up where dead ones left off. It is up now at The Art of Manliness, a fine site for men in its own right.

Check it out now and get your two cents in!

BULL represents, Pt. 2

2010-12-15T14:33:00.000-05:00

BULLmen making the rounds again: Ryan Ridge with a quick little ditty up at Stymie, and your fair editor writes a western, more or less, over at Dzanc Books' The Collagist.

Go forth!

BULLshot: Jon Morgan Davies

2010-12-15T11:33:00.001-05:00

BULL: Did you spend any time in these virtual worlds as research for this story? What'd you think?

JMD: Alas, I'm strictly on a dial-up connection here, so my Internet isn't fast enough to allow me to experience these sort of online worlds. I think the germ for "Heart," however, first came from news stories about people living off the proceeds from their lives in these places, about terrorists blowing up buildings on one of these sites, and . . . about one of Georgia's universities opening an affiliate in one of these worlds. You really could live online. I think that fact is part of why I've kept to dial-up; I fear I'd end up spending way too much time in places like these, as they sound fascinating.

My drink: Silver Patron with lime.

New in the Horns: "The Heart Is A Strong Instrument"

2010-12-08T10:03:00.000-05:00

This week BULL goes where it never has before, courtesy of "The Heart Is A Strong Instrument" by Jon Morgan Davies. It's probably our bloodiest story to date (if you can call that blood), and features our most sadistic women as well (if you can call them women).

BULL represents

2010-12-06T12:26:00.001-05:00

This week over at 5 Chapters our man Ben Jahn has a piece called "Runways", a stepdad serial. Easy reading - just a few paragraphs a day. And goddamn does this thing move.

And in case you missed it, (like I did, 'cause no one told me), our own JY Sexton was also over in Hobart last month, with a fiery one.

But be sure to get back here Wednesday. We got something good...

BULLshot: John Oliver Hodges

2010-12-01T11:13:00.000-05:00

BULL: Our man in "Pollen" seems proud of his Cherokee blood; what kind of ancestry would you most like to have?

JOH: I would love to be a full-blooded Cherokee maiden in distress, it is true, but only while at the same time living my life as a poor overworked tomato farmer with six kids and a starving wife in some little known rural hamlet in Texas. That would be great, if I were those people. As those people I would live ignored, exploited, pitied or despised, while all the while being a black tyke with tall hair in a powder blue shack in Birmingham. Lately I’ve wished pretty heartily for my ancestry to be Chinese, but each day when I wake up I find that I am only the same tall white guy that I’ve always been.

5 Answers to 6 Questions

2010-11-29T14:47:00.000-05:00

A while back a fellow named Jim Harrington asked me six questions and I did my best to answer them but kind of skirted one, maybe more. It was that kind of day. Q and A's alike can be found here, if you're interested.

New in the Horns: "Pollen"

2010-11-24T12:36:00.000-05:00

So, it may be the wrong time of year to have a story like John Oliver Hodges' "Pollen" up in the horns, and I haven't got anything very Thanksgiving-y to say about it. But I will say this: The world, in all its grand and mysterious wisdom, can certainly inseminate itself in very uncomfortable ways. I think you'll see what I mean...

BULL Wants You at Your Best

2010-11-17T13:00:00.000-05:00

On the heels of our site redesign I've been rethinking how BULL should run in general. Of the goals I have in mind, the foremost is to assemble enough material to eventually work an issue in advance. I figure this will allow for a greater cohesion between stories, maybe even centered around a theme if one should arise. Naturally, this requires a bunch more submissions, and to that end I offer here a few reasons why you should submit your best work to BULL and feel great about it:

Ample, uncluttered exposure. Our (your) stories live six weeks, at least, in the homepage horns. And since we're rolling weekly, for two weeks of that time you're the newest, brightest star. Feels good, right? Moreover, it's just three of you up there. You and two others. This is for a reason, gang--I want to keep each of our stories fresh and distinct, not part of some grand static buffet that invites readers to try a bit then move on to the next. A story is an entrée here or, at the very least, its own course. And they are presented, visually and temporally, so that they will be read, not just tasted.

On that note, have you ever noticed that issues of some mags are nothing but a list of names? Names! What about the work?! It just seems off to me, and though it may be nitpicky, it's the reason why the stories come first here, with authors italicized underneath.

Stories we don't select still get a honest read. And for now, before things get too cuckoo, we're trying to give you something back on that read. Sometimes quite a bit, sometimes just one sentence amid other boilerplate letterness, but we make an effort to respond to you personally and directly, to explain our reasoning about your work or at least give a worthwhile thought on it.

You and your story get a bright, wide spotlight. Each piece that goes in the horns gets its own unique blog plug, an introduction, say--it's more or less a Rod Serling moment on my part, and I admit I can sometimes be as corny as the guy himself. But we consider a new story something of an event and like to attend to them as such. You also get an author interview, the BULLshot, one question so we can all get our kicks and get back to our lives. And where else are you invited to have a little drink while answering? If you choose to partake, we figure you deserve it.

We're not raging testosteroid garbage. I really don't know who is or might be, but it ain't us. As a magazine, our tone is steered toward the frank and direct, with some flair here or there, maybe a little pepper on it or otherwise a whole lot of gravy. I confess I don't know what the latter half of this blather means, but I'll say this: we try for smarts without pretension, a suitable ratio of brains to balls.

We look damn good now. And we're only getting better.

Finally, I say all this not in opposition to other fiction venues out there; I'm impressed and humbled by a number of outfits and it's for that reason I'm looking to ramp up the BULL game. My purpose here is to outline and highlight what all we do at BULL with the writer and the work in mind, and to get you motivated to send us your best work. Your best, folks--no more holding out. If you want in on all this, check out our archives if you haven't already, then submit here, and we'll be waiting.

We Clean Up Well

2010-11-10T09:21:00.000-05:00

We've straightened up our act a little--no longer adrift in a sea of beige, no more defaulting sans-serif fonts for those not privy to our Caslon. We were cleaning up for the new year, but the first wave of our debut has come a little early. Let us know what you think! And since there's always glitches to be had across browsers, let us know too if anything looks funky...

BULLshot: Paul Kavanagh

2010-11-03T09:37:00.000-04:00

BULL: Have you ever boxed like our brothers in "A Joke from Penury"?

PK: When we were kids this is exactly how we boxed. It was great fun. Kids can endure a lot more pain than adults. Before boredom could set in we were introduced to Thai-boxing, and believing that Thai-boxers had gloves on their feet, we wrapped our feet in towels and kept the towels in place with plastic bags. I once went to kick my opponent in the head and slipped and banged my coccyx. I was rushed to the hospital. They don’t make carpets like they used to.

Best of the Web Nominees

2010-10-29T12:44:00.001-04:00

A tough call like always, but we've finally picked out stories to represent BULL in this year's Best of the Web runnings:

What I Learned to Live With by Matthew Baker

The Dark Is What by Jensen Beach

Just Listen by Jared Yates Sexton

Congrats, gentlemen, and good luck!

New In The Horns: A Joke from Penury

2010-10-27T10:47:00.000-04:00

"Violence can be funny," says the narrator of Paul Kavanagh's "A Joke from Penury," new this week in the horns. But what the man leaves out is whether it's ha-ha funny or that guy is kind of funny. And that's not the only thing he leaves out either...

Meet the Team!

2010-10-20T11:11:00.003-04:00

Who says a man can't ask for help? That's what we did, and these are the men who answered. First, the fellas making up our reading staff:

Ben Jahn is a fiction writer, step-dad, and English teacher in the S.F. Bay Area. His stories have appeared in McSweeney's, The Santa Monica Review, The Greensboro Review, ZYZZYVA, and other magazines. He received a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts grant.

Ryan Ridge is the author of the forthcoming story collection Hunters & Gamblers (Dark Sky Books, September 2011). His work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Juked, The Mississippi Review, The Los Angeles Review, PANK, Salt Hill, among others. He lives in Long Beach, CA and teaches at the University of California, Irvine.

JY Sexton is an Assistant Professor of English at Ball State University. A former winner of the Mary Reid MacBeth Fiction Prize, his work has appeared in the Emerson Review, Relief, and The Benefactor, among others, including BULL, wherein he lives here.

Born on the East Coast, grown on the West Coast, Michael Goodell now lives in Michigan, the country's Third Coast. A writer of fiction, travel narratives and political essays, his first novel, Zenith Rising, was published in 2008. When not writing, he can be found riding his bicycle on long road trips. You can take a look at his website, or check out his BULL piece here.

Lucas Ahlsen grew up in the suburban forests surrounding Portland, Maine. When he's not working as a hotel maintenance tech, he runs a writing workshop called the Glass Jaw Fiction Company out of a shady speakeasy. He goes for post-apocalyptic fiction and off-beat humor, but also has a weakness for ancient mythologies.

But we're not done there:

Arkansan Jon Trobaugh now serves as BULL's social networking honcho. He's also a freelance advertising copywriter and is pursuing a master's degree in English literature at the University of Central Arkansas. His fiction appears or is forthcoming in Knee-Jerk, Monkeybicycle, Prime Number, and Fractured West. Connect with him, and BULL, on Twitter, Facebook, and others forthcoming.

Max "Kind Eyes" Campbell, our copyeditor and foreign liaison, lives in Montreal, Canada. He drinks his coffee (or café) black, and can (and will) be held personally responsible for every typo that should sneak through the cracks.

And of course, general consult Tim Chilcote, and Yours Truly, Editor, as ever. The team, your team. That's it, that's us, that's BULL.

New in the Horns: My Old Guy Boyfriend

2010-10-13T11:09:00.002-04:00

This week we put Ani Smith's 2009 print bonus on the web and in the horns-- "My Old Guy Boyfriend" --a primer on dating older (much older) men. Ladies take note: like a fine wine, we get older with age.

Joke credit: Josh Peterson, of course

Slate.com on New Men's Mags

2010-10-11T12:51:00.000-04:00

I just learned of this article on Slate, which I think is a fine and fair evaluation regarding the rise of new men's magazines on the web--encouraging, but not without its drawbacks. I have to admit, for as much as I appreciate the new dynamic taken towards the audience, sometimes I tire of all the emphasis on self-improvement. What about guys who are more or less okay with who they are? This is the essential reasoning behind the aim of BULL: come as you are, see what we got, make up your own mind, do as you will.

BTW, learned of it through Art of Manliness, one of the sites mentioned, and worth a look.

BULLshot: Ravi Mangla

2010-10-05T23:03:00.000-04:00

BULL: This piece, "Necklace", is about dying in public and private, so what would you say is the most badass way of kicking off?

RM: Riding a bald eagle into the sun.

(For my shot, it's a Baileys Sapphire. Equal parts Baileys Irish Cream and Bombay Sapphire. A Columbus Day favorite.)

New in the Horns: "Necklace"

2010-09-29T10:13:00.000-04:00

Last time in the horns we dealt with loss of limb, this time we're talking loss of teeth. If this is a pattern I'd hate to see where it leads. In this week's "Necklace", Ravi Mangla gives us a better place to put those little suckers than under the pillow.

PS. Sorry for the picture.

BULLshot: Kurt Mueller

2010-09-22T09:16:00.000-04:00

BULL: If you could do one piratey act in your daily life and get away with it, what would it be?

KM: I've been under the weather the last few days, and I just did a shot of NyQuil (at 3 in the afternoon on a Tuesday - and not for recreational purposes), so I think I'm still within the spirit of the BULLshot series. I would love to be a pirate, but not the neuvo Somali-style actual pirating, thieving pirates that hijack ships and take hostages and whatnot. I would love to be a classical pirate with a parrot on my shoulder and a foul mouth and the ability to make people walk the plank. If someone crosses me, sorry, but fuck you, walk the plank. It's such an instant way of getting rid of problems. No discussion, no protests, nope. I'll just tie a person's hands behind his back and force him to walk into the water to drown or get eaten by sharks. For my worst enemies (and people who cut me off in traffic or take too long in line at the grocery store or just kind of rub me the wrong way), I can imagine no greater punishment than the hopeless and helpless feeling of walking to your own death, of falling into the sea knowing you'll never be able to stay afloat. Plus, it's not murder on my part - they walked out there on their own. As a disclaimer, I don't really want to kill anyone - this is more of a metaphor. I don't want to seem crazy.

New in the Horns: "Barnacles" - Print Issue Bonus

2010-09-15T13:28:00.002-04:00

This week we cap off our summer print compilation with a dirty little gem by Kurt Mueller -- "Barnacles" -- dealing with a morbid quirk known as apotemnophilia. (Look it up, I had to.)

Due to a technical snafu we can't put up a PDF issue that would print right, but consider this your opportunity to join our current subscribers in letting BULL do the grunt work, and get four of these handsome devils sent to your mailbox throughout the year.

Remember when you used to get mail? Mail you could actually enjoy?

Ask Not What BULL Can Do for You...

2010-09-08T11:51:00.001-04:00

Coming up soon on two years of BULL's existence we've seen ourselves growing at a steady pace, and to help keep up that growth we're excited to bring in some new blood into the operation. At the very least we're looking for assistance in evaluating submissions, and ideally some of these folks would eventually want to work with our writers, editing and polishing the work for publication. We're also looking to fill a few roles in other venues like Twitter and Fictionaut, etc... and maybe you've got an idea or insight about something we're missing completely. If any of this interests you, if you like what BULL is doing and want to be a part of it, we want to hear from you. Email BULLmensfiction@gmail.com with "editorial" somewhere in the subject line, and we'll talk more about the specifics, what's in it for you, etc...

The Expendables: A Movie with No Balls, or Point

2010-09-01T12:44:00.004-04:00

A BULL review by Josh Peterson

As if a review of Sex and the City 2 was not enough, I’ve been invited back to this publication to rip on another bad movie, The Expendables, and lay on the lambaste across gender lines. And oh, what a bad movie The Expendables is. If you really want to see this bad movie, (which there is no shame in wanting; I, for one, saw it) do not read this. I will spoil this bad movie for you. Just a warning.
But first, a primer: Dirty Harry, we’ll remember, is a movie about a rogue cop who breaks the rules to save the life of a little girl. It’s a brutalistic movie, a movie that says “fuck the rights of criminals and fuck those liberals who gave criminals rights in the first place.” It was a conservative response to the sixties. And although I don’t agree with the theme of that movie, at least the movie had some balls.

    The Expendables, in this sense, has no balls. There isn’t a single ball in the movie. I’m sure all the actors have functioning scrotums, (except Schwarzenegger, that ex-steroid-using, political waffler) but I’m speaking of metaphorical balls, the balls that allow artists and movie-makers to take risks. The only risk this movie seemed to take was to take no risk. Wrap your head around that.
    The movie starts on a ship overrun by modern-day pirates. Unsurprisingly, Stallone and his buddies stop the pirates, but one of these buddies, Dolph Lundgren, wants to hang a pirate who has already surrendered. Sly and the others are like, “Hey! We don’t hang pirates! We just shoot them a lot until they give up.” But Dolph shows no remorse, instead he threatens Jet Li, the tiniest of all the Expendables, with a knife. And by the way, it turns out Lundgren is only acting like this because he’s high on some drug. They don’t say what drug; they just let us know it is a drug, a bad drug—the drug that Nancy Reagan hates the most. The Expendables seem to have nothing by way of a workplace counseling program, so Lundgren is fired and, naturally, becomes a bad guy.
    Meanwhile, Bruce Willis calls a meeting of the meatheads, and with Stallone and Schwarzenegger, assembles the most uncomfortable Planet Hollywood shareholder’s meeting ever. After Arnold and Sly bicker a bit, Willis says, “Hey, are you guys going to suck each other’s dick now?” Then there is an interesting pause. Sly and Arnold look at each other, and Sly raises his palm as if to say, “What do you think about that proposition, Arnold?” Then Willis does an awkward laugh and the movie continues. I don’t understand what that scene was about, but I have four theories:

My first theory, the most likely theory, is that in Sly Stallone’s mind, Bruce Willis shouldn’t suggest that two larger men orally pleasure each other, because Willis will get beat up. And the silence between the two GNC Gold Card Members is an understanding that an ass-beating is owed to Brucie, who gets the message, and laughs off a punch.
There are rumors that Sly and Arnold have had gay sex and these gay-sex rumors make them popular in the homosexual community. Instead of denying it, they decide to allude to it to keep that popularity. Willis laughs because he knows the truth.
This was a dig at Arnold, because Proposition 8 was overturned. Bruce Willis is standing at the head of a church like a minister. Sly and Arnold stand where a bride and groom would stand. Willis laughs at Arnold because he is a Republican, too.
They are in love with each other and forgot they were acting for a moment. Bruce Willis feels nothing but joy.

But I digress: Bruce Willis eventually offers Stallone and Arnie mercenary work killing a dictator on some island. (San Lorenzo, perhaps?) Stallone takes the job, because, apparently, Arnold is too busy illegally running for president.
Time for subplot: while Stallone is out talking dicks with his business partners, Statham goes to his girlfriend’s house and finds out that she has a new beau, who I’m pretty sure is the guy whose picture is on the Hanes’ crew neck three-pack.

So no one gets their blow job, and Statham and Stallone fly to the island and meet a beautiful woman. This woman shows them the castle where the bad guy lives. Yes, the movie is like a video game. And like a video game, Stallone and Statham kill a bunch of no-name peons in a matter of seconds. Also like a video game, this bad guy is not the ultimate bad guy; there’s a worse guy pulling the strings—an over-tanned ex-CIA corporatist end boss. The Expendables advance to the next level, but they have to leave the beautiful woman behind.

    This point brings one of the best scenes of the movie. Statham, worried that his seaplane might get shot at, takes off unnecessarily early. Here is Stallone’s gratuitous “leaping on a plane at the last moment for no reason” scene. It made me laugh, and that is something.
    Statham and Stallone are so pissed off about being shot at, instead of flying away to safety, they turn the plane around and kill every single person on the docks with their airplane guns. Luckily, Tanny McBadGuy and Steve Austin leap off the dock into bullet-and-explosion-proof water.
    Somewhere around here they also squeeze in that guy from The Wrestler. Rourke. The Wrestler was a pretty good movie. You should maybe rent that movie instead of seeing this one.
    Oh, and Statham goes to see the lady that dumped him. She has a black eye now. The Hanes’ man beat her up. This gives Statham moral provocation to punch his rival. And with few dozen of those punches, romance is rekindled.
    And Dolph Lundgren! He comes back to avenge his wounded pride. There is a car chase that ends in a factory, where Li and Lundgren have a little fight. Stallone sits out, dazed from a serious car crash. Only a serious car crash can daze Stallone. Lundgren is just about to impale Li when Stallone presses a button in his mangled car. This button activates a gun-dispenser. Stallone shoots Lundgren, and we all think Lundgren dies.
    (Brief aside: In my old Pontiac, I had a built-in gun dispenser, but whenever it was too hot, my gun-dispenser would stick. And fuck, every time I got in a fender bender, the gun dispenser would automatically dispense my gun, even if I didn’t want it to. Frankly it doesn’t seem realistic that a.) the gun dispenser would still work after a serious car crash or b.) guns were not dispensed on impact. Of course, I hear GM is planning some big strides in weaponry-dispensing features. The bazooka-mounting package on the new Suburban, for example, will really make Chevy the leader in blowing shit up on the interstate.)
    Back to the movie: They fly back to the island, I guess, kill a bunch of people, and save that woman. One guy with a cauliflower ear sets “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on fire then punches his burning face. Tanny McBadGuy is shot and stabbed and the woman is saved. Yo.

At the very end of the movie, though, the whole gang is sitting around the bike shop throwing knives. And guess who’s alive! Dolph Lundgren! All his drug-addled sins have been forgiven. Believe it or not, there is a metaphor here. Dolph Lundgren was a symbol for the heart of the Expendables, but the Expendables lost their way, just like Dolph. By saving that woman, the Expendables earned their Dolph-like hearts back. Except, what did the Expendables ever do that was so wrong?
Let’s look back: in scene one, they killed pirates. Remember those pirates that Barack Obama had snipered off the coast of Africa? Remember how everyone and their momma said what a good idea that was? Sure, killing a pirate who’s surrendered may be wrong, but that’s not what the Expendables did. That’s just what Old High-Times Lundgren wanted to do. And leaving that woman behind wasn’t really a sin; she was the general’s daughter after all (did I mention that?) so there was no reason to think she'd be waterboarded. Statham can’t even fight a guy he hates until he’s given the moral green-light. So when did these guys lose their hearts? Every unique action in this movie was aboveboard from a contemporary morality standpoint. If you are going to write a redemption story, you need to have something to be redeemed for. But the movie didn’t have the balls to sully any of their Expendables with sin.

    Also, no one dies. No one here is really expendable. Even the guy that dies really doesn’t die. They’ll all be back for the rip-roaring sequel. Way to play it safe!
    I’ll end this article with a few technical thoughts on Stallone’s directing ability. Stallone likes to use the “shit-in-the-way” method of directing, in which a scene unfolds behind the waving branches of a bush or next to billowing curtains, and you can expect to watch every fight scene from behind a chain-link fence. For dramatic scenes, Stallone likes to use the “what-the-fuck-am-I-looking-at-close-up” method, zooming in real close on 70% of a person’s head. For example, during The Wrestler’s dramatic speech, the only thing on the screen is his face, but we’re so close to the face that we can’t see all the face, just most of the face. Or it may be my local Cineplex is cutting corners, figuratively and literally. But in any case, hooray for Stallone for making the movie scream, “I am being directed!”
    (And just to prove I am not a coward, if any Expendables have a problem with this, I’ll account for these views personally anytime during office hours at the University of Arkansas’ English Department. I’ll be waiting, with a very light dumbbell in one hand and some Alice Munro in the other, muthafuckas.)

BULLshot: Jensen Beach

2010-08-25T12:25:00.000-04:00

BULL: When doing a puzzle, edge pieces first or distinguishable objects first? Why?

JB: My son and I were building a puzzle just the other day (neither of us had been taking shots--but if I had, it would probably have been scotch, in a glass, with two ice cubes. That is, not really a shot, just a drink) and I was explaining this distinction to him. Definitely the edge pieces first. But my strategy is never to put all the edge pieces down and then fill in the rest. I tend to build in sections, let the shape start to take form, use the green of tree leaves to teach me where the brown bark should be and so on. I'm no expert, though. My son is five. We build really simple puzzles.

New in the Horns: The Dark Is What

2010-08-18T10:05:00.025-04:00

This week BULL takes you straight into the Great American heart of darkness: the flea market. Now in the horns, Jensen Beach's "The Dark Is What" proves those dusty tables and the dustier folk behind them yield a learning experience for men of any age. Just make sure you're ready for the lesson...

BULLshot: Mel Bosworth

2010-08-11T13:57:00.000-04:00

BULL: What's the most arousing form of transportation? The least?

Mel: The most arousing form of transportation would have to be a bus. Not sure why. The vibration, the air brakes, the noise, the sometimes odd smells that aren't entirely unpleasant? Maybe all of those things. Maybe the idea of "shared travel," of moving together, of working as a unit. Maybe bus travel sparks the zen of connectedness in me. And it's on the ground. It's not in the air. It's not in an airtight tube. It's not recycled air. It's better. It's real. Nothing stirs the loins better than the blunt reality of bus travel. The least arousing form of transportation, to me, would have to be...when I'm behind the wheel. But once I get where I'm going, and I'm out of the car, watch out for the horn. The bull horn. Ha. Get it? Bull? Oh man. [Shot of Choice: Jack Daniels]

New In the Horns: The Things I Did and Did

2010-08-04T10:38:00.000-04:00

This week in the horns we're giving due webspace to Mr. Mel Bosworth's "The Things I Did and Did," the bonus story from our last summer print issue. A word of wisdom from The Bos, as we call him: watch your mouth --literally-- if ever in the company of malicious lip-readers...

BULLshot: Shane Ryan Bailey

2010-07-28T14:41:00.000-04:00

BULL: The ending of "Pastoral" seems almost peaceful and happy to me; did you intend it as such? Is there beauty in decay?

JRB: There is certainly peace and happiness at the end in the sense that the affected parties (the wife and the son) were able to find personal solace by abandoning the husband/father, and as for the husband/father, his last moment was in the very spot he enjoyed being in. On the flip side, the final words of the last sentence create a grotesque image which, I had intended, seems to contradict the title of the story. "Pastoral" is a term that is applied to art forms (painting, music, literature) which feature the idyllic life of shepherds and country folk, or even just the countryside itself. Pastoral paintings normally depict the countryside and nature as a peaceful, beautiful setting--almost like the Garden of Eden. The father did find peace by immersing himself, alone, on his rural property, sitting by the river and enjoying the view of the country, but in the end, his "god" (Nature) claims him, leaving his decaying body to mar what would normally be a beautiful scene of the surrounding landscape.

New in the Horns: Pastoral

2010-07-21T12:24:00.000-04:00

This week we bring a touch of realism back into the horns, with Shane Ryan Bailey's "Pastoral", proving it doesn't get more real than an angry dad at the dinner table. Not much realer than death either, but in a story this short I think I've said too much already.

BULLshot: Matthew Baker

2010-07-14T02:40:00.001-04:00

BULL: Aside from "D," what are the other coolest (or not) one-letter nicknames?

MB: If I'm drinking a shot while writing this, it's probably a shot of New Holland Brewery's 12th Anniversary Blue Sunday ale, and it's probably a jar instead of a shot.

The best one-letter nicknames are, in order: Z, then K, then B. I've been nicknamed both K and B, but never Z—the only thing that keeps me going sometimes is the thought that someday someone might for whatever reason dub me that preeminent one-letter nickname, but at this point I just don't know if it's going to happen. I've also been nicknamed P (the 7th best) and M (the 11th). The worst one-letter nickname is U.

New in the Horns: What I Learned to Live With

2010-07-07T12:05:00.000-04:00

Maybe it's the heat, that sweet summertime abandon, but we seem to have been filling the horns lately with some truly oddball stories: talking monkeys, post-coital froglegs, and now a sexbot to round out the trifecta, as featured in this week's "What I Learned to Live With" by Matthew Baker. This story is BULL's first foray into what could possibly be considered sci-fi, or maybe not--who knows what they got out there nowadays.

Sex and the City 2: Redefining Failed Pornography

2010-06-30T18:42:00.006-04:00

A BULL review by Josh Peterson

The definition of the word pornography should be expanded to include what the movie Sex and the City 2 attempts to be. Classically, porn is known for its flimsy repairman-centric plot, poor dialogue, ludicrous titles, boob-jobs that defy Einstein’s notion of curved space, and greasy mustaches. At its heart, however, pornography is a standard boy-meets-girl story. Sometimes it can be a girl-meets-girl or a boy-meets-girls or a boy-meets-goat-in-hat story, but what pornographers really do is distill any of these stories into nothing more than a brief introduction and a whole lot of intercourse. They also succeed at reducing the complexity of human existence into the desire to procreate with, and at, each other. Once the characters are introduced, they satiate that desire ad nauseam. (The French call it the little nausea). Viewers then flock to porn to satiate that single need themselves, and another case of Jergens is sold. Hooray!

Let’s say that the definition of pornography can be expanded to any sort of media that is created to fulfill a singular need. For example, many people enjoy the television show Family Guy. The popular TV show has a host of detractors who complain that the characters and storyline just serve to set up jokes. Even though I love the show, I’d have to say that those detractors are correct. Family Guy is nothing more than comedy porn. You watch the show, you get your kicks, and you are left with nothing--no emotional pay-off and no sweet nugget of morality. So if you can stand those hilarious, yet cold, cold, emotionally detached and tasteless twenty-two minutes of Family Guy, then you have enjoyed comedy pornography at its finest, but if you have enjoyed an episode of Two and One Half Men, then you have enjoyed something with absolutely no merit. And that is worse.

This brings us right back to Sex and the City 2. This movie was awful, but you already knew that from all the other terrible reviews the movie has garnered. At its best, SATC2 could maybe be touted as a porn of sorts for women. It could have been just a series of gratuitous closet/shoe/wedding shots ending with some very expensive facials in a five-star Middle-Eastern hotel. But the movie fails to provide even the basest of enjoyments to its target audience. Why? Because unlike porno, Sex in the City 2 has very little respect for its viewers.

The movie started off with a wedding. Leonard Nimoy, I mean, Liza Minnelli was at that wedding singing “Single Ladies.” Carrie was mad at her husband cause he watched TV a lot and then he wanted to go watch TV somewhere else for two days a week. And this idea of far-away TV-watching made Carrie sad. Charlotte’s husband liked to look at this one lady’s boobs, and Charlotte worried her fat, bald, and ugly hubby might one day touch those boobs. Samantha was on a bunch of pills that made her like sex even though she was old now. And that red-headed one quit her job, therefore, they all went to Dubai.

In Dubai, the ladies caused quite a stir, because the culture in the Middle East is different than the culture in New York City. The ladies were all like, “WTF? I like the tops of my boobs showing and being a woman, but these Arab men want my boobs hidden and for me to be quiet.” But quiet and de-cleavaged these women would not be! They stood up on stage and sang “I Am Woman Hear Me Roar.” Then they were waited on hand-and-foot by swarthy, sensitive men. Some of the ladies went on dates with globe-trotting fantasy men. But the best part of the movie was the end.

Let me explain it to you: Samantha was caught having sex on the beach with her Danish fantasy man. (I am of Danish blood, ladies.) This sex-having was a big no-no in the United Arab Emirates. The shah who was financing her $22,000-dollar-a-night hotel room found out about the on-beach sex and stopped paying for the women’s room. That means the women had to pack in an hour! One hour! Because if they did not pack and leave their room in exactly one hour, they would have to pay $5,500 dollars each for another night. “We cannot afford that! We will go to jail!” they exclaimed, which surprised the fuck out of me, to hear that these rich, rich women could not afford something.

(By the way, I am a broke-ass grad student/teaching assistant, and I can come up with $5,500 dollars. I mean, I would have to max out the credit cards that I spent over a decade paying off, but the value of not going to Middle-Eastern jail is, as they say, priceless.)

But the women do manage to pack in an hour, whereupon they rush to book a flight back to the U.S., because if they don’t hurry they’ll have to fly coach. Hey? How’d we suddenly get so spendy? But the ladies must first return to the bazaar, where Carrie, the dumbass, had left her wallet and passport and subsequently buys all her friends shoes. (No one, by the way, is worried about flying coach while shoes are being bought.)

I forget why, but some guys start chasing Samantha and try to take her purse. They grab it and a bunch of condoms fall out and all the men in the marketplace get mad at her. The women flee and hide in a run-down flower shop filled with Middle-Eastern women in burkas. Turns out, all the burka women read Suzanne Somers books and wear the latest NYC fashions under their religious garments. Everybody wants to be a rich white lady! This movie really goes to show that Consumer Capitalism is way better than Fundamentalism. You can’t even wear the shit that you see in Vogue under Fundamentalism. Stupid, stupid not-American culture.

After that little bit of ethnocentric silliness, the Sex in the City ladies don burkas, so they won’t be recognized as harlots, and make a mad dash to the airport. However, they are having trouble hailing a cab in their unflattering garb. So Carrie does what any self-respecting lady would do, she hikes up her burka and shows the Middle-Eastern cab driver her legflesh. The car screeches to a halt.

Wait? Weren’t the Middle-Eastern guys pissed when Samantha showed her cleavage? But this cab driver is OK with lady parts? What the hell is going on in this movie? Is the movie trying to say that it is not all right for men to treat women like sex objects but it is fine for women to use sex to get the things they want, and therefore, it is all right for women to be treated as sex objects as long as the women choose to be treated like sex objects? That’s a bad lesson, I think, to take away from this movie.

But this is why Sex and the City 2 is worse than pornography. The producers of porno films know what their audience wants, and they treat their audience with respect. If a movie is called Ass Pillagers 2, it means, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that asses will be pillaged, albeit figuratively. There would never be a porn movie where the actors break from sex and talk about the benefits for solar power for an hour. That’s just disrespectful to the porn-consuming audience. And it's interesting, really, how the sophisticated city-dwelling, sex-having target audience of Sex and the City 2 doesn't even get the same respect as mouth-breathing, trench coat-wearing booth-lurkers.

But I doubt this movie even functions as pornography for women. Let me define what pornography for women is really quick, and I’ll try to make it as inoffensive as possible. You know that guy, the one that your girlfriend is always talking to on the phone? He’s like the blind guy in Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” or like Eric Stoltz in any 80’s movie. He dotes on your girlfriend and is probably in love with her, but he never had the guts to ask her out and thus fell into the “friend zone.” He's the guy she goes and talks to after a fight, probably to make you jealous, and to have the unconditional support of a male. The reason that guy is available for her is because he’s never had the nerve to ask out any girl he actually likes, and instead dates girls who look like funhouse-mirror versions of your girlfriend. That guy is porn for women. He’s all the emotional support of a relationship without the stress and sacrifice of a real relationship. A fantasy man incapable of saying no.

And if you are that guy, then fuck you. Get your own girlfriend. Seriously. She’ll never love you. She's just using you for your inability to set boundaries.

But I forget--why am I reviewing a “woman’s” movie for BULL: Men’s Fiction?

Because I thought it would be funny.

Want to do a review? Read this.

BULLshot: DJ Swykert

2010-06-23T14:14:00.000-04:00

BULL: Tell us what you're drinking, then answer the following: Practically speaking, which would you rather be: monkey, lizard, frog or dog, and why?

DJ: Since it's 2:44pm in the afternoon on a Monday I'm drinking coffee. But if it was 2:44am on a Friday night it might be Bourbon, neat, no ice. I would be a monkey: they enjoy many of the same vices as I do, and as they grow older they become less responsible, less reliable, and even crazier.

New in the Horns: Monkeyville

2010-06-17T21:05:00.001-04:00

This week brings us the back nine on what we're calling MonkeyMonth--last spring's print bonus "Monkeyville" by DJ Swykert, now ready for online reading. Be it wishful thinking or Corona-induced delusion, this one's for that little king in all of us trying to get out.

WANTED: Reviews, of Everything

2010-06-16T13:21:00.006-04:00

Starting this fall, BULL hopes to add in the horns a quarterly "Week in Reviews," where we'll feature reviews of not only books (and perhaps not even books at all, because book reviews, we've too often found, lean towards tedious droning and/or intellectual preening) but rather anything and everything you think a thinking man should know about, or have a keen perspective on, or just flat-out find entertaining.

Like what, you may ask. We don't really know. Outboard motors? Mulch? Your wallet? (Bi-fold or tri-?) Hopefully in the coming months we'll post prototypes here and there, but more than likely we won't know what we're looking for 'til we see it. So interpret the above however you will, take it away and send us what you come up with.

What else can I say? Think: fun. It's summer, for chrissake.

Be a (bigger) part of BULL

2010-06-09T16:09:00.000-04:00

It's a little known fact that the BULLshot question asked to our authors is actually one of two we send their way to choose from. And since Morely Safer we are not, Tim and I are often left scraping our skulls every other week for a good, hearty question apiece. This is exactly where you could, and should, come in--we need your inquiring minds, my friends. So take notice that the horns that close each story now link to comments or questions, and if you jot down a query there by Friday, say, we'll pass it on to the author along with ours. Remember--this site is yours, readers; this BULL, is for you.

New In The Horns: Monkey and Man

2010-06-02T14:53:00.007-04:00

We at BULL are declaring June to be MonkeyMonth, for no better reason than both our stories to come being of strong simian persuasion. Kicking it off this week in the horns is the bonus for our Spring print issue, "Monkey and Man", brought to us by John Warner, the brains behind McSweeney's Internet Tendency. So you know this one is something to see--a murdered organ grinder, a hopeless patsy, and a monkey paramour in rainbow suspenders. Better button that back pocket, my friends; better watch those wallets.

BULLshot: David Galef

2010-05-26T09:22:00.008-04:00

BULL: If you could have "All You Can..." of anything, what'll it be?

DG: As for my shot, it's Baker's bourbon, which makes me feel as if I'm drinking above my station.

Unlimited sex, wealth, and food are all tempting, but any fairy tale reader knows that making such requests is bound to backfire. Unless I meet a genie who can convince me I won't self-destruct, I'll have to pass.

Bonus! DOUBLEshot: Jeff Kass

BULL: As an English teacher, what would you say has changed (or not changed) about fisticuffs in public high schools?

JK: If I'm drinking a shot while writing this, it's probably some dirt-cheap vodka, out of a paper cup.

As far as fist-fighting in schools, I actually don't see very much of that anymore. Perhaps that's because schools are pretty heavily patrolled now by police officers with guns and tasers. Perhaps that's because the present generation of students is smarter than previous ones, less violent. However, when violence does occur, one thing which seems disturbing is what looks like a willingness to pile on. If somebody's getting beat up, not only do on-lookers fail to do anything to stop the beating, but it sometimes looks like people get excited by somebody on the ground and jump in, kicking at the person who's already down. It's almost as if any dude who gets his ass beat deserves even more scorn, more of a beating. In his weakness, he's also become contemptible. That feels scary to me.

New In The Horns: All You Can Eat

2010-05-19T12:28:00.005-04:00

We've all been there--just last week yours truly was left all but incapacitated after back-to-back buffet engagements. But how about when you really can't get enough, or just can't decide--in food or otherwise? In the horns this week, David Galef tackles the male appetite with "All You Can Eat". A fine time to sit back and let the belt out a notch.

New In The Horns: Don't Mess

2010-05-05T15:35:00.005-04:00

In case you didn't catch them in the BULL print issues, occasionally throughout this year we'll be giving due web/hornspace to our print bonuses (bonii?) of 2009, for the sake of our readers lacking a double-sided printer or single-sided savvy. This week we bring the full Nelson with "Don't Mess" by Jeff Kass, featuring bloodymouthed youth wrestlers, sweet-smelling cheerleaders, and gratuitous use of the arm-bar; or better yet--make that a double.

BULLshot: Lloyd Phillips

2010-04-28T11:28:00.002-04:00

BULL: If you're drinking, state what.
LP: I’m drinking a screwdriver. Is that like wearing your own band’s tee shirt?

BULL: I'm interested in this "cellar," where our man in this story "keeps moments like this." Do you think every man has a place as such? What makes us go there? What keeps us out?
LP: Yeah, all men have a cellar where they put mistakes, humiliations, moral blunders, the Spanish-American War, etc. If one of us was about to disappear for a couple of days or had reappeared after a couple of days, my drinking buddies and I used to joke that we had been "cleaning out the cellar." Only some men do that, though, clean out the cellar. Some men buy a stronger padlock year after year, hoping the big hairy spider demon down there curls up and dies one day. The problem with this scenario is that padlocks can be picked or clipped, and that demon will never die. Black Flag wrote a great song about the padlock guys called "Nervous Breakdown." Other men go down there, probably with the intention of cleaning up, and never make it back out again (see Phil Lynott, J.D. Salinger, and too many of my friends). The men who keep the cellar doors wide open and pass the bottle to the mutants and specters that come out, most of those men are writers.

New In The Horns: We Are Good People, All of Us

2010-04-21T13:02:00.001-04:00

Summer may not be in effect just yet, but that doesn't mean we can't look forward to sunny days spent poolside. Consider Lloyd Phillips' "We Are Good People, All of Us" a cautionary tale, either to lay off the sauce and stay on "good husband, good person floors," or at least invest in a swimsuit that offers some resistance.